A magnificent night.

From atop the lofty CN tower, Lucien LaCroix surveyed Toronto’s sprawling skyline.
He savored the sting of a chill wind, the blue disk of a waning moon, and the cold
glitter of myriad stars overhead. They had been far brighter, those stars, in ancient
Rome, with no city lights to dull their splendor. But, no matter. An affair of rather
different stellar proportions had captured his attention this evening.

Nicholas, it seemed, had been playing a game – and what a fascinating game it was. In
his very brief visit to Nicholas’ loft in the midst of this unprecedented event, LaCroix
had delivered a bottle of the Raven’s best – a gift his theretofore unwilling-to-imbibe-
human-blood son had, to his dismay, accepted. He’d expressed his approval and
departed shortly thereafter. But he had not, as was his custom, told his self-indulgent
offspring just how much he’d known about this game. That he could sense Nicholas’
pleasure in it through the link that bound them was, perhaps, apparent. What he had
not revealed was that the very special bond he shared with this particular son had
permitted him to share the fantasy and its incumbent thrills entire. The unbridled
excitement of the hunt, and the incomparable vision of a Nicholas free of bothersome
inhibitions, free of guilt, and free to be the vampire.

Virtual reality, it would appear, had somehow made possible what eight centuries of
his own fatherly discipline had never managed to accomplish. He should, perhaps, be
jealous of this bit of electronic frippery and its influence over Nicholas. But he was
not.

LaCroix was fascinated.

“So promising a concept simply must be explored more thoroughly, Nicholas,” he said
to the wind, and when it snatched his words away, he rose into the air to follow the
capricious breeze. The city’s lights morphed into a pleasant blur of color, resolving
themselves only when he came to rest on the roof of Nicholas’ warehouse. In the
shadow of a round, steel-girdered water tank, he slipped effortlessly through an open
skylight, coming to rest on the floor of the loft near the grand piano Nicolas prized so
very much.

The room was silent, dark, unoccupied. But the vampire’s ultra-sensitive hearing
informed him that Nicholas slumbered peacefully in the bedroom beyond the upstairs
landing. An equally sensitive nose told him that something other than firewood had
recently been burned down here.

“And what might this be?”

He plucked a warped and twisted thing of metal and plastic from ashes not long cold
on the hearth, and at once, his fingers sensed vestigial traces of emotions that intrigued
him – because they had belonged to Nicholas. Although he’d experienced them along
with his son as the game proceeded, he savored the ghost of them now anew. Anxiety
was here, and frustration, and anger. But there was also strong determination, the
dark, seductive excitement of the hunt, and over all, the intense and overpowering
pleasure of the kill.

All of these pleased LaCroix very much indeed, but the latter pleased him in
particular. Nicholas had killed – and taken pleasure in it. An imaginary kill, yes, but
that was for the moment of no consequence. The long-suppressed vampire had been
reawakened. And perhaps, with just the right application of this so-called virtual
reality, it might never be stifled again.

With the charred device in hand, LaCroix flew to the landing and quietly entered the
bedroom, where a soundly sleeping Nicholas lay supine on the disarrayed bed. For a
time, he did nothing but stand and watch his offspring rest in Morpheus’ embrace.
While he watched, he felt the morning sun rise outside the loft’s protective walls to
drench Toronto in the light of yet another day. Oblivious, Nicholas slept on. To assure
the continuation of this state, LaCroix reached out and with the lightest of touches,
exerted a very ancient influence upon his progeny’s still-malleable mind.

“Sleep, Nicholas. But while you sleep, hear my words. I have wondrous things to
impart, in new and marvelous ways.” He lay the ruined headset on the bedside lamp
table, tilting his head to view Nicholas from a slightly different perspective. “I
thoroughly enjoyed your little game, you know. It was so... invigorating. What a pity
you never formally invited me to play. Ah well. Perhaps we can remedy that
oversight.” Slowly, LaCroix circled to the opposite side of the bed. “Tell me, Nicholas,
what lofty ideals were they that once motivated the knights of your much-vaunted
Crusades? I mean, apart from those tiresomely unattainable goals of reclaiming
Jerusalem, the Grail and the One True Cross? A knight’s oath was to uphold and
defend the concepts of... now let me see. Honesty. Faith. Virtue. Fealty. Courage. Oh,
there were more, but we’ll content ourselves with those for now, shall we?”

LaCroix closed his eyes, breathed deeply of the loft’s decidedly stale air, and sought
out the mental vibration that was Nicholas. Attuning himself to it with practiced ease,
he continued, though he no longer spoke aloud. In our own little version of the game, I
think perhaps we shall examine these five values. Though, this time we will do so from the
vampire’s more enlightened perspective. I will serve in the ignoble capacity of scorekeeper.
And you, Nicholas, shall be the questing knight. So, let us begin at the beginning. In our
virtual world of ‘what if,’ how should we deal, I wonder, with honesty?

                                            *          *          *

Nick found himself sitting alone at a back booth while the Raven’s booming sound
system pounded out a song, one Janette had always favored when she’d owned the
club.

On the dark side of the glass, the vocalist sang to the throbbing rhythm, alone on the
edge...

“Is that what you are, Nicolas? Alone on the edge?”

She appeared, literally, out of nowhere, fading into being on the bench seat beside
him. It was a power no vampire possessed in reality. In virtual reality, however...

“Janette.”

But then, she couldn’t really be Janette, could she? Janette was gone. She’d vanished a
year ago, and left the Raven to LaCroix, to punish Nick for bringing her back across in
the midst of the fire, against her will. This, then, was a virtual Janette. LaCroix’s
dream-induced creation.

“I should have known you’d have a part in this,” he said.

“Mmmm.” The sound she made was part affirmation and part seduction. She nuzzled
closer on the bench, and then without warning, leaned over to kiss him. No chaste kiss
this, but one filled with the same heated passion with which she had first seduced him
eight centuries ago in Paris. And he found, quite pleasantly, that he had no desire at
all to rebuff the advance. With no care for the crowd of virtual club patrons dancing
frantically nearby, he returned the kiss with an enthusiasm rivaling hers. The touch,
the mental vibration, the scent of her – all of these belonged to the Janette he had
known for most of a millennium. Surely no simulacrum, even one conjured by
LaCroix, could be so real?

“It is you,” he marveled when their lips finally parted.

She looked genuinely hurt by his implication. “Nicolas, if anyone else were ever to kiss
you this way, I would be very, very jealous.”

“But it can’t... You can’t be real. None of this is real.”

“Mon cher...” She cuddled against him again, and the tip of her tongue teased at his
ear. “I am as real as you are.”

Now there was an answer cryptic enough to have come from LaCroix himself.
Because of course, the “real” Nicholas lay asleep in his loft, and the one sitting here...
well, he was, to correctly quote the bard, such stuff as dreams were made on.

Sighing, he stopped trying to make sense of it and simply reveled in her presence.
He’d been unwilling to admit, even to himself, how much he’d missed her these past
few months. Yes, they’d been parted for far longer periods in the past. But it was
different now. He had not been her maker then. He’d been about to express that
sentiment to her aloud when a portly figure in an ill-fitting grey suit squeezed through
the dance crowd to approach the booth.

Nick stared in shocked disbelief. LaCroix had said nothing about resurrecting the dead
for this so-called game.

“Schanke?” Nicked looked helplessly to Janette as his deceased partner made his way
toward their table. With a coquettish shrug of one contoured shoulder, she said, “You
always wished you could be more open and honest with those mortals you cared for in
this life. Well, now is your chance.”

She slipped away, vanishing into the shadows just as Schanke fumbled his way
through a chain curtain to arrive at the booth.

“There you are. Look, Nick, I hate to interrupt your little tete-a-tete here, but we’ve got
a hot date of our own down in lock-up, if you know what I mean?”

Nick, who’d been suppressing the urge to leap up and hug the man, settled for a
mumbled apology instead, then followed Schanke back through the dancing throngs
and out into the relative quiet of the street. Nick’s sea-green Cadillac waited for them,
parked three cars down from the Raven’s entrance. Nick had just unlocked the
passenger door when something Schanke had said inside the club belatedly registered.
Nick paused with his hand on the door handle.

“Schank... What did you say about lock-up?”

“Huh? Geez, partner, what were you drinking in there? Earth to Nick! We switched
assignments on the prisoner transfer, remember? That little problem you’d have with
sunshine coming in the plane windows? We’re making the pick-up along with
Captain Cohen, and then you’re dropping all three of us off at the airport.”

Airport? Cold dread abruptly clutched at Nick’s heart. He dug the car keys from his
coat pocket and hurriedly pressed them into Schanke’s hand. “Take the Caddy back to
the precinct. I’ll meet you there in...”

“Oh, no!” Schanke shoved the keys back into Nick’s grasp. “No, you don’t! You are
not disappearing on me again just when I need you the most! Nyet, no, huh-uh and
get behind the wheel, Nicky boy, ‘cause we’re going, you got that?” He yanked open
the Caddy’s door and dropped into the passenger seat before Nick could do anything
more to dissuade him, then rolled down the window to stick his head back out. “You
coming?”

Frustrated, Nick charged around the car and got in, peeling away from the curb so fast
that Schanke grabbed hold of the upholstery with white knuckles. “Knight! What is it
with you?!”

“There’s a bomb on that plane, Schank.”

“A what??”

“With any luck, we’ll get there well before they start boarding.”

“Whoa... whoa! Whoa! Will you slow down and tell me what the hell you’re talking
about?” Schanke held on for dear life while the Caddy screamed around a corner,
literally on two wheels.

“Don’t ask, Schanke!” Nick had to shout over the squeal of brakes as he veered around
slower traffic on the downtown streets. “Just hold on!”

Virtual Schanke obliged, complaining loudly all the way exactly as the real one would
have done. Nick had fleetingly considered leaving him in the Caddy and flying to the
airport on his own. But a virtual Schanke was better than none. Nick couldn’t –
wouldn’t – abandon him again.

The airport traffic very nearly made Nick reconsider that decision. When at last they
lurched into the parking lot, going through the mundane formality of snatching a
ticket from the machine, circled through five aisles and finally found a space, Nick was
out of the car and running before Schanke had opened the door.

“Niiiiiiiiiiiiiick!!!”

Confident that his portly partner would catch up eventually, Nick raced on. He skirted
the main terminal building, leaped a security fence without touching the chain link,
and tore across the tarmac at a speed no mortal eye could possibly have followed,
searching until he found the plane. He had no trouble distinguishing it from the rest:
the numbers on that tail fin were burned indelibly into his memory. The last time he’d
seen them, though, they’d lain in the midst of a scattered, smoking field of wreckage,
along with the mortal remains of nearly everyone aboard – including Detective
Donald Schanke.

Nick took in several factors in rapid succession: a loading ramp in the process of being
docked to the main door of the aircraft; the whine of several vacuum cleaners running
inside the passenger section; fuel and catering trucks both servicing the plane. He
entered through the rear door, where the catering car, raised on its scissored
scaffolding, had been linked to the fuselage. When a startled man in a catering
company uniform challenged him, Nick flashed his badge, switching at once into
what Natalie had always teasingly called his ‘cop mode.’

“Nick Knight, Metro Police,” he said, loudly enough that both cleaning and catering
crews stopped their work to look up at him. “Everyone stay calm,” he cautioned. “I
need to know if any baggage or cargo has been loaded yet.”

“What?” The man who’d challenged him shook his head. “No. Why?”

“Okay. We’ll still need to search the plane.” He had no idea when the bomb had come
aboard, or with whom, but one way or another, he was going to stop it. “We’re looking
for a package about the size of a shoe box, with a small music box inside. It’s packed
with C-4 explosives.” A collective gasp went through the work crew. Nick held up a
hand. “If you see it – or hear the music playing – don’t touch it. Just show it to me and
clear the plane. I have back-up coming, and we’ll deal with it. If, however, anyone
wants to leave now, you’re free to go.”

Several tense seconds ticked past in which some of them appeared to be considering
that option. In the end, no one left, but their movements, when they began searching,
were understandably timid and fearful. Nick had started making his way forward
when he spotted two members of the flight crew boarding from the newly-docked
loading ramp up front. One of them, a young woman, carried a small package under
her arm.

“Excuse me...” Nick had to maneuver down the narrow aisle past several members of
the cleaning staff. The young co-pilot looked bewildered when he showed her his
badge and said, “Do you mind if I ask where the box came from?”

“Wha...? Well, from a friend. Why is that any of your business? Who are you?”

Nick showed her his badge with one hand and reached out for the box with the other.
She reluctantly surrendered it, all the more bewildered when the catering and cleaning
crews all began a hasty retreat out the rear hatch and into the catering car. Nick paid
no attention to them.

“Does this friend have a name, Miss...?”

“Miller,” she said nervously. “And don’t ask me why, but he calls himself Vudu. Look,
what’s this all about anyway?”

Both the male pilots behind her echoed the question. Nick’s answer was to begin
issuing orders. “Call your security division. Tell them to keep everyone clear of the
east field until an explosive ordnance has been detonated. Then call the 97th Precinct
station. Tell Captain Cohen her flight’s been delayed – by a bomb.”

He left all three dismayed pilots at the cockpit door, turning with bomb in hand to exit
the plane through the rear door. The catering container had already been lowered to
ground level and driven away. Without a second thought, Nick simply drifted from
the open hatch to the tarmac and headed east with the little box, noting that even the
fuel truck driver had abandoned his post in haste, leaving the fuel line attached to the
plane. Word was spreading fast.

He’d nearly reached the point where concrete expanse gave way to grass field when a
panting Schanke came trotting up to fall into step beside him.

“Geez Louise, Nick, could you just once tell a guy what the hell you’re up to before
you...?” He spied the package in Nick’s grasp then, and immediately sidestepped
several paces away. “Is that...?”

“A bomb?” Nick finished for him. “Yes. You might want to get under cover, Schank –
inside the terminal.”

Schanke broke stride for a few brief steps, apparently considering, but then scurried to
catch back up again. “Oh, no,” he breathed raggedly. “You’re not getting rid of me
that easily. And by the way, exactly where the hell are you taking that thing?”

“As far away from the buildings as I can get it.” Nick stopped abruptly part way across
the grass expanse. “Schanke, if this thing goes off, there’s no sense in both of us getting
blown to pieces. Give me a minute?”

Hesitant but finally convinced, Schanke nodded and backed away, holding his hands
out in mock surrender. Nick hurried on with his small burden, reaching the
easternmost point of the grass expanse between runways. He knelt, placed the box on
the ground and then rapidly scooped out multiple handfuls of damp, grassy soil to
pack around the bomb. When he’d built up a miniature sod pyramid, he sprinted back
to Schanke. Together, they retreated several more yards, back onto the tarmac.

“Well,” Nick said, and stopped walking again. “Now I suppose we can either call in
the bomb disposal unit, and put those good public servants at risk trying to disarm it.
Or...” He pulled his seldom-used Glock 17 from its shoulder holster and snapped off
the safety clip, working the slide to put the first round in the chamber.

Schanke snorted in disbelief. “You’re kidding, right?” He squinted at the barely-visible
(to human eyes) mound of earth out there in the dark field. “Needle in a haystack at
two hundred yards? Oh, you should be so lucky!”

“Maybe we should both be so lucky.”

Schanke broke into a wide grin and a bad John Wayne imitation. “Well, shucks
pardner. Let’s just blast ‘em!” He pulled his .38 police special out with a flourish,
aimed it with both hands and started firing at the little pyramid out there on the grass.
Nick’s semi-automatic joined in, and a few rounds later, the grass field erupted in a
fireball accompanied by a deafening boom that shook the ground under their feet. The
fiery cloud mushroomed upward and then collapsed into roiling, thick black smoke,
leaving tiny fires burning all over the area that had once surrounded the buried box.

Schanke released an impressed whistle. “C4?”

Nick nodded.

“All right, so give. How’d you know?”

“Phone tip a while ago,” Nick lied. “I just didn’t put the pieces together until now.”

Sirens screaming, half a dozen airport emergency vehicles tore past them, heading for
the explosion site. Schanke made a smirking face. “Geez, didn’t any of these guys ever
hear of overkill? You’d think... uh-oh.” He interrupted himself, looking back toward
the terminal. “Somebody’s awfully interested in our little blow-out.”

Nick followed his gaze, at first seeing only a throng of spectators behind the glass
terminal walls. Then he spotted what had obviously captured Schanke’s attention – a
black-clad figure crouching behind a tow tractor, peering over the engine at them. The
moment Nick spied him, the man bolted, ducked under the plane and darted out of
sight.

“Hey!” Schanke instantly gave chase with the .38 still in hand. Nick slipped his own
gun back into its holster before sprinting after both of them. He outdistanced his
already-winded partner with ease, applying just enough vampiric speed to catch up
with the fleeing suspect yet not appear to be more than human. He caught the man’s
turned-up coat collar, yanking him to a whiplash halt and spinning him around.

“Vudu, I presume?” Nick tried to exert his will over the mortal –but the eyes that met
his were wandering, vacant, and completely mad. Nick shook him, trying to force
those eyes to focus. “Why?” he demanded. “I want to know why!”

Vudu’s only response was to begin softly singing the garbled lyrics to the song his
lethal music boxes played.

“Tell me!” Nick shouted the words, unable to stop the vampire’s rage from turning his
eyes gold. “Tell me why!”

No response. He had to vanquish the vampire in haste when Schanke arrived, but
when he re-opened his now-blue eyes, the shocked look on his partner’s face told him
he may have been too late. Schanke lurched to a startled halt, the .38 having been
exchanged for a pair of handcuffs that swung loose from his right hand.

Nick forestalled any questions for the moment by going through the motions of
patting Vudu down, removing a cell phone and a handful of suspicious wires from his
pockets. “You’re under arrest for attempted homicide. Put your hands behind you.”
When Vudu failed to comply, continuing to burble the song lyrics instead, Nick
grabbed his arms and pushed them into position for Schanke to take over and apply
the cuffs. Every instinct he possessed screamed for Vudu’s blood rather than this tame
and unsatisfying resolution. In the real world, this madman had murdered Schanke,
Cohen and a plane full of innocent people. And for that, the vampire longed to drain
the life from him in revenge, ‘virtual’ though it may be. He repressed the urge with
difficulty, guarding Vudu in sullen silence while Schanke called in and reported to
Cohen.

His partner developed an unprecedented case of laryngitis after that, though he
continued casting odd glances Nick’s way while they waited for the black-and-white
unit that came to collect Vudu. Schanke called Cohen again to confirm the pick-up,
and when she asked (Nick could easily hear both sides of the conversation) when the
two of them would be in, Schanke told her they still had some loose ends to tie up
here. When he’d folded the cell phone and slipped it back into a pocket, he looked at
Nick expectantly and said, “Don’t we?”

“Yeah,” Nick admitted. “I guess we do.”

They walked away from the melee still surrounding the smoldering field, oddly
detached from it now, and returned to the Caddy. Schanke still said nothing as they
drove away, until Nick pulled over on a remote street along a ridge overlooking the
airport. Even then, it seemed to take a monumental effort for him to get the first words
out.

“I was right,” he said, and his voice broke on the last word. “I put it all together, didja
know that? Your allergies to garlic and sunlight, the way you always got there first, the
way you flew off that fire escape – and you did fly. You tried to make me forget and
then that Nightcrawler guy made me think it was all just my imagination, but...”

“Schanke...”

“God in Heaven, Jesus Mary and Joseph, I was right.” Schanke crossed himself, not
noticing the wince it evoked in his partner. “I was right,” he repeated breathlessly.
“You are a... a...”

“Vampire,” Nick said the word for him. “You were right, and I’m sorry we had to do
that to you, Schank. It was for your own good. I need for you to know that, to
understand it.”

“My God, Nick. How can you be a cop on the one hand and on the other go around
killing people and drinking their...”

“I don’t.” Nick met his partner’s eyes for the first time since he’d stopped the car. “I
don’t kill, not any more. Not for a hundred years. I’ve been searching for a cure for
over a century. And I’ve been trying to atone. Natalie’s been researching possible
cures.”

“Yeah.” Schanke nodded. “Yeah, I’d figured that out, too. I just don’t... I just don’t see
why you couldn’t tell me, Nick. I mean, we’re partners. We’re partners, and you
couldn’t trust me?”

“It wasn’t like that, Schank. It’s not about trust. It’s about protecting our secret, at any
cost. We have policemen, too. And if they learn that a mortal has managed to uncover
the truth about us...”

“Oh. All right, I think I get the picture.” Schanke still looked badly shaken. “But don’t
mess with my head again, okay? I’m not gonna tell a living soul about any of this, I
swear to God I’m not. It’s just gonna take a little getting used to, that’s all. It’s... it’s...”

“I know, Schank. I know.”

If only it had been that easy in real life. If only it had been at all.

Nick re-started the Caddy, and with the awkward silence reigning once more, drove
back to the station. When they arrived, he pulled up in front and left the engine idling.
“Do me a favor?” he asked.

“Okay,” Schanke said. “I’ll write up the report. And I’ll book off for you. Isn’t that
what you were going to ask?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Nick watched his partner leave the car and make his way up the
flight of concrete steps to the door, wishing yet again that this could be reality. He
pulled away and merged into Toronto’s late night traffic with no particular destination
in mind.

He hadn’t driven far when the same alluring vision that had earlier graced his table at
the Raven shimmered into being in the passenger seat beside him.

“So,” she said. “You have at last confessed the truth to your mortal partner. Do you
now feel absolved?”

“I might,” Nick muttered, “if any of this were real.” He was still absorbing the novelty
of Janette seated in his Caddy, a place her real-world self had always eschewed in favor
of her expensive imported sports car.

“Ah well,” she sighed. “You might as well enjoy experiencing what might have been,
mon coeur. Isn’t that the point of this game? Well, one of them, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask LaCroix?”

“Ah, but it is your game, Nicolas. And you must go where it leads you.”

At the moment, it appeared to have led him home to the loft. Nick pulled into the
garage and cut the engine, waiting a few moments before pressing the remote on the
dash to close the door once again. In the pale yellow illumination of the door opener’s
automatic light, virtual Janette had taken on a soft, golden-hued shimmer. When she
didn’t fade away, he had to ask. “Are you coming upstairs?”

Again, the coy, come-hither smile. Just how explicit was this virtual reality of
LaCroix’s allowed to be? Seeing her again, even the semblance of her, was beginning
to give him decidedly impure thoughts.

Her response to his question, however, was disappointing. “Not just yet, I think.
Besides, I’m afraid you already have a visitor.”

Nick got out of the car to stare upward at the section of garage ceiling corresponding
to his living room. He listened. One steady human heartbeat reached his ears, and its
owner wasn’t difficult to identify.

“Natalie.”

“Yes, Natalie.” Janette stood suddenly beside him, tho he’d never heard her open the
car door. “Another mortal with whom you have never been entirely honest, is it not
so?”

“Is it?” His response was deliberately evasive. He wasn’t at all sure he liked where this
was leading.

“Some would say that it is wrong to allow a mortal to harbor hope where there is none.
She is in love with you, Nicolas. What is the expression...? One must sometimes be
cruel to be kind? She will never move on with her mortal life as long as she clings to
the hope that she might have a chance at a life with you. So what is cruel? And what is
kind? You choose.”

She kissed him, this time briefly and without the passion she’d displayed earlier in the
Raven. It was clearly a dismissal, a gesture meant to urge him forward into this new
level of LaCroix’s game. Nick opened the stairwell door, sending blue neon light
spilling out into the garage. When he turned back, however, he saw nothing but the
parked Caddy. “Janette?”

No reply. Nick scowled. Virtual Janette’s ability to vanish without warning was
beginning to annoy him, no less so because in this artificial world, he had apparently
been granted no such special dispensation.

Fuming a bit over that, he skipped the stairs and simply levitated to the second floor
landing. When he pulled open the bright red door to enter the loft, he found Natalie –
virtual Natalie, he mentally corrected – sound asleep on his black leather couch. She
stirred when the door clicked shut behind him, then sat up, yawned and stretched.

“Oh,” she said, “there you are.” She stood, and with a guilty glance back at the couch,
added, “Sorry. I had a long shift. I just wanted to stop by and see how you did with last
night’s protein shake.”

“Fine.” The lie came too quickly, too easily, and her expression told him that she
knew it. “All right, maybe not so fine. Nat...” Lost for words, he fled a short distance to
the mantel, turning back to face her from there. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the
effort, and all that you’ve tried to do. It’s just that...” She waited while the awkward
silence stretched on far too long. He finally forced the words out. “I don’t think we’re
on the right track here. The deprivation, the protein substitutes. It’s just not working.”

Anger flashed in her eyes then. “Maybe if you’d try...”

“I am, Nat. I have.”

“Yeah?” There were tears lurking behind the anger now. “When was the last time you
ate any real food? Or took the garlic pills?” She didn’t appear to expect an actual
answer; not that he had one. “Nick... Maybe you’re not so sure mortality’s what you
want after all.”

“I’m sure.” He said that with all the conviction he could summon, though privately he
wondered if she might not be right on that count after all. “But that’s not what this is
really all about, is it?” he went on, getting to the crux of the matter at last. “That’s not
the reason you’re so angry.”

Her fury dissipated then, giving way to the tears as she came to stand beside him at the
ornate mantel. “I thought you wanted the same thing I did, maybe even for the same
reason I did. You can’t tell me you don’t know, that you haven’t felt it, too. Because I
don’t think I’d believe you.”

“Nat...” He took her by the shoulders, a grasp that was both firm and caring at the
same time. “I was wrong to let that happen. I never meant to.”

“Why? Is hope so wrong? Is love wrong?”

Now that she’d used the word, he found that he could, too, though not in the way she
wanted to hear it. “It is for me. Don’t love me, Nat. Please don’t.” Too late to ask that
of her, he knew. But he had to try. “I can’t allow myself to love a mortal. And fair or
not, I can’t tell you all the reasons why. But you already know most of them, Nat. I
told you when we first met. Didn’t I say that I wouldn’t want to hurt you – but I
might?”

She wasn’t ready to give up the argument just yet. “That’s a risk I’ve been willing all
along to take. We were well on our way to overcoming those obstacles, Nick, if only
you’d...”

“Nat.” He tightened his grip on her shoulders briefly, then released her altogether.
“You don’t want to know how many others over the centuries I’ve tried to love. I killed
them, Nat. All of them.” If not even that ugly, unadulterated truth could dissuade her,
he had no idea what would.

“I know you were making progress,” she said stubbornly. “When you made the effort,
you were getting somewhere. I saw the results in the blood work. I know that if...”

“You’re not hearing me, are you?” Nick strove to keep his tone soft but adamant.
“Whether there’s a cure or not isn’t the issue. Loving me is a death sentence. How can
I possibly put it any plainer than that?”

The tears returned, making her eyes shine in the loft’s muted lighting. “I can’t help
the way I feel, Nick.”

“I know.” He reached out again, drawing her into his embrace. “I know,” he repeated.
“And I wish it could be different. But I can’t risk your life, not even in the hope of a
cure. I won’t.” He held her in silence for a time, simply listening to the steady mortal
rhythm of her heart. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Nat. Believe me, I never meant to.”

“I know.” She echoed his words in a small, tearful voice, but even as she did, he could
already feel her resolve returning. “But I’m not giving up on a cure.” She pulled away
to meet his eyes once again. “Not even if you do.”

“I won’t. That much I can promise you. If I haven’t stopped searching in two
centuries, I’m not about to stop now.”

Resolve notwithstanding, both pain and disappointment were still evident in her face,
and Nick felt an overwhelming self-loathing for having put them there. Cruel to be
kind? He could see nothing kind about it.

“I’ll just... see myself out.” She moved awkwardly back to the couch, where she
gathered up a coat and purse and then headed for the elevator door. Nick gripped the
carved mantelpiece with both hands, fighting down the desire to call her name before
she opened the sliding door. Better a broken heart, after all, than a stilled one. He
should never have allowed this to get so far out of hand. How could he not have seen
what it was doing to her?

“Nat...”

But by the time he turned, she had already vanished in the descending freight elevator.
Only the burn-scarred door stared mutely back at him, offering no solace. Nick started
for the stairs, uncertain what he would say if he caught up with her before she drove
away. And that uncertainty stopped him cold with one hand on the door knob.

There was nothing else he could say.

“Nothing else indeed,” LaCroix’s soft voice agreed. Nick turned to find his maker
leaning casually against the grand piano, a glass of something deep red – and
undoubtedly human – in hand. “It was the truth, after all, just as it was with Officer
Schanke. Ah, sweet honesty.” He sipped at the glass, though his eyes never left Nick.
“So do tell me, Nicholas. Do you feel purged? Unburdened? Perhaps even, dare I say
it, forgiven?”

Nick nodded, mute with the unexpected realization that he did feel unburdened.

“Ah, well then.” LaCroix twirled the wine glass between his long white fingers. “It
would seem that honesty, for you, need be no more than a means of purging your
incessant, unnecessary guilt. Lesson learned, points gained.” He sat the glass down
beside one of the burning candles adorning the piano. “Now, as to that thoroughly
troublesome concept you call faith...”

Without warning, Nick’s world went a brilliant, blinding white. When he threw up a
hand to cover his eyes, he abruptly found it wielding a sword, holding fast against an
adversary similarly armed. They fought in full sunlight in the midst of a battle that
raged beneath the walls of a towering Moorish castle – and both of them were
unequivocally mortal.

Breathing hard, Nick struggled to defend himself against his opponent’s heavy blows.
Had he really been this weak once, this vulnerable? Forced to retreat from the
onslaught, he tripped over something – a body, he realized with horror – and as he
stumbled, his attacker pressed home his advantage and lunged. The blade sank deep
into his left thigh, narrowly missing a far more sensitive portion of his anatomy. Then
the sword was brutally yanked free, his opponent moving on to attack another as
Nicholas fell, landing hard on a field already strewn with the corpses of his fellow
crusaders.

It had all happened precisely this way eight centuries ago, and to relive it now,
especially as a mortal, would by no means have been his choice. Just as he had then, he
closed his eyes against the blazing sun and tried desperately to will away the terrible
sounds of battle above him: the harsh ring of clashing swords and the cries of the
wounded and dying. He’d never known why his victorious opponent had not spared a
moment to finish him, but when he opened his eyes again, the point of yet another
sword lay poised against his bloodied doublet, resting just over his heart.

Two Moors stood over him, in the midst of an apparently heated argument in a
tongue he had no prayer of understanding, yet he knew the gist of it when one of them
knelt and roughly pulled the silver ring with its ornate family crest from Nicholas’
finger. He waved this prize beneath the nose of the man with the sword, undoubtedly
arguing that a fat ransom might be had for a prisoner from so wealthy a family. The
swordsman, unconvinced, shook his head and pressed his blade harder against
Nicholas’ chest. He bit his lip to avoid crying out while the disagreement escalated
above him. Not until a third voice, stern and authoritative, intervened did the sword’s
sharp point retreat and allow him to take a deep breath once again.

The newcomer, tall and splendidly dressed, was clearly in charge and not one to be
argued with. Both soldiers, in fact, bowed to him and mumbled apparent apologies.
The tall man proffered a hand and was duly delivered of the de Brabant family ring,
which he examined with interest for several moments. He then closed his hand over it
before pointing at Nicholas and barking an order. When both soldiers promptly bent
to lift him, the wounded crusader lost his battle to maintain a stoic silence. The pain of
his injury, inexplicably dormant until then, seared into him like a hot firebrand. Such
agony was another aspect of mortality he had mercifully forgotten. In the horror of
war, far better not to be mortal. Before his captors’ rough handling sent him beyond
pain into oblivion, he wondered if, in forcing him to relive this most horrible day of his
mortal life, LaCroix had intended for him to reach that very conclusion.

When next he woke, it was to find himself in total darkness, still in pain and lying on a
cold stone floor. He could smell moldy straw and the strong, iron odor of his own
blood. He heard the sound of a heavy bar being lifted and a wooden door scraping
open. Then the flickering light of a torch accompanied the tall man from the
battlefield into the chamber. A servant affixed the torch to a wall sconce and departed,
leaving his master alone with the prisoner.

The Moor came to stand over him, much as his soldiers had done earlier. Then, in
flawless French, he said, “You are Nicholas de Brabant.” He had obviously found the
name the silversmith had so delicately etched inside the ring. He went on, however,
without waiting for a response. “I am Ahmad. And it is my fortress your crusaders have
died attempting to siege. They have perished to a man, all but you. You I have spared.
Do yo know why?”

“My father,” Nicholas rasped, “will not be persuaded to ransom a dead son.”

“Oh, you will be very much alive. I shall see to that. Two things I will demand before
you leave these walls, Nicholas de Brabant. A ransom in gold from your wealthy family
– and your conversion to the one true faith of Islam.”

“Then I will never leave these walls.” At the time, he’d had every reason to believe, in
spite of Ahmad’s words, that he would die of his wounds long before any ransom
could be paid.

But Ahmad, not surprisingly, took his response for defiance. “You will convert,” he
said coldly. “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet. One day,
Nicholas de Brabant, I will hear you repeat those words.” He didn’t wait for an answer
that time either, but swept out of the cell with the servant on his heels. They’d left the
torch, and had not barred the door. He knew the reason for both apparent oversights
moments later, when the door opened yet again and a woman completely draped in
black entered, carrying a wooden bowl and a bundle of white cloth. She knelt beside
him and with embarrassing familiarity, tore the bloodstained breeches to expose his
injury. Nicholas turned his head aside and bit his lip as she soaked a strip of cloth with
something vile-smelling from the bowl and began to clean the wound.

When she’d finished, she wrapped one long cloth strip tightly around his leg, tying it
off with an odd flourish. He’d seen that gesture before...

When it seemed she should have gone, the woman remained, still kneeling beside
him. The torchlight flickered on her delicate hands as they began, slowly, to lift the
heavy veil obscuring her face.

He wondered why she would risk death by stoning to reveal herself to a complete
stranger, and an ‘infidel’ at that. She threw the veil back altogether then, revealing not
the young Moorish woman who had cared for him in reality’s version of these events,
but...

“Janette.”

“So, Nicolas – is this the mortality you yearn to regain? All of this pain, misery and
suffering? Is this truly what you want?”

“No,” he admitted without hesitation. “Not this.”

She gestured toward the bowl and bandages on the floor beside him. “Pain and death,
surely, are the legacies of mortality. But given the chance to rewrite this most
unpleasant time in your life, what would you do? Had you our gift then, Nicolas,
would you not have used it?”

“Yes.” A sharp pang from his bound thigh made him force the reply through gritted
teeth. In reality’s version of this horror, he had spent more than a year imprisoned in
Ahmad’s fortress, waiting for a ransom that would never come. The demand had never
reached his family in Brabant. Ahmad’s messengers, he was to learn years later, had
been waylaid by rogue crusaders and killed en route.

For four-hundred and twenty-seven days, measured by a tiny beam of sunlight that
invaded his cell between two ill-fitting stones ten feet up the wall, Nicholas had
endured daily beatings and incessant demands that he embrace the Muslim god.
When fervent prayers to his own Christian deity for release had gone unanswered, he
had eventually denied them both with a bitter acrimony that had remained well into
his first five centuries as a vampire.

His liberation had come long after he’d lost faith in any man’s god, when a contingent
of crusaders unrelated to his own had successfully overrun Ahmad’s stronghold.
They’d granted him a boon – to view the bloodied corpse of his ‘host’ and tormentor
hanging, partially dismembered, from the battlements. But the sight had merely
embittered Nicholas further. For in all his months of imprisonment, he had longed to
kill Ahmad himself, in any one of a hundred excruciatingly painful ways. Now that
others had done the deed, he felt cheated, deprived of his rightful revenge.

Soon after his release, five of the crusaders’ number had been given leave to journey
with him to his homeland. It was a trip that had ended prematurely in Paris, where he
had first crossed paths with Janette – and LaCroix.

“Accept our gift, then,” the virtual Janette in his cell was saying, and her eyes glowed
with a fire more intense than the torchlight. He reached up to her with both arms,
eagerly inviting her deadly embrace. She gave him that and more. The sweet, sharp
piercing of her fangs at his throat brought an instant euphoria, freeing him of all pain,
all care, all life...

He awoke alone in the cell to the clamorous rages of first hunger. All traces of his
wound now vanished, he stood and approached the barred door, acutely aware that a
strong and steady human heartbeat lurked just beyond the barrier. Eyes blazing gold,
he ran his hands briefly up and down the rough wood edges of the door, then gripped
it on either side and pulled.

Stressed wood groaned in protest, then abruptly cracked and splintered. He heard the
satisfying clang of the iron bar, ripped from its pinnings, falling to the stone floor
outside.

The startled guard stood against the corridor wall, his short sword ready to deal with
the escaping prisoner. Nicholas welcomed the man’s attack, allowing him close
enough to thrust the blade savagely into the his chest. When his victim did not fall but
stood looking back at him with demon’s eyes, the guard stumbled back, muttered
something about Allah, and turned to run. He round himself clutched by iron hands,
spun and pressed back against the wall by inhuman hands strong enough to crush the
mortal life from him.

But Nicholas did not crush him. Slowly and deliberately, he used one hand to slide the
short sword that still impaled him free. The guard’s eyes went wide with horror when
the vampire held the weapon between them, its bloodied metal glinting in the
torchlight. With a deep-throated, bestial growl, the demon licked the blade along its
length with a blatantly obscene sensuality, reveling in the disgust and horror this
action evoked in the mortal. Nicholas flung the sword away then, pleased when the
loud echo of its impact against the wall made the man jump. He was unconcerned
about the noise. If the sound brought more soldiers, the ravenous vampire could feast
on them as well.

His current prey began mumbling terrified prayers to Allah, but when the vampire
struck, his panicked scream was quickly cut short. In mere moments, his lifeless body
sat slumped against the wall beside the ruined cell door, and his killer had flown, in
search of more rewarding game.

He found Ahmad slumbering in a lavishly appointed bed chamber, in blissful
ignorance of the fate about to befall him. The guard outside this door succumbed to a
swiftly-broken neck, but the sound of it was loud enough to awaken his Moorish lord
and master. Ahmad was on his feet when Nicholas entered the room. He’d called out
a name – the guard’s, perhaps – and had plucked his own sword from somewhere near
the bed. It instantly fell from his stunned grasp, however, when he saw the eyes of the
creature now approaching him. He clearly recognized his former prisoner, even in the
dim light of the bed chamber’s oil lamps, for the next words he spoke were in French.

“In the name of Allah,” he whispered, “what are you?”

Nicholas’ answer was the cold, brutal truth. “Your death,” he said. “If you truly believe
that there is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet, well then... I will gladly
send you to meet them both.”

His attack was swift and merciless, long-denied retribution for sins that this virtual
copy of his tormentor had not even committed as yet. Nicholas didn’t care. He
relished every last drop of the man’s blood, along with the fear that ran deep within it
to the very end.

With a snarl of utter contempt, he cast Ahmad’s lifeless form to the floor and strode
over it to the chamber’s vaulted window. Thrusting open both heavy wooden shutters,
he stepped out into the night and hovered briefly in the warm air before drifting
upward to the battlements, following a familiar vibration. He came to rest atop a tower
on the castle’s northwest corner and at once, the source of the vibration stepped out of
the shadows and into view.

“An excellent reaffirmation of your true nature, Nicholas. Points gained yet again.”
LaCroix seemed thoroughly unconcerned that his dark suit and polished leather shoes
were jarringly incongruous with the medieval setting around them. “And so much for
faith. His. Yours. Delusions all. Pay homage to no god greater than yourself, and your
immortal existence will at last find peace.” Nicholas nodded in acknowledgment, but
said nothing. This was not the time to contravene his master’s pragmatic philosophies.
“Now then,” LaCroix went on, “shall we explore virtue? And whose, I wonder? Not
yours. Not mine. Perhaps that of one whom we both hold dear...”

Nicholas found himself airborne once more, over a place he knew only too well. The
Seine flowed, unmistakable, beneath him, but the lights and landmarks of the city he’d
known for eight centuries were missing. Instead, the river’s banks were lined with
haphazardly arranged wooden houses interspersed with larger gray stone structures –
the squat, unadorned architecture of Norman France. The simple muslin overtunic
and leggings he now wore reflected the same era.

LaCroix’s signature vibration drew him to a manor house poised on a hill north of the
city. His master had concealed himself just inside a stable overhang to the rear of the
main house. From there, he watched intently as an empty, ox-drawn cart arrived at the
servant’s entrance and waited.

No sooner had Nicholas joined LaCroix in the concealing shadows than a ruckus
broke out on the servant’s porch. Two men had dragged a struggling young woman
out the door and shoved her into the open cart with manifest disdain, as though she
were no more than rubbish to be hauled away and discarded. Immune to her cries, the
cart’s filthy and unshaven driver never even turned to look as his human cargo was
cruelly lashed to his transport with heavy ropes.

“What is this?” Nicholas demanded in hushed tones as the woman’s pleas grew
louder. In the moonlight, he could see now that she was far younger than he’d first
assumed. Not a woman. Barely more than a girl. “What are they doing?”

“Delivering a bit of merchandise,” was LaCroix’s taut reply. “Duly marketed, paid for
and now collected – by the local brothel keeper.”

Nicholas gripped a wooden post and glared past it at the ugly scene beyond. “She’s
only a child,” he said angrily. A horse in one of the stalls behind them snorted in
fearful response to the vampires’ presence. Both of them ignored it.

“Thirteen, to be precise,” LaCroix said. “Old enough to wed. And old enough to be
sold to the brothel keeper when her noble family has fallen into disrepute and
financial woe. Her husband, you see, wishes to make a more... advantageous
marriage.”

Nicholas followed his master’s gaze to a third floor window of the house, where a man
well into his forties gazed dispassionately down at the scene below. What was it
LaCroix had said about someone they both held dear? Unbidden, Janette’s recent
words returned to haunt him. ...to be sold to the brothel keeper if she was in the way of
another marriage.

“It can’t be.” Nicholas squinted at the frail, sobbing figure tied to the cart. “It can’t.”

“Then I suggest you look more closely.” LaCroix moved away when the driver
snapped a whip at his ox to urge it forward. Nicholas followed him, and together they
secretly trailed the little cart down the estate’s winding path and into the dark Paris
streets.

Several times they came near enough for Nicholas to indeed get a closer look at the
bound ‘merchandise.’ She was painfully thin, her face all but hidden beneath a shock
of wild auburn hair. But there was no mistaking her lips, her nose, her incredibly blue
eyes.

“Janette...”

He’d been about to rush forward to waylay the driver there and then when LaCroix’s
grip on his arm pulled him back. “Beware, Nicholas,” he admonished. “Know that this
Janette, this mortal child, does not know you, nor has she any knowledge of our kind.
If you would defend her, sir knight, perhaps just this once, a mortal solution might be
called for.” From the pocket of his still-anachronistic black suit, LaCroix produced a
leather drawstring pouch. Heavy with coins, it jingled when he pressed it into
Nicholas’ hand. The younger vampire accepted it with a nod, and at once moved to
block the cart driver’s path.

“Hold there.” He caught the ox’s bridle to stay it, and the animal bellowed in terror at
his touch. He released it again at once, though he continued to block its path. “Where
go you at such an hour,” he asked the driver, “with so young and unwilling a burden?”

Janette’s cries had roused no one from the houses along their route, and apparently the
driver was accustomed to that apathy. He leered at Nicholas through broken and
yellowed teeth. “Who,” he demanded grumpily, “wants to know?”

In answer, Nicholas hefted the coin-filled purse. “A man with gold,” he said, and
watched the immediate gleam of avarice fill the man’s small, porcine eyes. “All for
you, in exchange for your lovely cargo.” While the driver considered this most
tempting of the seven deadly sins, Nicholas tried to reassure the terrified young Janette
with his gaze. She stared back at him with tear-filled, pleading eyes, and it was all he
could do not to gather her into his arms, break the ropes and fly away with her then
and there.

He nearly did just that when the greed in the cart driver’s eyes gave way to trepidation
and the man’s heart began to race. “Oh, no you don’t,” he grunted. “Daviau would slit
my throat for losing this one. You want her, you’ll have to bid on her like everyone
else.” His beard-stubbled face twisted into an obscene smirk. “Not that you can keep
her after, mind.”

Disgusted, Nicholas moved past the bleating ox and came close enough to capture the
dirty man’s gaze with his own. “Take the money,” he commanded. “Release her to me.
There’s enough here to take you where Daviau can never find you. Enough to live on
comfortably for years to come. Take it!”

The man’s eyes succumbed for a moment, but then quickly hardened anew. “Get
away!” He shoved Nicholas hard enough to send him reeling backward, then cracked
his whip and sent the ox lumbering off down the midnight streets, its crude wooden
wheels clattering noisily over the cobblestones and its bound occupant crying out in
fear once again.

Well, so much for mortal means. And why hadn’t he at least said something to try and
comfort her? Cursing himself for a fool, Nicholas stood where he was for a time,
waiting for LaCroix to reappear and chastise him. When he did not, Nicholas resolved
to try again. He turned and once more followed in the oxcart’s wake.

It led him to a rambling wood-and-brick building situated on the river bank, its
unpaned windows glittering with candlelight. At least a dozen brothel patrons loitered
outside the front door. They had apparently been waiting for the cart to arrive, as they
eagerly gathered around when it did to ogle the new ‘merchandise.’

A thin young man with a long nose and stringy brown hair appeared in the front
doorway, gave the cart’s prisoner a cursory examination of his own, then held up a
hand to the gathering crowd.

“My friends,” he said unctuously, “your indulgence, for a moment.” He snapped his
fingers at the driver, who scurried around the cart to untie Janette’s bonds and slap
away the hands of a few over-eager bidders. Again, Nicholas fought the urge to fly into
their midst and snatch her away, snapping as many of their vile necks as he could in
the process. He struggled to keep the fire from his eyes when the skinny man –
Daviau, he presumed – leaped into the cart and roughly hauled the shivering Janette
to her feet. She’d stopped crying now, but her terror was plain to see when the brothel
keeper pushed her forward to the cart’s edge, presenting her to his clientele as though
she were a prize mare.

“There now,” Daviau announced. “Here she is. The annulled bride I promised you,
discarded by his lordship-on-the-high-hill, who tells me, on his honor, that the
marriage was never consummated. You may make of that what you will, but proving it
will cost you.”

With approving roars of laughter, the men gathered round him began making
vigorous bids while Daviau turned Janette in a circle, the better to exhibit her.
Nicholas hated the man at once, with such vehemence that flecks of gold fire began
appearing in his eyes. He contained himself, barely, until it seemed the auction had
reached the upper limits of most bidding patrons’ budgets. Then he made his way
with slow deliberation through the crowd to hold two gleaming gold sovereigns aloft
under Daviau’s nose. The scrawny brothel keeper promptly forgot whatever his
previous best offer had been and accepted the coins, snatching them from Nicholas as
though this wealthy new bidder might suddenly change his mind.

“Sold,” he said peremptorily, and a flurry of grumbling protests broke out among the
crowd. The cart driver muttered something in his employer’s ear, and at once Daviau
waved the shiny coins at Nicholas, though he made no effort to return them. “You do
understand,” he said with an oily smile, “that you are purchasing two hours with the
lady, not buying her outright?”

“Two hours,” Nicholas said tightly, “will be just fine.”

He held both hands out to Janette then, ignoring continuing complaints from the
surrounding disappointed bidders. “It’s all right,” he soothed. “I won’t hurt you. You
have my word for that.”

Daviau sneered at his new customer’s words, but released his grip on Janette’s arm just
the same. She hesitated before finally permitting Nicholas to lift her from the cart.
They both followed Daviau inside then, down a corridor that ran the length of the
long house, and into a dank-smelling, squalid room furnished only with a bed and one
flickering, half-burned candle stuck to melted wax on the window sill.

“Take care you don’t damage the merchandise permanently.” Daviau made a point of
examining both gold coins in the paltry candlelight, biting hard on each of them with
his few remaining teeth. “She’ll have at least a half dozen more paying customers
before sunup, so don’t overstay your time.”

Nicholas grabbed the front of the man’s grimy tunic and with a snarl, shoved him back
out into the corridor. He slammed the door shut on Daviau’s infuriated cursing.

When he turned, Janette was seated on the edge of the soiled bed, staring at him with
wide, fearful eyes. “What must I do?” she asked in a voice so frail and childlike that it
made Nicholas’ cold heart ache. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Nothing,” he told her. “Nothing at all. You are called Janette?”

She nodded, suspicion, puzzlement and fear all evident in her eyes. “I am Nicholas,”
he told her, striving to banish the rage he still harbored from his voice, lest she mistake
his intentions. He moved slowly across the room to gently take her chin in one hand
and raise her pretty young face to look at him. “And I promise you, none of these
beasts will ever lay a hand on you. I swear it.”

She did not seem reassured, but then, he told himself, why should she trust him, a
complete stranger? He wondered if anyone in her short life had ever shown her a
kindness. What must it be like, to be forced by your own father into a loveless
marriage, only to be discarded and sold like so much excess baggage to a swine like
Daviau? That had been, in the real world, Janette’s mortal life. Small wonder she had
so eagerly accepted LaCroix’s offer of immortality – and revenge.

But how was he to gain her confidence here and now? He’d exhausted all the mortal
methods he knew, and so, LaCroix’s admonishment notwithstanding, he would have
to resort now to non-mortal means. He looked into her so-young and yet so-familiar
eyes, captured the mortal rhythm of her heart, and said, “Sleep now, Janette. When
you wake, you will remember nothing of this place. After the annulment, your
husband sent you away to become the ward of another family. He sent you to the
estate of Lord Antoine Louis Charles de Brabant.”

Her eyes closed at once. Nicholas lay her limp form on the bed for the moment, and
turned his attention to the window. Its crude wooden shutters were thrown open to
the night, and the opening was more than generous enough to crawl through. But
Daviau had either anticipated or already experienced the abduction of his ‘ladies’ by
the brothel’s amorous customers: two vertical iron bars subdivided the window,
making an exodus through it impossible – for a mortal.

First making certain that no one lurked in the alley outside, Nicholas took a bar in
either hand and twisted until they loosened. Then he pulled until both broke free of
the mortar with a satisfying crunch. With care not to allow them to fall and make too
loud a noise, he placed the bars flat on the floor against one wall.

A breeze from the nearby river extinguished the candle as he gathered up his sleeping
burden and, cradling her safely in his arms, flew into the night.

Nearly two centuries before his own mortal birth, the manor he had known in the
duchy of Brabant was a pale shadow of its future self. But Nicholas’ ancestor, despite
the late hour, had lived up to his reputation as a kind and caring lord. Though he’d
stared curiously at the mysterious man calling himself Nicholas de Brabant ( a
supposed distant cousin from Normandy), he’d accepted Janette – and the purse full
of gold sovereigns – with very little need of extra mental persuasion.

Nicholas left the manse on foot, and some distance down the road had turned to gaze
back at his future birthplace. He was still staring at the wooden-walled estate,
sprawled on its hill in the moonlight, when a soft voice said, “A most novel means of
preserving the lady’s virtue, I must say.”

LaCroix had appeared this time without sound or vibration, whether due to virtual
reality or to his ancient ability to mask his presence, Nicholas couldn’t say.

“You do realize, however, that given this turn of events in reality, she might well have
become your great-great-grandmother?”

The brief look of alarm on his protege’s face obviously pleased him. “No matter,
Nicholas,” he added quickly. “The point is well and truly earned. Unless I’m
mistaken, though, there is one other small item you would very much like to deal
with.”

How he’d known that did not occur to Nicholas to ask. But he nodded in agreement.
“Just one small loose end,” he affirmed. “Back in Paris.”

“Well then, to Paris it is.” LaCroix took flight, and Nicholas lingered a moment longer
on the path to Castle Brabant before he did the same.

Even in the hour before dawn, the brothel remained crowded with paying customers.
Nicholas found its unwashed proprietor in the alley behind the building, just outside
the window through which he’d taken Janette a short time ago. Daviau was presently
engaged in a hated argument with a small, cowering man who was ardently claiming
that his work had not been of poor quality.

“Lying pig!” Daviau struck him across the face, sending him reeling, then reached to
retrieve a loose brick from the window sill. “Your cheap mortar has cost me a fortune. I
should every last franc out of your miserable hide!”

He’d landed only one good blow with the brick when someone – something – clutched
the back of his neck and hauled him away from his hapless victim. Nicholas spared the
brick layer only al moment’s glance. “Get out of here,” he commanded. Wide-eyed,
the little man scurried from the alley in obvious fear of his life. Daviau, on the other
hand, had just twisted free and turned to recognize his attacker.

“You!” he spat. “You bastard! Where have you taken my...”

Nicholas advanced on him again, clutching the front of his collar this time. “Your
what?” he growled. “Your property?”

Daviau’s eyes defied him. “Yes!” he spat.

“She’s gone, pourceau. To a place you’ll never find and to a life you’ll never touch with
your filthy hands again.”

The brothel keeper swore and tried to strike Nicholas with the brick he still held. The
vampire tore it from him and holding it aloft in one hand, pointedly crushed it into
fine, crumbling dust. Daviau’s eyes went round with fear then. “W-what...?” His
question suddenly became a scream when an enraged Nicholas dropped the brick’s
remnants, gained a stronger hold on the hated mortal’s clothing, and without warning,
took to the air.

It was a short flight. Nicholas carried his shrieking burden high over the Seine – and
there granted Daviau’s continuing demand that he be released.

The screaming culminated shortly in a very satisfying splash. Nicholas flew on, caring
not at all whether Daviau had perished in the fall, or survived the drop to be fished
from the sewage-polluted river later on.

Either way, vengeance had been satisfied.

“And as our dear Janette is so fond of saying,” LaCroix announced when Nicholas had
landed atop the flat-roofed Norman cathedral on its tiny island in the Seine, “the best
revenge... is revenge. I do believe you enjoyed that.”

Seeing no point in denying the truth, Nicholas merely nodded.

“Good. And as for virtue,” LaCroix went on, “well, protecting that of an innocent
mortal, in this case, required the vampire’s superior strength after all, did it not? For
us, Nicholas, strength is virtue. Yet another point earned. Now then... whatever shall
we say about fealty, hm?”

Though he was becoming accustomed to the blinding light of the game’s transitions,
Nicholas found this one particularly unsettling. The air grew repressively hot around
him despite a late night hour. A full moon hung overhead – illuminating the
incredible sight of the gilded pyramids of Giza in the distance.

Below the sandy hill on which he stood, an armed camp of Egyptian men surrounded
a brightly painted temple with a golden-winged Isis above its shuttered doors.

“Here, Nicolas, is where it all began. This is our beginning.” The virtual Janette
appeared beside him on the hill, no longer the frightened and exploited child of the
last scenario, but again the beautiful vampire he had known for eight centuries. She
wore the elegant white drape and gold jewelry of a wealthy woman of ancient Greece.
His own clothing had been replaced with a Greek-style white tunic and leggings, as
well as a belt and rings that were also rendered in gold.

“Have you never asked LaCroix how we first came to exist?” she asked, and when he
shook his head, she sighed and said, “We very nearly did not.”

A commotion in the valley just below drew his gaze back to the temple. A lone male
figure – a young vampire, by the vibrations he emanated – had slipped out the door
and tried to sprint past the encamped guards. They caught him easily, and his
weakness, panic and excruciating hunger burned across a virtual link so intensely that
Nicholas winced. The mortals bore their thrashing captive to the ground. Two of
them held him pinned there while a third placed a sharpened stake above his heart.
His sobbing pleas fell on deaf ears as the third man produced a wooden mallet and
callously drove the wooden spike home with three heavy blows. The vampire’s blood-
chilling screams cut off abruptly after the hammer’s first strike, making the second and
third superfluous, but the human with the mallet was obviously a man of strong
determination.

Nicholas turned back to Janette with anguished eyes. “Must we watch this?”

“It is your test of fealty,” she answered, echoing LaCroix. “The first of our kind were
made here, not very long before this time. Six months ago, they were a thriving
community of fifty-eight young vampires. Now...” Janette made a small sweeping
motion with one hand, and disconcertingly, they were now standing not on the hill
but inside the dark and stifling confines of the temple itself. Seven vampires huddled
together at the feet of a towering gold-leafed Isis, six of them surrounding a seated
woman whose distinctly noble demeanor shone through despite the obvious ravages of
blood deprivation.

“These few are nearly all that remain,” Janette said, and inclined her head toward the
seated woman. “She was the first of our kind. As a mortal, she was high priestess here,
until the pharaoh chose to worship a single god and to close down or destroy the
temples of all others.”

Nicholas recognized the description. “Akhenaten,” he said. “The so-called ‘heretic’
pharaoh.”

“Yes. He outlawed her cult and condemned all those who would not convert to
worship of the Aten, the one god, to death. None of those who worshiped Isis would
obey his decree. On the eve of their pending execution, the high priestess prayed to Isis
for a way to save them. The goddess granted her the gift of vampirism, which she in
turn passed on to all of her followers. She was also given the honor of taking Isis’
name as her own.”

“But... she hasn’t saved them,” Nicholas said. “They’re trapped here, too weak from
hunger to fly, and if they try to escape, they meet with a hammer and stake.” Haunted
by the image of the young vampire whose destruction they’d just witnessed outside, he
stared again at the gaunt woman on the chair. From the midst of her starving
fledglings, she lifted her head and looked directly at him with dark, entreating eyes.

Discomfitted, Nicholas took a step backward. He’d assumed somehow that the group
of vampires could neither see nor hear them. Yet Isis met his gaze and held it, her eyes
expressing a plea more poignant than words could have conveyed.

Help us!

In that moment, every reason Nicholas had ever possessed for hating what he was
evaporated.

“How?” he asked Janette. “How can we help them?”

“Akhenaten believes he has trapped the last of Isis’ kind in the temple and need only
wait for starvation to draw them out so that his men may destroy them. In reality,
there were two who escaped his trap, and returned to save the others. They posed as a
Greek physician, Janos, and his wife Helene.”

“Us,” Nicholas concluded.

With a nod, Janette once again waved her hand in the delicate sweeping gesture that
had brought them here, and they now stood in the pillared courtyard of a palace
resplendent with hanging plants and torch-lit reflecting pools. A man in brightly
colored garb approached them, and in heavily accented Greek, inquired, “You are the
physician called Janos?”

With a glance at Janette’s faint smile, Nicholas affirmed, also in Greek, that he was.

“You have been expected for some time now,” the man said in a tone that was not
quite scolding. “The need is urgent. Come with me.”

With only a cursory nod to the physician’s wife, he set off at a rapid pace, leading them
across the broad courtyard to a doorway obscured by a heavy curtain. This he pulled
aside and held, clearly expecting them to pass through.

The room they entered reeked of burning oil, incense, herbs – and sickness. A frail
young woman lay motionless on a fabric-draped bed, surrounded by a half dozen
attendants, all of whom shrank back to allow Nicholas and Janette to approach the
bed.

“Who is she?” Nicholas asked Janette the question in French as he bent to press a
hand to the young woman’s forehead. It was feverishly hot.

“Akhenaten’s beloved daughter, Sekhemnet. One of many daughters borne him by
Queen Nefertiti. She is lost to history, as are many daughters, obscured by the fame of
her half-brother, Tutenkhamen. But the pharaoh loves her more than any doting
father has ever loved a child. Her illness has been long and grueling, resistant to all his
physicians’ treatments. Sending for you is his last, best hope of saving her.

Even without having touched her, Nicholas could tell that Sekhemnet hovered near
death. The fever had ravaged her once-strong body to a thin and sallow state, and her
heart thrummed a slowing, irregular beat.

He’d been about to relate these observations to Janette when the heavy curtain was
drawn back once again, this time to admit a figure that could only be Akhenaten
himself. The attendants all bowed deeply. When Janette inclined her head, Nicholas
followed her lead and did the same. The gestures of respect apparently accepted, the
pharaoh swept on into the room to face Nicholas directly. “You will cure her,” he said
in Greek. It was not a question.

Nor did Nicholas hesitate in responding. “Yes,” he said, though of course there was
only one ‘cure’ for Sekhemnet’s current condition. And by LaCroix’s unsubtle hand,
wasn’t that precisely where all of this was leading?

“Bring her back to me,” Akhenaten said, “and anything you ask, anything that is
within my power to give, shall be yours.”

Nicholas could not suppress a faint smile. It couldn’t possibly be so simple as that,
knowing LaCroix’s penchant for complications in these scenarios. But, first things,
first.

“With the pharaoh’s permission,” he said, inclining his head once again, “we must be
left alone with your daughter for a time.”

Akhenaten’s lean face managed somehow to convey both hope and annoyance at the
same time, but he accepted the physician’s edict, motioning sharply to the attendants.
All of them swiftly vacated the room. The pharaoh remained for a moment longer, his
gaze fixed on Sekhemnet’s thin, waxen face. When he looked again at Nicholas,
unabashed tears shone in his eyes. “Anything you ask,” he repeated, and then
promptly followed in the attendants’ wake, allowing the heavy black curtain to fall
back across the doorway.

Sekhemnet’s heartbeat had begun to falter. They had very little time.

Under Janette’s approving smile, Nicholas knelt beside the bed, turned the dying
woman’s head to one side to expose her throat, and did what must be done...

She revived within the hour, restored to a regally statuesque beauty that left Nicholas
thoroughly smitten. When he’d opened his own wrist veins and fed her sufficiently to
satisfy the initial pangs of first hunger, they both took her aloft and out into the night
for her first hunt. Only when the new vampire had sated her ravenous appetite did
they return to the palace, and to her father’s private chambers.

Akhenaten’s delight upon first seeing his restored daughter was manifest by his rush to
embrace her. Nicholas and Janette stood aside while father and daughter conversed for
some time in hushed tones.

“Physician,” Akhenaten said at length, “I know not how you have brought about this
miracle. But I shall honor my oath to you. Tell me what you would have of me.”

“A small favor,” Nicholas replied, and then waited a beat before he continued.
“Withdraw your troops from the temple of Isis. Allow those within its walls to go free.”

This was clearly not at all what the pharaoh had expected to hear. His pleased
expression grew instantly stormy. “Why?” he asked darkly, and his gaze now fell on
Sekhemnet with fear and suspicion. “What have you done?”

“Release them,” Nicholas said, “and I will see to it that they leave your kingdom.”

“Abominations,” Akhenaten murmured.  “They must be destroyed. They must be.”

“Would you kill me then as well?” Sekhemnet’s Greek was every bit as impeccable as
her father’s. “The physician has done far more than restore my life. He has made me
as they are. He has made me immortal.”

The pharaoh made a sign that Nicholas assumed was meant as a ward against evil.
Sekhemnet flinched but did not back away. “Undead,” Akhenaten breathed. “You are
cursed. Condemned to the underworld...”

“If escaping death is a curse, then it is one I have chosen freely,” she replied. “And if
you will not honor your word to the physician, then you must indeed destroy us all,
father. Beginning with me.”

With one deceptively delicate hand, Sekhemnet lifted a nearby chair, crushed it until it
splintered, and from the wreckage, extracted a single sharp length of wood. This she
handed, without reservation, to her father.

“You gave me life,” she said, and opened her arms to him in symbolic surrender. “I
give you leave, now, to take it.”

Akhenaten swore a tear-choked oath in Egyptian, drew back his arm, and thrust the
makeshift stake toward his daughter’s heart. Janette staid Nicholas’ intended charge to
intercept the blow just as the pharaoh, hand trembling, arrested his strike just short of
its goal. Sekhemnet’s small hand closed over the stake once again, pulling it easily
from his grasp.

The pharaoh vented an anguished sob and drew her once more into an embrace. They
stood that way for some time before he again composed himself, released her and
turned to address Nicholas.

“I will honor my word,” he said, “on the condition that you honor yours. The cursed
shall leave Egypt. Only Sekhemnet may remain.”

While Nicholas nodded his acceptance, the pharaoh’s daughter was not so easily
satisfied. “I must go with them as well,” she said. “They are my people now. My kind.”

Akhenaten’s sorrow turned to anger then. “No! Must I regain you only to lose you
again?”

“I will return to you, in time. That is my oath. But first, I must aid those who have
saved me in reviving the others of our kind. Then I must go with them, for a time.”

Not even a pharaoh, apparently, could argue with Sekhemnet’s strong-willed
determination. He spread his hands in apparent consent, but then steeled himself and
abruptly turned his back on them. “Go,” he said, his voice hard. “I will send word to
the royal guard that the cursed are to be released into your custody.”

They wasted no time on expressions of gratitude. Akhenaten had clearly dismissed
them. By the time they reached Isis’ temple, he had also clearly kept his promise to call
off the guard. They remained outside the building, but their camp had been
dismantled and most of them stood in ranks, prepared to depart on their leader’s
order. That leader – the same man who had earlier staked the young vampire – stood
apart from the rest, a look of sheer contempt dominating his angular features.

Sekhemnet had noticed his expression as well. “I see that Khufa is not pleased with his
orders,” she said. “I will speak with him.”

Nicholas detained her for the moment with a fatherly gesture of his own. “Take care,”
he warned. “Tonight, we saw him drive a stake through one of our kind. Pharaoh’s
daughter or no, he wouldn’t likely hesitate to do the same to you.”

“Ah,” she smiled, “but he knows not that I am one of you. And he has... feelings for
me. He will listen.”

With that, she went to confidently challenge Khufa, wearing the demeanor of her
royal authority like a badge. The captain of the guard bowed his head to her in proper
deference, muttering something in his native tongue. She responded in harsher tones,
issuing what sounded to Nicholas like an order. Khufa’s scowl deepened, but he
nodded again in acquiescence and barked an order of his own at the waiting ranks of
his guards. Three of them hurried off at once; the rest remained standing until another
order from Khufa dismissed them to file unceremoniously away.

“What is she doing?” Nicholas asked, intrigued.

“I have no idea.” Janette gazed toward the east. “But whatever it is, it must be done
quickly. The sun is about to rise.”

It was true. Nicholas’ vampire senses could feel its approach even before the first blush
of pale light appeared on the horizon. They watched Khufa step aside, leaving
Sekhemnet a clear path to the temple’s closed doors. She extended a hand toward
Nicholas and Janette in clear invitation, and they followed her to the entrance,
avoiding Khufa’s hateful glare along the way.

The dreary scene inside the temple had not changed, but it appalled Sekhemnet, who
had not seen her those her father called ‘the accursed ones’ until now. “Are they
dying?” she asked in a shocked whisper.

“No.” Nicholas sensed all six vampire signatures, though they remained huddled
together near the giant statue’s feet and had not so much as looked up when their
rescuers entered. “For us, death by starvation would take many years. They’re entering
a dormant state, a deep sleep we call the true undeath. It’s... not pleasant, but it keeps
us from going mad if we’re long confined without nourishment.”

Janette’s expression suggested that she found this a vast understatement, but she said
nothing.

Quietly, Nicholas led them down to the cluster of dormant vampires, where they stood
in awkward silence for a time before Janette suggested, “We should wait for the night
to return. Then we must find a way to feed them.”

Sekhemnet smiled grimly. “I have already seen to that.” And she’d no sooner spoken
the words than the large front doors were again opened, spilling lethal morning
sunlight across the temple floor. The three guardsmen Khufa had sent on
Sekhemnet’s errand entered, each carrying a clay jug nearly half his own height. The
moment they arrived, Nicholas’ keen senses told him that the liquid sloshing in the
huge jars was not water, but blood. Animal blood, by the scent of it.

All three men, looking utterly terrified, placed their burdens on the floor and fled back
through the double doors. They closed with a decisive thud, shutting out the daylight
once more.

“My father would never have consented to a human sacrifice,” Sekhemnet said when
the guardsmen had gone. “So I ordered Khufa to bring me the blood of three healthy
oxen instead. Will this suffice, Master Nicholas?”

Though he inwardly cringed at the address, Nicholas nonetheless felt a deep sense of
paternal pride at her forethought. “It will indeed,” he told her, and together they went
to retrieve the vampire’s salvation from the entryway floor.

Isis was the first to revive, returning from the ashen pallor of true undeath to a pale but
utterly timeless beauty that rivaled the towering image of the goddess above their
heads. Nicholas was in awe when she turned those dark, deathless eyes on him and
said in Greek, “Thank you. We are in your debt.” What remained of her flock,
standing on their own now, voiced agreement.

“When the night returns,” Nicholas told them all, “we will see you safely out of
Egypt.”

His words were intersected by the deadly twang of several bowstrings. Four separate
arrows streaked into their midst from the shadowed alcoves surrounding them. One
struck Nicholas in the shoulder as he whirled toward the sound; another found its
mark through the heart of a fledgling. She fell dead into Isis’ arms as the others cried
out and flew in all directions. Chaos erupted in the temple. Nicholas yanked the arrow
from his shoulder as another volley was fired at them. Sekhemnet gasped and fell,
struck in the leg. Janette and Nicholas both dropped to the floor beside her.

“To the ceiling, as high as you can get,” Nicholas shouted to Janette over the din.
“Take her, now!”

Janette did as he asked, flying into the shadows overhead with Sekhemnet held fast in
her arms. In the same moment, Nicholas found Isis at his side, and together they flew
head on into the nearest dark alcove to confront their unseen attackers. They collided
at vampire speed with two of the bowmen. A third dropped his weapon in panic and
fled. Nicholas’ foe had been knocked unconscious by the impact, but he heard the
man Isis had tackled scream once – then came the unmistakable crack of a human
neck snapping.

Nicholas scrambled back to his feet, pausing only long enough to smash the mortal’s
bow against the stone wall. Then he raced back to the temple’s center, where he found
two of Isis’ acolytes feeding on the bowman who had tried to run.

“There’s one more,” he said when Isis re-emerged to join him. She was obviously fully
prepared to continue this battle for the survival of her flock, at any cost.

Before they could seek the mortal out, however, Khufa stepped out of the dark niche
opposite them, his nocked arrow threatening both Nicholas and Isis.

Something dropped from above to land directly in front of him. Sekhemnet, Nicholas
realized with swelling pride. She had recovered from her would far more quickly than
most new vampires would have done, and now stood blocking Khufa’s line of sight,
deliberately exposing herself to the danger posed by his weapon.

Nicholas didn’t need a translator to understand Khufa’s angry words. Get out of my
way!

Sekhemnet’s reply was soft, cajoling, attempting to make him see reason. But the
captain of the guard was having none of it. He shouted at her again, repeating the
same phrase.

Janette landed beside Nicholas, drifting from high above to a silent and graceful stop.
The four surviving members of Isis’ flock reappeared as well, and began to circle
slowly round the deadly tableau on the temple’s center floor.

Unnerved by this development, Khufa tightened his grip on the bowstring, his arm
shaking from maintaining the tension. Still, Sekhemnet remained in front of him, in
the path of the arrow. Nicholas wanted to fly at him and try to snatch the damnable
weapon from his hands. But he would not risk his new daughter’s life so callously.
With glowing eyes, the vampires continued to circle them, predators patiently stalking
the prey.

“Tell him,” Nicholas said to Sekhemnet, “that if he agrees to leave the temple now, we
will spare his life.”

“I have done so,” she replied as the flock’s deadly dance around the agitated Khufa
continued. “He is angry that I deceived him, that I am as you are, and that he cannot
now petition my father for my hand in marriage.”

“Marriage?” Nicholas felt an unreasonable pang of jealousy at that. So, Khufa had
harbored more than simple feelings for her. He’d had greater ambitions.

Janette, it seemed, was thinking more rationally. She moved to Sekhemnet’s side,
regarding Khufa now in a new light. “Do you wish to be with him?” she asked the
pharaoh’s daughter.

Sekhemnet exchanged a look of unspoken comprehension with Janette, then
addressed Khufa once again in her native tongue. When she moved closer to him, her
voice soothing, Nicholas moved closer as well, fearing for her safety. But for one so
terribly young, Sekhemnet’s powers of persuasion were proving formidable indeed.
Khufa’s heartbeat slowed. He stood mesmerized, tears brimming in his eyes, and even
without understanding the words, Nicholas knew only too well the temptations she
was now offering him. Powers beyond ken, eternal life, and the chance to spend all of
it with her...

Khufa released an anguished sob of indecision, but in another moment, he had
permitted both bow and arrow to tumble from his grasp. It was Isis who then took
things in hand. Gently interposing herself between them, she extended one arm
toward Khufa in invitation. When he willingly took her hand, she nodded to the
others and with a smile, led him back into one of the shadowed niches between the
temple’s massive pillars.

Sekhemnet turned to her sire, confusion and mild disappointment in her eyes.
Nicholas knew her concern. Could she not have brought Khufa across herself?

“It’s all right,” he reassured her. “With Isis his master, you and he will be on equal
ground. Besides, it’s best that he be brought across by one well acquainted with the
art.”

“Well said, Nicholas.”

The sudden appearance of LaCroix decked in Greek attire emerging from the shadows
brought a puzzled frown to Sekhemnet’s face, but she nodded to him in
acknowledgment just the same. LaCroix, in turn, assessed her with an admiring gaze.
“I must say, Nicholas, that your newfound progeny is altogether fetching. And your
points for fealty to your own kind are entirely deserved. You’ll be happy to know that
your counterparts did indeed lead our people out of Egypt, and the flock led by the
mother of us all flourished to spread throughout the Earth. You’ve done quite well.”

Nicholas smiled his thanks, genuinely pleased at his master’s high praise.

Isis reappeared from between the pillars to summon Sekhemnet. “Come, daughter,”
she said. “Be at his side when he wakes.”

Nicholas stopped her just long enough to grasp her hands in a good-bye that she could
not have known would be one. “Live well,” he said. She smiled at him, a smile
brighter than daylight, and then hurried after Isis to awaken the newest of their kind.
He watched her go with a sharp pang of regret, knowing that he would never see her
again. Of all the scenarios given him in this game thus far, he would have selected this
one to remain in, had he been given that choice.

“Time for the final story in our collection,” LaCroix announced, and Isis’ temple at
once dissolved into the now-familiar white light. “Fealty is an honorable trait,”
LaCroix’s now-disembodied voice went on. “But there is also, regrettably, fealty sworn
to one who is false, undeserving of your loyalty. The trait required to overthrow such a
man – an unworthy lord – is courage. Courage, and the remarkable prowess that only
a vampire possesses.”

When the light faded, Janette still stood at his side, this time on a grass-covered plain
beneath a moonless sky that stretched overhead, bright with summer stars. She was
once again clad in the modern-day gown she’d worn in the Raven in the first scenes of
the game. He, however, found himself in clothing he had once worn in mortal life – as
an attaché to the delegation of Lord Delabarre. He could see the stone circle –
Gwynneth’s circle, or so he’d always thought of it – just to the east, and beyond that,
the liege lord’s encampment.

This had been the second worst day of his mortal existence.

He plucked angrily at the doublet bearing the hated Delabarre crest, and sneered in
contempt at the memory of his former lord. “I don’t want to be here,” he said.
“Anywhere. Anywhere else. Tell LaCroix...”

“Courage, Nicolas.” Janette slipped a gold chain from around her neck, pressing it and
the engraved disk that hung from it into his palm. “You will have another chance now
to right a wrong done to you – and to one you loved – long ago. Wear this.” She
stroked the pendant in his hand, and he glanced down at it for the first time. Engraved
on the small gold disk was a radiating sunburst. “The sun will rise in a moment,”
Janette said. “And for this one day, in our virtual world, the charm will enable you to
live in the light. Use it well.”

Closing her hand over his with the pendant inside, she kissed him, a long and
lingering embrace that very nearly made him forget the tingling warning signs of an
approaching dawn. He released her, stepping back to slip the chain over his head and
to tuck the charm inside his doublet. The pin-pricking sensation of the coming
daylight abruptly ceased. When he looked up again, he stood alone on the plain.

“Janette?”

No one answered. But a sound from the stone circle made him turn sharply to stare in
that direction. Music. The gentle strumming of harp strings, lyrics sung in a soft,
silken voice.

Gwynneth.

Hearing her voice again warmed him every bit as much as the approaching dawn. He
stood transfixed as, accompanied by her music, the first rays of sunlight spilled over
the eastern horizon and through the upright stones to fall on him without pain,
without harm. It was a phenomenon he had not witnessed in eight long centuries, and
if he could thank LaCroix for nothing else in this fantasy test of knightly virtues, he
would forever be grateful for this.

It was, however, a moment the mortal Nicholas had slept through, entirely oblivious
to the danger stalking Gwynneth in the dawn’s light. Delabarre had murdered her,
then allowed Nicholas to be accused of the deed and packed off to Jerusalem as
punishment.

It was an act of treachery he would not allow to occur again. Not this time.

Loathe to turn away from the magnificence of the sunrise, he hurried toward the
monument, skirting its perimeter through the tall weeds that grew along the brook’s
edge. He could hear movement further down the embankment.

Delabarre was coming.

Behind him, Gwynneth went on singing to the rising sun, oblivious to the
approaching peril. And this time, with him to protect her, Nicholas intended to make
sure that she never knew of it.

Stalking human prey in the daylight was a new experience, but no less exhilarating for
the lack of any concealing darkness. Nicholas used the high reeds for cover, moving in
stealth and silence, then pausing to listen until he could hear Delabarre’s nearby
heartbeat.

The vampire waited then, biding his time until the right moment. Then he stepped
out of the thicket directly into the liege lord’s path.

Delabarre drew up short with a startled expletive. “Nicholas! What in the name of
God are you doing here?” His tone was hushed so as not to warn Gwynneth of their
presence. “Go back to the encampment at once.”

A lord’s order to a mere attaché was not to be ignored. Thus, Delabarre bristled,
infuriated when Nicholas did not immediately obey him. “You have no further
business here, or with that pagan witch. Go. Now!”

“I won’t allow you to harm her, Delabarre.”

“You won’t...” Incensed by this unprecedented show of defiance, Lord Delabarre
attempted to push his impudent attaché aside with one powerful sweep of his arm.
But it met a solid resistance that should not have been possible, and the bearded noble
reacted with characteristic rage, swinging his arm in a backhanded blow that should
have sent his impudent aide sprawling. Instead, he found his hand caught in the vise
grip of impossibly strong fingers. They remained locked in that glaring contest of wills
for several moments, until Delabarre’s trembling muscles at last could take the stress
no longer. He pulled free of Nicholas’ grip and stumbled backward, sputtering in
dumbfounded rage.

“What trickery is this?” His angry bellow should have been audible in the nearby stone
circle, but Gwynneth, perhaps transported by the power of her music, never stopped
singing to the strains of her ash wood harp. Delabarre tried one last intimidation,
punctuating every syllable with deadly threat. “Get. Out. Of. My. Way!”

The lowly attaché, incredibly, still refused to move. “You will not harm her,” he said
again, and the deep rumble of his voice warned that this Nicholas was a master of
intimidation in his own right. Delabarre, however, neither heard nor heeded the
danger. He saw only an upstart aide-de-camp who needed, apparently, to be put in his
place.

“If I choose to do away with the conniving little witch, it will be no concern of yours,”
he hissed. “Now get out of my way, or so help me God, I’ll cut you down where you
stand!”

His patience at an end, he whisked the sword from his scabbard with an angry
flourish, and when Nicholas still refused to give way, thrust the blade with full force
into his young attaché’s left shoulder. That should have sent the insolent puppy
yelping back to camp to nurse his wounds in terror of his fearsome lord. Instead...

Nicholas recoiled from the penetrating blow only briefly. Then, slowly, he
straightened to confront his foe with the burning eyes and brutal snarl of a stalking
predator. Delabarre swore another oath, let go of the sword’s hilt and rapidly crossed
himself. “Mother of God,” he breathed. “The sorceress has possessed you.”

When the demon now before him pulled the impaling sword free of its flesh and
turned the blade toward him, Delabarre at last abandoned all semblance of control and
ran. In his panic, he almost immediately tripped over something in the soft loam
underfoot, and went sprawling. He rolled over into a sitting position, only to find
himself staring up into those terrible, flame-red eyes.

“Get up,” the demon commanded him. “A man brave enough to slay an innocent
woman in cold blood should at least have the courage to die on his feet.”

Delabarre struggled in the loose soil to rise, first to his knees, then awkwardly back to
his full height. Along the way, his right hand had stolen beneath his overtunic and
emerged grasping a beaded rosary. Its pendant crucifix was thrust abruptly into
Nicholas’ face. The vampire recoiled with a snarl, and Delabarre took full advantage
of his suddenly weakened state by pressing the cross forward with all his might, until it
seared its imprint into his adversary’s forehead.

Gasping in pain, Nicholas fell backward with Delabarre and the crucifix landing hard
on top of him. The vampire’s strength dissipated under the power of the cross as the
rosary was shoved with vengeful force against his chest.

A panting Delabarre shifted his weight and came to rest on his knees alongside a now-
paralyzed Nicholas. “I know not by what sorcery the pagan vixen has bewitched you,”
he breathed. “But by God, we shall dispatch it – and her – forthwith.”

With the crushing force of the cross pinning him to the ground, and with the
unaccustomed sunlight stinging his eyes, Nicholas could see only a blurred Delabarre
as the man drew a dagger from his belt, rose and moved away. He heard a snap, then
the unmistakable sound of a blade slicing at wood. The liege lord returned to his
subdued foe with a sharpened tree branch in one hand and a sturdy rock in the other.

“This should suffice,” he muttered. “For you, the stake. For her...” He turned his head
toward the monument, where Gwynneth’s beautiful voice still continued its song.
“...the sword,” Delabarre finished, and placed the pointed branch just above the
resting crucifix, over Nicholas’ heart. The vampire hissed, its eyes glowing deeper red
as Delabarre raised the stone high over his head – and swiftly brought it down upon
the stake.

The blow was true – but something deflected the stick’s sharp point, skewing it aside
just far enough to snare the rosary and send it tumbling from his chest.

“What the–?” Delabarre saw the falling rosary and grabbed for it. Too late. And that
one small failing was, in a flash, his undoing. Free of the cross, the vampire’s strength
returned in force, and Nicholas surged to his feet to seize a flailing Delabarre in iron
hands.

“I think,” the vampire snarled in his ear, “that it is your time to die.” Forcing
Delabarre’s head back with nearly enough strength to break the man’s neck, he struck
with all the deadly accuracy of a viper. He relished his victim’s startled cry of pain
almost as much as the thick, warm flow of his blood...

Only when Delabarre lay dead at his feet did Nicholas become aware of something
pressing on his skin just inside his tunic. He reached in and shortly drew out the gold
chain with Janette’s sun charm on it. It had been compressed against him by the force
of Delabarre’s blow, and so had protected him from far more than just the daylight.
Mouthing silent thanks to both Janette and LaCroix, (who had undoubtedly provided
the talisman), he allowed the disk to hang freely exposed now, resting against the
family crest adorning his doublet. Delabarre’s crest. Curling his lip at the bizarre irony
in that, he stepped over his former lord’s corpse and at last headed for the circle of
standing stones.

Gwynneth’s ballad had finally concluded, and while she’d remained so long unaware
of the drama playing out so near her sacred place, this time she did hear his approach.

“Nicolas?”

She pronounced his name as Janette had always done, in the French fashion. When he
entered the circle, she lay aside the ash wood harp and ran to embrace him.

“I was afraid for you, Nicolas. There was something...” She pulled suddenly away,
almost as though touching him had burned her, and her hand went at once to the gold
charm. She lifted it far enough to make the engraved sunburst glint in the morning
light. When she looked up at him again, her eyes reflected an eternity of sadness. “Oh,
my poor Nicolas,” she said. “It is as the casting stones foretold. They said you would
live a very long life, and a long life indeed has been yours. But the happiness you seek
has eluded you.”

“How...?” he started to ask, but she silenced him with the gentle touch of her
fingertips to his lips.

“You must go now,” she told him. “Back to the life you have chosen. Back to your
time.”

He claimed her hand with his, drew her back to him and kissed her with all the ardor
he remember giving to her all those centuries ago. “Live your life, Gwynneth,” he said
when they had again parted. “All of it.”

Fervently wishing that this fantasy, too, might have been the reality, Nicholas gave her
a final kiss before turning to depart the stone ring for the last time.

LaCroix waited for him a few paces down the path. He too wore a sunburst pendant,
and his deathly pale face and hair looked utterly incongruent in the sunlight. He said
nothing for several moments: they stood together on the path and watched as four
men from Gwynneth’s village carried Delabarre’s body from the thicket and headed
off, not toward the papal delegation’s camp, but toward the town, where Nicholas
sincerely hoped it would be dumped into a deep, dark cesspit. Lord Delabarre’s men
would in all likelihood never know what fate had befallen him – nor whom to blame
for it.

“Your final points are well-earned,” LaCroix announced triumphantly when the
peasants and their burden had disappeared from view. “For mortals, this virtue is
courage. For us, it is rather more simply the greater prowess of a superior species – the
vampire – manifest. So tell me, Nicholas...” With a casual wave of LaCroix’s hand,
medieval Wales in all of its daytime glory melted away, becoming the dark, familiar
surroundings of his Toronto loft’s living room. Janette was there, perched primly on
his leather couch, and all three of them wore modern garb once more. “Did you enjoy
our little game?” LaCroix finished.

Nick did not have to consider his honest answer. “Yes,” he said.

“I’m so glad.” LaCroix brushed imaginary lint from the sleeve of his black coat.
“Perhaps we’ll play again some fine summer’s eve.”

Again, Nick responded with candor. “I’d like that.”

LaCroix smiled, genuinely pleased, and with a parting nod to his son and daughter, he
faded silently from view.

His sire’s unconventional disappearance startled Nick a bit. He’d assumed that their
return to the loft had signaled the game’s end. But then... he crossed to the leather sofa
to sit down beside the very alluringly-clad Janette. After seeing her in all of the recent
virtual reality scenarios, he’d all but forgotten that the real Janette had left Toronto in
the wake of regaining her mortality – only to lose it again at his hand. If LaCroix’s
dreamscape had in fact ended, Janette would not be sitting here beside him.

“I did enjoy the game,” he told her truthfully. “Thank you, for being there. And here.
There’s so much that we need to talk about...” And having said that, the right words to
go on with instantly eluded him. “I’ve missed you,” he finally managed to say.

“And I you.” She slipped into his embrace with the ease of age-old familiarity, and in
that moment, it was as though she’d never left at all. He held her tightly against him,
wishing with all his being that she were not part of LaCroix’s VR fantasy, but the real
Janette. His Janette.

“I’m sorry,” he said, murmuring the words into her ear. “I shouldn’t have brought you
back across. Not against your will. I was wrong to do that.”

“Nicolas, mon coeur. Only you would feel guilty for saving me from myself.”

It wasn’t the response he’d expected. When she’d gone, bidding him no good-bye for
the second time in their long relationship, he’d been certain that she would never
forgive him for sending her back into the darkness when she had begged to die a
mortal death instead.

“I couldn’t let you go,” he confessed, pulling back to look into her eyes. “I still can’t.”

“I know.” She kissed him then, briefly but fully. “I was wrong to ask that of you. I
know that now. It is I who should be asking your forgiveness, for blaming you when
all along, you had done exactly the right thing. There is no guilt in that. Know that I
love you, Nicolas. I always have.”

The second kiss was deeper, longer, and he was loathe ever to let it end. “Come back
to me, Janette,” he entreated. “You were the only thing that made living forever
bearable. I don’t think I can face an eternity without you. I don’t want to try.”

“Oh, mon cher Nicolas. You really must be careful what you wish for...”

This time, her kiss lasted a very long time indeed.

                    *          *          *

Nick woke to what he could have sworn was the lingering scent of her perfume. But
he was quite alone in the loft’s sparsely furnished bedroom. The melted remains of the
VR game headset, the one Nat had tossed into the fire last night, lay on the bedside
lamp table. He took it with him, padding shoeless down the long flight of stairs to the
living room. With a wistful glance at the now-empty couch, he left the headset on the
table behind it and headed for the refrigerator.

Cold bovine blood was decidedly not what he craved just now, but for lack of a better
choice...

He reached the kitchen table and came to a sudden, baffled halt. Two wine glasses
waited there alongside a bottle that bore the Raven’s distinctive ‘wine’ label.

Nick paused, expecting to sense his master’s signature at any moment. While he
waited, he uncorked the bottle and filled both glasses with the thick, heady libation,
LaCroix’s favorite human vintage. Closing his eyes to savor the first sip, he had to
repress a clamoring urge to grab and down the entire bottle. A night’s sojourn in the
virtual world had left him ravenous.

The vibration arrived, along with a soft whisper of movement from the open skylight
above and behind him. Then came the almost-soundless touch of feet upon the loft’s
concrete floor. Nick picked up the second wine glass, intending to offer LaCroix a
toast. But when he turned...

“Hello, Nicolas.”

A vision in a blood-red evening gown stood in the moonlight that poured into the loft
from above. He had one terrible moment of doubt that she was real, doubt that
LaCroix’s game had ever really ended. But then she came closer, took the glass from
his left hand and tasted its contents. The signature he sensed in her was far stronger
than virtual Janette’s had been. So strong that he could now feel her yearnings. One
was a desire to return to Toronto and the Raven. Another relished the blood of which
she now partook. And a third...

Her third – and by far most ardent – desire pleased him beyond measure. It told him
without need of words that he was indeed forgiven, that she had returned to stay this
time, and that her need for him remained in every way as passionate as his for her.

Nick reached out to touch her glass with his own, a welcoming toast accompanied by a
warm smile. “Do I have you to thank for the gift of the Raven’s best vintage?”

She returned the toast and the smile, and both of them drained their glasses before she
replied simply, “Non.” She took both glasses then, and placed them on the table before
turning back to move willingly into his embrace. “But before you thank LaCroix for
his most thoughtful gift, perhaps there is something else I might do for you.”

“I think...” he said in between her impassioned kisses, “...I just might be able to
arrange that.”

And without further prelude, he lifted her into his arms and flew with her back to the
loft’s upper floor.

                    *          *          *

When the bedroom door had clicked shut, LaCroix drifted through the skylight to
land silently near the table. He casually refilled one of the wine glasses, then held it
aloft to offer a toast of his own.

“Good night, mes amis,” he said softly. “May you have a long and very happy eternity –
together.”
 

                             The End