An extremely old edition of Gulliver’s Travels. A King James Bible, ancient and tattered, lay next to a scholarly text on cults and cultists. Andrew Greeley. Ian Fleming’s entire Bond series. Nero Wolfe. Sherlock Holmes. I wondered how Sherlock would react if he knew he was shelved next to Jackie Collins.

  Only in the lowest right corner of the bookcase was any real organization apparent. In that shelf Adam had collected every work he could find on the subject of vampires, from Stoker to P. N. Elrod. I’d never realized there were so many. I pulled one at random and took it back to bed, but the words just sat on the page, mute and uncommunicative.

  It was a big difference, living a fantasy.

  Adam’s entry was so quiet that it took me by surprise; in this windowless room, unadorned by so much as a travel alarm, it was hard to gauge time. He was just there, suddenly, with the panel gliding shut behind him, and I could see, with my newly enhanced vision, the heat in his skin. It showed up as a faint glow, fading even as I noticed it.

  “Sun’s coming up,” Adam told me tersely, and stripped off his clothes to toss them in the closet. There was a vivid white star-shaped scar on his back; as he finished pulling on pajama bottoms and walked toward his bed, I saw that there was a matching blaze on his chest, too. Something had gone all the way through—over his heart.

  That was a death-wound. It looked old.

  “Sunup means we die, Mikey—for a little while, if we stay out of the direct light, or permanently, if we’re caught out in it. You’ll start to feel the pull in a minute. Don’t fight it.” Adam settled himself in bed, turned his head, and looked directly at me. “It doesn’t hurt. Just try not to panic.”

  His tone didn’t hold much hope. I wondered how often he’d panicked, before dying had become as much ritual as waking up. I wondered if he still panicked, in spite of what he said.

  The first rays of the sun fell over the house. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew; it was a sensation like a cold knife sliding into my back, water spilling into my lungs … I gasped in air automatically, air I didn’t need except to make some unintelligible sound of terror. Adam’s eyes were still turned in my direction, dark, getting dark, going blind.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and his voice ground to a nightmarish halt in my ears, breaking into the shriek of breaking glass and ripping metal and the red drip of my escaping life.

  The sun came up. I went down, into darkness, screaming.

  Chapter Ten

  The Enemy

  Adam forgot to warn me about waking up.

  I lay in a shaking huddle, tangled in dry cool sheets, and clutched my head as if I could dig the sensations out of it. After a while the futility of that occurred to me, and the disorientation passed into white silence. I felt—alien. I was terrified, but I wasn’t sweating; my heart was silent, not pounding as it ought to. I wasn’t gasping for breath. The only thing human left in my response was the shivering—and the terror. I finally unclenched my muscles and stretched out on my back, staring at the windowless tomb that was my new bedroom.

  Adam’s bed was empty. There was water running in the house, distant but clear to my undistracted ears. Amazing how easy it was to hear without all those internal bodily noises, like heartbeat and the rush of breath. Adam in the shower? The idea came as a strange shock, but I supposed hygiene continued to be a consideration, dead or alive. Maybe, I thought sickly, more of a consideration after death.

  The memory came to me, unbidden, of Maggie’s skin against mine under the warm spray of the shower. I shoved it away and distracted myself by getting to my feet.

  It was surprisingly easy. I didn’t waver much. My fingers, when I worked them experimentally, seemed nearly back to normal efficiency. I tried them out on the doorhandle. It didn’t turn. I exerted more force. Nothing. I yanked in a fury at it, rattled the metal, even bent the stainless steel knob into a knobby oval with the force of my rage. It didn’t open. I turned in a claustrophobic circle. Walls, walls, walls, ceiling, floor. Nothing. No way out.

  I’d thought of this as a tomb before, but now the reality crashed in on me. It was a tomb. A modern vampire’s version of a coffin—conveniently lockable from outside.

  Adam must have locked me in, Adam or Sylvia. Somehow I was betting on Adam. I flexed my fingers and felt a sensation glide over me, something dark and hungry and absolutely seductive. Adam. Yes. The sensation was anticipation, and I was thinking about his death, about his stolen blood spurting out over my hands and beading like garnets on my flesh. I sank down, stunned, to the tangled sheets and put my head in my hands. Gold, both head and hands, despite the fever heat that I’d just felt.

  Dear God, why …

  The claustrophobia hit me again, wiping out everything but the primitive instinct to escape. I was back at the door before I remembered moving, clawing at the handle, slamming my hands into the door again and again with bone-breaking force. No bones broke. No flesh shredded.

  No door opened.

  When the red fury faded, I stood in the middle of a room that looked as if a tornado had passed through it. The only thing I hadn’t disturbed was the bookcase, probably because it was against the wall and out of the immediate path of my rage. My bed was—dismembered. Its white stuffing littered the room like the entrails of a slaughtered beast. I couldn’t even identify the remains of the pillow.

  This time I collapsed into a corner, drew my knees up against my chest, and concentrated on breathing in and out, just as if I needed the oxygen. It was calming, at least. It forced me to concentrate on something other than panic.

  My head came up with a snap even before I realized that someone approached the door—someone human, someone with a working heart and lungs. Female. The scent was familiar.

  “Michael?” she asked through the door. I didn’t move. “Michael, are you all right?”

  Some instinct took hold of me. Sit still, it said. Say nothing. Wait.

  I did that thing.

  “Michael?” Sylvia said again, sounding anxious. I could hear the pounding of her heart as it beat faster. “Please say something. Please.”

  Say nothing. Wait. Wait.

  She cursed softly, under her breath, and started to walk away. Stopped. Came back to the door and fit a key into the lock with a metallic dick.

  Say nothing …

  Sylvia eased the door open. She saw the wreckage first, and her lips parted in helpless amazement. I came up from a crouch and crossed the distance to her faster than her eyes could track me. I remembered how Adam had moved in the morgue. Faster than I could see—

  Instinct moved me toward her, toward the pulse beating in her body. I froze as I realized why it had counseled me to silence and waiting. It was a predator’s instinct. Tigers sat for hours watching their prey. I’d become a tiger, something worse than a tiger, perhaps. Sylvia’s wrist was in my hand, pulse throbbing light and fast under my fingers. That was what I wanted. Her life.

  I let her go and went back to my corner, resting my forehead on my clenched fists. I wanted to pray, as I hadn’t prayed since I was a child in the Clear Creek Baptist Church, but nothing came to my mind except an incoherent plea for mercy.

  “Mike?” Sylvia asked in a voice no steadier than her wildly beating heart. “Mike, I’m sorry—”

  You’re sorry?

  She came closer. I tried to draw myself tighter into a ball—not out of fear, but to prevent myself from lunging at her. She stopped a few feet away and put something down on the floor with a clink of glass.

  “Here. This will help, I think. If you need—” The well-mannered hostess’s line seemed wildly inappropriate, somehow. She didn’t finish it. When I looked up, Sylvia straightened and backed toward the door. She was the one who’d been in the shower, obviously; her hair was damp and straight, pushed back over her fleece-robed shoulders.

  “Where’s Adam?” I asked, not even glancing at the bottle she’d put on the floor between us. My voice worked. That was an improvement, too.

  “He had business to attend to. He’ll be back soon.” I wondered if her nervous addition was for my benefit or her own. Sylvia forced a smile. “Your eyes. They’re red.”

  She didn’t mean bloodshot, I guessed. I remembered how disturbing Adam’s eyes were when he was enraged, and lowered my gaze to the hardwood floor.

  “I don’t know—”

  “I know,” she interrupted. “Adam told me not to underestimate you. I just didn’t listen. It was hardly your fault. Drink-drink and you’ll feel better.”

  Drink your blood like a good boy, she meant. My lips peeled back from my teeth in a snarl of anger, but I didn’t look up. Sylvia’s warm, living presence backed away, and the lock clicked shut behind her.

  The scent of her hung in the room like the afterimage of a bright flash. I reached out for the bottle she’d left me and lifted it to the dim light, tilting it from one side to another and watching the liquid slosh slowly. It reminded me of lava lamps and bachelor pads, but I ripped it open and drank like a man dying of thirst.

  It tasted sweet and gagging. I drank it all. I broke the bottle in my invulnerable fingers and licked the red film off the glass fragments, sickened and amazed by my hunger. I gathered up the pieces and threw them in the trash, then looked around the room again.

  My bed was, I thought, a total loss: I methodically picked up stuffing and packed it in the huge rent, then leaned the wreck against the far wall. Activity prevented me from thinking about the blood I’d just gorged on, the warm heavy sensation in my stomach. My pillow was still missing, unless a scattered drift of feathers in the opposite corner counted. I’d avoided trashing Adam’s bed, which was lucky. The nightstand next to my bed had been reduced to matchsticks.

  I dressed and sat on the bare floor. After a longtime, I got up and selected a book from the shelves. If Adam intended to keep me locked up in here for the rest of my unnatural life, at least I’d be the most well-read damned vampire on earth.

  In spite of the revulsion I felt, the blood eased the cramps in my limbs, the restless desperate energy. I felt—human. I lost myself in the flow of words and imagination, so far gone that I failed this time to hear Sylvia’s approach until the door opened and the scent of her drifted toward me. I looked up to find that she’d dressed, too, in a comfortably faded pair of jeans and an oversized sweater patterned with abstract pastels. Her hair was back in a long braid again, emphasizing her Indian heritage.

  She looked very calm. Only the beat of her heart—too fast—gave her away.

  “I’m going out,” she said as if I were a normal everyday houseguest instead of—whatever I was. “Do you want anything?”

  It seemed inappropriate to ask for a burger and fries. I stood up—slowly—and stayed very still. Sylvia didn’t flinch.

  “I need to get out of here,” I told her. Her green eyes raised to meet mine. I wondered what color mine were now.

  “You understand why he’s doing it,” she said, which wasn’t an answer. I nodded.

  “But I’m claustrophobic.” To say the least. It was a new experience for me, and I didn’t much like it.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured, very gently. I wish—I don’t know what I can do for you, Michael. You can be violent, you know that.”

  “Only if you keep me locked up in here.” I hoped. My voice, never very strong or very steady, broke. “Sylvia, please. Help.”

  She stood there looking at me for a long moment, heartbeat slowing to a comfortable even beat, breath rushing in constant rhythm. Sylvia adjusted quickly, probably quicker than I did—but then she’d had practice.

  “All right,” she said then, startling me. And smiled, showing even white teeth. “Let’s go for a ride, Doctor. The fresh air will do you good.”

  “Ride?” I protested. She crossed to the closet and pulled out one of Adam’s jackets, t0ssed it to me. I pulled it on. It was too large in the shoulders, but she nodded critically and smiled again.

  “Gorgeous. Come on, if you’re coming, before Adam gets back.”

  He was going to kill us both—if I didn’t kill her first, of course.

  Of all of the things I’d expected to be different, it was the way things smelled that bothered me the most. I’d noticed food, of course, perfumes, garbage, overpowering smells that were the sensory equivalent to being hit over the head with a hammer. But the subtleties had escaped me, as I suppose they escape most people. Living in cities deadens the senses, and when we got in Sylvia’s car I received the first of many unpleasant lessons. When I shut the door I was assaulted by the closed, musty scent of mold, fungus, stale food, a sharp tang of plastic, burnt metal, ancient cigarettes …

  I rolled the window down. Quickly. The scent was easier to stand when I didn’t breathe in, which I thankfully didn’t really need to do, so I took one deep lungful of cool outside air and cleaned the stench out of my body, then sat in unmoving silence. Sylvia watched this with bewildered, amused patience, then shrugged and turned the key. The engine roared to life-loud, louder than I remembered. My hearing was better, of course. She had a valve problem.

  “We’re not going out for long,” Sylvia said, apparently at random, and put the car in gear. We slid away from the curb and around the cul-de-sac curve. Lights were on in some of her neighbors’ houses; I wondered what they thought about my presence, or if they’d even noticed. We seemed to be in a genteel suburban section of the city, which either meant she lived with yuppies who were too consumed with their own lives to worry about the odd goings-on of crazy neighbors, or bored retired couples who amused themselves by living the lives of everyone else on the block. A curtain stirred as we drove past one house. I caught a glimpse of the man as he turned away from the window—a middle-aged, pot-bellied man wearing the kind of undershirt that my father wore and hated.

  Hey. Marge! I could practically hear him. That crazy Indian woman’s got herself a new boyfriend!

  For the first time since my life had jumped off the rails, I felt truly, genuinely amused.

  “You okay?” Sylvia asked me as she coasted up to the stop sign. I glanced at her and nodded. “Mmm-hmm. Thought so.”

  I turned my face to the cool night air and breathed again. Talking still required air.

  “Your house?” I asked, flicking my eyes back at the Victorian house. She shrugged and a faint smile touched her lips—a sad smile.

  “Inherited. A friend of mine died four years ago and left it to me. I’m surprised you didn’t read about it in the papers. His family kept trying to break the will, or claim I had undue influence—” She broke off and shook her head abruptly. “That’s when the police started investigating my background. They were looking for anything to get a lever.”

  “My wife—” I began, but ran out of air. It was an acquired skill, apparently, learning to talk without breathing. Sylvia didn’t seem to hear the non-question, just turned right and kept driving. I could see the lights of downtown now, closer than I’d thought.

  “I never met your wife, just saw her at a distance. Nick Gianoulos was one of the investigating officers, though, and I met him a time or two. Can’t say I particularly cared for him, though he’s got a hell of a nice face.”

  “Think so?” I asked. She gave me a deadpan look.

  “Women love faces like that, didn’t you know? Except for your wife, apparently. I saw her giving him looks that should have left him paralyzed from the neck down.” Another right turn, onto the freeway access. “Anyway, the house stayed mine. I probably should have sold it, but I—I wanted something to remember him by. He was a special man, very gifted. And he died too young.”

  I did remember, vaguely. A featured article in the Sunday paper about the death of a young choreographer, one in a wave of deaths in the arts as AIDS grew from a trickle to a flood. His family had been unhappy, all right, and accused his—nurse—

  “Nurse,” I murmured aloud.

  “Mmm. Not according to Dan’s sister. She was a lot more concerned with my mental history than my ability to read a treatment chart. Well, it’s over and done with, he’s at peace and so am I. Do you like the house?”

  “Very nice.” I sucked more air in and got a mouthful of poisonous fog spewed from a passing truck. Well, it couldn’t kill me, could it? “Where are we going?”

  Four words in a row. I was definitely improving.

  “I have to make a quick visit to a friend. You can stay in the car if you like, I won’t be long. I’d prefer not to take you inside, if you don’t mind—kind of disturbing when your eyes glow like that. I guess it takes time to master the tricks, doesn’t it? I never knew Adam when he was—young; since I’ve known him, he’s always known how to blend in. It’s scary, sometimes. I forget that he’s …”

  Sylvia’s lips tightened on some private memory, and she pretended to be occupied with the sparse traffic on the freeway. A flare of red and blue lights in the distance distracted us both—police, pulling somebody over. The thought finally crossed my mind that I’d have to be careful about being recognized, particularly by any of Maggie’s old cronies. They wouldn’t believe what they were seeing, of course … unless they took a good, long, sober look …

  The lights strobed to a stop behind us with a dark-colored sedan in the hot spot. Sylvia relaxed a little and brushed a loose tendril of hair away from her forehead.

  “Adam’s different,” she said softly. “I’ve never really understood how different until now—until seeing you like this. I never knew Adam any other way, but now I realize he must have been human once, must have loved, been loved, had a life. I never asked him, you know. And he never told me.”

  “What do you know about him?” I asked. My eyes were still focused on the flashes behind us. “Where did he come from?”

  “I met him one night when I was trying to kill myself,” Sylvia said simply. I turned to look at her. Her face was quiet and serene, only a few lines tightened around her eyes to betray her pain. “I was young and stupid, Mike. I came back from nursing in Vietnam and found out nobody much cared where I’d been as long as I didn’t bleed in the street. I was going to cut my wrists—but there was Adam, and when he looked at me it was like looking into the heart of a fire. He lived; he lived so hard that he made me want to live, too. So I did.”