Near Washington, D.C.

At 7:00 a.m., in a truck stop not known for safety, Roxy, wearing a black pageboy wig and large round glasses, along with skintight leggings, a leather jacket and matching boots, sat at a table in the back and waited. She looked like Velma from Scooby-Doo, if Velma had joined a biker gang. The senator came in, looking nervous as hell, and as out of place as a goldfish in a barracuda tank. She clicked through the place in her sensible two-inch navy blue pumps that matched her blazer that matched her skirt, looking around in the most obvious manner possible.

"Shit," Roxy muttered. She quickly got up and made her way past the crowd of patrons, mostly large men and a few large women, talking loudly, chugging coffee and eating meals big enough to feed a small third-world village. She gripped the senator by the forearm and leaned in close. "Could you be more obvious?"

With a sharp look her way, the senator frowned. "Are you-"

"Endora," Roxy said. She'd had to pick a phony name when she'd emailed the senator, and her favorite TV witch had seemed like a good enough choice. "We need to make this fast."

"I'm all for that."

"Did you tell anyone you were coming here?"

"Yes."

Roxy stopped walking, sent her a look.

"My private security guy, the guy who screens my email. And no one else. I wasn't going to come here alone."

Roxy glanced toward the entry, a big glass door.

"He took the limo around back, but I can get him back here fast if needed."

"Gave you a panic button, did he?"

The senator averted her eyes. "Your message said this was about my new committee post. That you have information I need. What is it?"

She was a pretty thing, Roxy thought. And she had that idealistic fire in her eyes she'd glimpsed before in young politicians. Before they'd been around long enough to have it extinguished by the good ol' boys who wanted to keep the status quo.

"This way."

The two made their way to the table in the back, and Roxy slid into her chair and shoved a mug of coffee across the table. "I ordered for you."

"I prefer tea."

"You drink coffee today."

Roxy sipped her own, and the senator followed suit. Without further delay, Roxy said, "There's a former mental hospital called St. Dymphna's in Mount Bliss, Virginia, that's been commandeered by the DPI. You know about the DPI, right?"

The senator blinked rapidly, lowered her eyes. "I'm afraid that's-"

"Classified. I know that. Look, Ms. MacBride, I don't need you to tell me anything. I already know. I'm just trying to determine how much you know."

"I...know a lot."

"Not as much as you think, I'll bet, so I'll start at the beginning, and that's the DPI. Division of Paranormal Investigations. A black ops division of the CIA in charge of investigating vampires. It's been committing the kinds of crimes against other living beings over the past couple of centuries that make Saddam Hussein look like Mother Theresa. Only difference being their victims were vampires. Not humans."

The woman's eyes widened as she searched Roxy's.

"Yeah, I can see that's something you didn't know. Well, here's the thing. Right now they're rounding up all the human beings with the Belladonna Antigen and stashing them in St. Dymphna's."

The senator swallowed hard. "Humans with the antigen have been targeted by...vampires more than any other group of-"

"That's bullshit. Propaganda. Who told you that?"

"It's part of the research I was given by-"

"Research. Their research has been done by capturing perfectly innocent people who happen to be vampires and torturing them. Killing them. Experimenting on them."

"Look, I don't know who you are or why you think I'd believe-"

She'd started to get up, but Roxy gripped her wrist and jerked her back into her seat. "Humans with the Belladonna Antigen are the only ones capable of becoming vampires. Vampires sense them, and are compelled to watch over and protect them-even if it's to their own detriment. They can't help themselves. They're incapable of harming the Chosen, which is what they call those people."

Senator MacBride held Roxy's eyes. "Are you sure about this?"

"I'm the oldest living person with the antigen," Roxy told her. "I'm sure. Vampires have saved my life many times over the years, and I've seen them do the same for others. They're my friends. Not evil. Not monsters. And no matter what the DPI tells you, those humans being rounded up and stuck in that asylum are not there for their own protection."

"Then why...?"

"I don't know. But whatever the reason, you can bet it isn't good. You need to look into this."

The senator nodded. "I will."

"Don't take too long." Roxy pushed away from the table, dragged a twenty from her pocket and slapped it down. Then she headed for the restroom at the end of a long narrow hallway in the back. Glancing behind her to make sure she was unobserved, she ducked into the men's room, rather than the women's, and moved quickly into the second stall. Unseen. Perfect. She pulled large jeans and a pillow for padding out of the bag she'd stashed there earlier, switched her jacket for a bigger one, ditched the wig and glasses, donned a moustache and beard, pulled on a billed cap with a bulldog logo on the front, and headed out again. She walked right by the senator on her way out, and the woman didn't even give her a second glance. She was on the phone, probably with her security guy.

Outside, Roxy saw what had to be the senator's car pulling to a stop. Off to one side a man in a long dark coat stood watching. Not the senator's bodyguard. Someone else.

Roxy had known this was dangerous. She was glad she'd taken the precautions she had. Because either Senator Marlene MacBride was being watched...

...or she was.

Near Bangor, Maine

Brigit stood high on the hilltop, overlooking the winding road below, and watched as Utana spoke with a tall male mortal. The man's back was toward her, and she observed only that he was thin and wearing a brown "duck" type coat against the chill of the early morning. He drove a big SUV, dark green in color. It fit in here, just as his coat did. Perhaps he was a local. One of those bleeding heart, trusting types who took in strangers.

The idiot didn't know what kind of power he was playing with. Or what kind of danger. Utana was a time bomb. A killing machine with a warped mind.

There's so much more to him than that.

Now where had that thought come from?

Utana's face was visible in the early-morning sun. She'd deliberately stayed far enough away that she hoped he wouldn't sense her, but God knew she could still sense him. Not the killing machine part of him, but the man. The man who, she realized, had wept at the sight of all the carnage he'd caused. The man who'd kissed her as if she were the first shelter he'd seen on an endless trek across a burning desert. As if she were his first sip of water.

And she had to kill him.

God, what the hell was wrong with the world, anyway?

She sighed and dragged her attention back to the scene unfolding below. In spite of her mission, she found herself feeling ridiculously glad some Good Samaritan was taking pity on the once great king. Oh, she had no doubt the guy would regret it later, once he realized that Utana was completely off his rocker-a fact the stranger should have picked up on from the simple fact that Utana was wearing a filthy bedsheet like a toga.

Wait, something was happening. The local was opening the passenger side door of his SUV. Holding it as if he expected Utana to get in.

Hell, no, Brigit thought. There was no way he would trust a stranger, much less a mortal one.

Utana turned then, gazing in her direction as if he sensed her there. She sidestepped, ducking behind a bushy-boughed sentinel pine.

And then she heard him, speaking to her with his mind as clearly as if he were standing beside her, saying his words into her ear, his voice deep and resonant and sending chills up her spine.

I will not kill you yet, Brigit of the Vahmpeers. His thoughts were clear, their meaning overriding his broken English. When I have done the rest, I will ask the Anunaki to spare you. Perhaps they will agree.

A red haze of fury rose up in her, and she stepped out from behind the tree. You'll let me live to see all those I love die before me? And you're expecting my gratitude for that?

It is all I can do.

He lowered his head, bent low to get into the car.

Hey! Where the hell do you think you're going? Don't you know better than to trust strangers? Hey!

But he got into the car anyway, and the man closed the passenger door, then went around to the driver's side and got in. The car moved away, and Brigit had no idea where it was taking her quarry.

She was cold, tired, hungry and pissed. She was frustrated as all hell and wishing for a way to shirk the duty that had fallen to her to carry out. And she had a long walk on her hands, back to Bangor where she'd left her car and her supplies.

But she needed to know where this idiot was taking Utana before she acted on any of those pressing matters. And so she set off on foot, calling on her superhuman-though not quite vampiric-levels of speed and endurance to pull it off.

She followed the SUV to a small no-tell motel on the outskirts of Bangor, grateful that they were at least heading in the same general direction as her car. The two men got out and opened a door a third of the way along the single-story motel. Room 6, she noted.

And then, as she stood there, an aroma turned her head around. There was a diner across the street. Her stomach growled like a pit bull at the smell of used French fry grease. God, she needed food. She didn't know what was going on in that motel room, but she would have a clear view of it from the diner. She could watch just as easily from a table along the front wall, with a big fat plate of empty calories in front of her, right?

Right.

So she straightened away from the telephone pole she'd been leaning against and walked across the cracked blacktop to the greasy spoon.

She laughed, because that really was the name of the place. The Greasy Spoon.

The bell above the door jangled when she walked in, and a woman said, "Just sit wherever you want, hon. Coffee?"

"Yeah. A gallon or so," Brigit answered without looking.

Then she slid into a booth along the front, her eyes still on the motel across the street.

A filled coffee mug clunked down in front of her. "Are you the wife, or the P.I. working for the wife?" the waitress asked.

Brigit darted a glance the other woman's way and got stuck. She'd expected the cliched red or blond beehive with pencils sticking out. Instead, she saw a careworn face, silver-gray curls and a smoker's wrinkled upper lip. "I'm sorry?"

"You're watching that mo-tel like it's gonna get up and run off if you turn your head. You got a husband having a fling behind your back?"

"Oh." She got it now. "No, no husband." She showed off a bare ring finger. "Just a friend I'm going to, uh...surprise."

"Uh-huh. You want food?"

"Something fast. What's ready?"

"French toast can be on your plate in ten minutes."

"Make it five and I'll double your tip."

"Deal."

Four minutes later Brigit was wolfing down a stack of syrup-drenched, piping hot, buttery French toast that was actually pretty damned good.

She slugged down the coffee, getting up and digging in her pockets for cash.

"The breakfast is five bucks honey," the woman called from behind the counter. "And here's a coffee to go, on me." She slid a capped, extra-large cup across the counter.

"Thanks. I'm grateful." Tossing two fives onto the counter, Brigit grabbed the cup and turned. She needed the caffeine boost. She was blocking her presence from Utana as thoroughly as she could, mentally maintaining an invisible and impenetrable shield around her aura. It was exhausting, and yet vital.

The men were still in the motel room. What the hell were they doing in there?

She left the diner, cup in hand, and glanced up and down the winding road. The motel was covered in white clapboard siding, with brick-red trim, shutters and doors. Each door bore a metallic, gold-toned number. A sidewalk ran along the front, and the semicircular strip of blacktopped parking had room for one vehicle per door.

A smaller, square detached structure bore a sign that said Office.

Behind it, there was a big empty rolling field full of brambles, briars and weeds. And that, she supposed, was where she was going to have to go. Sighing in resignation, she headed up the road until she rounded a bend and was out of sight. Then she jumped the ditch and jogged far enough into the giant weed patch to be invisible, and from there she began making her way back toward the motel.

She emerged from the weeds directly behind it and began counting the windows, trying to match them up with the doors in the front. When she got to the one she thought went with Room 6, she crept closer.

The window was a little too high for her, but she located a loose cinder block beneath the oblong fuel tank in the back, dragged it closer and stood on it. She took a quick peek inside, then ducked down, blinking in shock.

Her eyes had registered the following: Big. Male. Naked. Wet. And effin' ripped. The makeshift toga had been hiding a chest that made her heart beat faster and a backside that made her knees go weak. Damn.

Drawing a breath, she closed her eyes slowly, then opened them again and peered through the slightly fogged glass one more time.

Utana was standing beside a shower stall, staring at it as if in wonder. He was buck naked, and she couldn't take her eyes off him. She had a three-quarter view, and it was the shoulders that got her first. Rippling, bulging, beautiful. Every muscle was visible beneath his smooth, tanned, hairless skin. Then his chest, broad and thick, and then the abs... And as he turned a little more, the blackened section of skin where her blast had hit home. As she focused there, she felt the pain he was still in. He was trying to overcome it, trying to function in spite of it, and, for the most part, he was succeeding in keeping it buried.

He was one powerful man.

Her gaze slid downward-down to his pelvic bones and...

Oh, for the love of...well, it figured he would be hung like a stallion, didn't it?

She blinked and forced herself to look elsewhere. But it was not safe. His hard butt had just enough curve and dimpled inward at the sides. His thighs were like tree trunks. His calves like banded steel.

God, all right already. She had work to do here.

She had to kill him. She had to destroy that beautiful work of art just beyond the glass. She could probably do it right then. He was so busy staring at the shower, as if he were completely awestruck by the device he'd just made use of. His hair was still wet. He'd shaved at some point. That was probably what had been taking so long. She didn't imagine his newfound pal had had an easy time showing him how.

Utana dragged a towel from the rack and wiped himself down with it, taking great care on his injured belly.

And then he turned to the sink and twisted the faucets as if for the first time, like a child. As the water ran, he cupped his hands beneath it, and a smile split his face wide. He cranked the faucets off, then back on, then off again.

A moment later he was doing the same with the light switch. On, off, on, off.

Brigit lifted her hand, palm up, fingers loosely resting against her thumb.

His white teeth were perfect, the joy on his face exquisite, despite his pain. He flicked the light a few more times, then gazed at the toilet. Bending, he picked up the lid and stared inside. His smile faded. A frown drew his glorious black brows together as he studied it, tipping his head this way and that. He lifted the tank lid, peeking inside, and his frown grew deeper. Replacing the tank lid, he hit the handle, and with a whoosh the toilet flushed. He jumped back, eyes going wide, and then that smile reappeared. Closing his eyes, he placed both hands on the tank and closed his eyes as if listening, or feeling for something.

Of course, she reminded herself. He could understand how something worked by laying his hands on it, absorbing the information by touch. That was what he was doing now.

Eventually he took his hands away. "Ahh, that is what you do," he said, his voice loud enough for her to hear beyond the glass. "I guessed well."

Brigit drew a deep breath and began calling up power from the depths of her. She waited to feel it rising up through her feet, heating her legs, filtering into her spine like magma rising through a volcanic chamber. But it didn't.

Utana was done with the toilet now. He was picking up articles of clothing that had, apparently, been provided to him by the local Samaritan. He held up the trousers and looked at them doubtfully.

Turning, he yanked open the bathroom door and strode, naked, back into the room, apparently complaining about the pants.

Out of sight. Out of reach. She'd had the chance to save her people, and she had let it slip away. Again. What the hell was wrong with her?

Oh, but that smile...those eyes...told her more clearly than anything what was wrong with her. She'd stopped seeing him as a killing machine. She'd seen him, just now, as a man. A man who could feel joy in the wonder of hot and cold running water, and electric lights. Like an innocent child, rather than a ruthless killer. A man whose death would mean his return to a state that was a lot like being buried alive.

Exactly like being buried alive.

No one deserved that, did they? Surely there had to be another way.

Slowly she withdrew from the window. She was going to have to follow them still farther, because she was certain now that this motel was not their final destination. If only she had her car.

"My king, you are about to experience something you've never even imagined."

Utana was feeling much better since his bathing, though still hurting immensely from Brigit's blast. He ignored the pain-something a warrior and king must become adept at doing. It was part, he thought, of being alive, being in a body again. And after being trapped without one for so long, he appreciated even the pain. He felt good, too, about his cleanly shaven face and the minty taste the "teeth-brushing" had left in his mouth, despite still being exhausted, in pain and uncomfortable in the modern clothing he'd reluctantly agreed to wear. The pants, in particular, felt confining and strange.

He looked across the car at his newfound vizier, doubt in his eyes. "You know not the wonder of my...imagines."

"True enough." Nashmun was driving, but he pointed up at the sky with one hand. "Have you ever imagined that?"

Scooting lower in the leather seat of the car, Utana tipped his head to stare skyward as the odd-looking bird passed overhead, and he nodded. "Yes, the large birds who soar, but whose wings do not move. I have seen and wondered on these."

"They're not birds, my friend. They are airplanes. Very much like the car in which you are riding now. They are machines, made by man, to take us from place to place. But instead of traveling on the ground, as we do in the car, the airplanes fly through the air."

Utana shot him a look, then craned his neck to see the bird again. "It is not possible."

"Of course it is. We're going to ride in one very soon, to take us to your new home."

"We are...to fly?"

"Yes. You'll love it."

Shaking his head as the airplane-bird moved out of sight, vanishing into the clouds, Utana said, "It is a strange world."

"I'm sure it is. Your English is coming along beautifully, however."

With a grunt and a nod at the device on the seat beside him, Utana nodded. "The voice that speaks into my ears is...help."

"It's an iPod. And the word you want is helpful."

"Helpful. Yes." He studied the man, his stomach fluttering with excitement over what was to come, and yet his mind was occupied with matters far more important. And one beautiful woman whose kiss still lingered on his lips. "Where do we fly?"

"There's a house awaiting you-almost a palace, really. It's where certain foreign royals stay when they visit my nation's leader. And I've procured it for our use for...well, for as long as we're likely to need it."

A palace. It was certainly time, Utana thought. He had been treated with far less respect than his station demanded by the people of this land so far. And yet that, too, wasn't his highest priority. "In...the direction of north?"

"South, actually."

Utana shook his head firmly. "I must go north. My mission lies in the north."

Nashmun sent him a steady look. His eyes appeared honest. "I want to help you in your mission, my king. But you need a home base. A place from which to plan and launch your attack. You need to heal from that wound you have," he said, with a nod at Utana's midsection. "And to regain your strength, and learn more about the way this world works and how to make your way in it."

"They will escape me. I will know not how to find them again."

"You can feel them. Sense them. Can't you?" Nashmun shrugged, not awaiting a reply. "Besides, I doubt it will be necessary. They'll be sending someone after you before long, if they haven't already."

Utana lifted his brows. "Someone?"

"An assassin. To kill you, Utana. They know you have no choice but to wipe them out. And they will try to murder you before you get the chance." Nashmun tightened his grip on the wheel that let him steer the car. "That's what kind of scum we're dealing with here. They're not human. They don't have human emotions, or even common decency. They would do this, take the life of the man who created them-a man who should be as a god to them, a man they should fall on their knees and worship-they would take the life of their own king, their own father, in order to protect their own putrid existence."

Utana lowered his head. Indeed, the man was correct. His people had already sent an "assassin" to try to kill him. A fiery, powerful, sexy assassin he would rather ravage than battle.

And yet, he couldn't really blame the vahmpeers for doing so. He had, after all, destroyed a great many of their kind.

"It will be better to let them run awhile," Nashmun was saying. "Let them find a haven they think is secure. They'll start to think they've escaped you, start to relax their defenses a bit. Meanwhile, we will be gathering information. We'll know everything about where they are and how many of them remain. When we move in, we'll take them by surprise."

"Not we, Nashmun. I. I will be the one to send them to their deaths."

Nashmun shrugged. "As you wish, my king. But either way, it will be easy. Fast. One attack, and it will be done. And then you can live out your days in peace, knowing that when you die, the gods will allow you entry into the Land of the Dead, where you will find rest at long last."

"I will not live long past my children," he said. "I have no wish to do so."

Utana lowered his head, his heart bleeding in his chest at the thought of finishing the task he had already begun. Oddly, his first attack on the vahmpeers had not hurt him the way only thinking of the next one did. It had not hurt him at all. His mind had not been fully restored then, he thought. He had lashed out like a long-caged and oft-tormented lion, whose door has been left open. It had felt like release.

Now it felt like a crime. Even though he knew it was the will of the gods, it felt wrong in his soul. And he wished with all he was that there was some other way. Even though he knew there was not.

"You're injured and weak, my king. In only a few hours you will be home. I promise, you'll be glad you let me help you."

Utana nodded, then let his head rest against the back of the seat. He was injured. Brigit's white-hot power had delivered a powerful blow. He'd used every bit of energy he could raise to keep her from killing him. And there was simply nothing left.

"That's it, my king. You relax. Try to get some sleep. It's all going to be better in no time. You'll have food, servants, a physician to examine your wounds. You'll be treated the way a man of your stature deserves. And you'll be far more equal to your task when you recover and regain your strength. I promise."