and yet there. She felt as if she were crumbling within. As if she were in a nightmare, and it was real, and there was no waking, and no escaping.

“Then Ann is... dead?” she whispered. “Dead, gone ... lost?”

“No, not necessarily,” Brent said.

“We have to see that they don’t get to her again,” Rick Beaudreaux said. He looked at Brent

“Go on,” Brent told him, watching Tara. “She’s seen so much, suspected so much ... and still she doesn’t want to believe anything I say.”

Tara answered that by going to the balcony doors and closing them. She arranged the garlic around them again. She went to Ann’s bedside, fighting tears, assuring herself that her cousin was breathing, that her heart continued to beat

“She’s ill, isn’t she?” Tara asked.

“If she doesn’t come to soon, she will need a hospital, a transfusion,” Brent said. “And we have to keep her safe and—here. And away from the force that has taken her, and certainly has some control over her now.”

“There are different ways that vampires kill,” Rick said. “They feast—and usually destroy the remains.”

“Decapitate their victims?” Tara said.

“Yes,” Brent said.

“What about the old stake in the heart?” Tara demanded harshly.

“Good, but decapitation is better. It’s the only way to be certain.”

“I don’t understand this. How did you get here?” she asked Rick.

“Ann let me in.”

“Ann has been sleeping.”

“She let me in—as she slept.”

“I don’t understand—”

“Obviously, Rick is a vampire,” Brent said.

Tara felt again as if black clouds were surrounding her, as if the world had become surreal, it was all a dream again, but she couldn’t wake.

“Then we need to destroy him, don’t we?” she asked harshly.

“Real world 101,” Brent said impatiently. “There are forces out there, have always been, will always be.

There are those who are fighting for a realm of normalcy, for life for all, for peace if you will, for all good things. And there are forces out there where power is sought by some, where needs and selfish gains outweigh all else. Once, and actually still, always, in some place, for some reason, battles are waged.

Long ago, tribes fought for space. In the Dark Ages, tribes were constantly shifting and moving. Death and destruction were the general way of life. And later, when the civilized world encroached, warfare generally ruled. Battles have always existed for land, and for power. And in the midst of that kind of death and destruction, more death and destruction was not much noted. Even into the past century, men went to war around the globe. And into this new century, men still fight their battles in their different ways, with death and destruction still the result. So in all this time, it has been easy for many to survive on the spoils of war. But if you will, it isn’t exactly true that a vampire is a shell of evil, a soulless entity.

Vampirism is like a disease, an ancient disease. One that cannot be cured, but can be controlled. And for some, the true soul remains, and a hunger for something different—eternity, if you will—along with the rest of humanity, a belief in a greater being, something beyond ... respect for life. Over the centuries, things change.

And now ... those who come over, who do ‘die,’ who are not slain but ‘turned,’ if you will, can be as they were in this life. Those who were prone to bloodshed hunger for greater bloodshed—and power.

Everyone ‘turned’ faces the hunger. Just as we are born with free will to seek peace or vengeance, so is the change.“

Tara stared at him blankly.

“I was a cop,” Rick said ruefully.

“A cop?”

“A cop in New Orleans.”

“When?” Tara demanded.

Rick shrugged. “Not so long ago,” he said softly.

“You weren’t brought forth from some musty tomb?”

He shook his head. “I’m a very young vampire,” he explained. “Unlike Lucian.” Tara’s eyes shifted to Brent. “So your friend Lucian ... is an old vampire?”

“Very old, yes.”

“When was he brought from his tomb?”

Brent smiled. “Never.”

“I see. He was born a vampire.”

“No, but he was turned when the world was in a constant state of raids and warfare, and he has been as he has been ... since.”

“And his wife, Jade?” Tara asked.

“No,” Rick said softy.

“But—”

“She was never ‘turned,’ ” Rick explained, as if that should make sense.

“This can’t be real!” Tara said, in a whisper of exhalation.

“But it is real, Tara,” Brent said, and he waved a hand impatiently in the air. “Just look at history, at the things that have gone on, at the legends that have been around forever.”

“So you are a vampire as well?” she demanded, staring at him. “You lied to me, you said you weren’t, but you’re among them, and you are one of them!”

He stared at her a long moment. “I’m not a vampire,” he said. “I’m—” She lifted a hand. “Don’t! Don’t tell me how you’re part of my grandfather’s great... Alliance. I don’t think that ... that ... oh, God! This is so ... insane! This woman, this one woman, came out of a tomb.

Because she wasn’t destroyed completely, the king loved her, so he didn’t take off her head. And now she’s been dug up ... and she’s running around the countryside, and the police don’t really know what they’re up against— except Rick here, who used to be a cop in New Orleans—so some other vampires are here to stop her?”

“You don’t understand,” Brent said. “She isn’t alone. She was extremely powerful in her last life, because she had the king. She had him in her power, but she didn’t kill him, because she needed him for the life she was living. But your grandfather’s Alliance was alive and well back then, and the king was forced at last to do something with her. And the Alliance saw to it that at the least, she was contained, with the proper materials, lead, brass, silver, copper, and gold. And she was held fast with these materials formed into the cross on the coffin, and sealed with the molten metals. But she was brought back on purpose, by someone who decided that they must have her. There is another force at work, one that is old and very powerful, and what we haven’t managed to discover is exactly who this is, and where they have created their lair.”

They were crazy. It was all crazy. The thought struck Tara again, along with a need to be away from them for a moment, to be alone.

She turned and walked blindly into the hallway and then headed for her room.

She closed her door.

It opened immediately.

The two men had followed her. “Tara, you can’t run away from any of this,” Brent said. “You have to listen to me, I’m trying very hard to explain, completely, why you have to do everything I say, and exactly who I am, and why—”

He suddenly broke off, staring across the room.

Tara looked as well, and could see nothing, just her room, bed, chairs, desk, balcony doors—closed, garlic around them—her suitcases in the corner, her easel, set up where she had been sketching.

She looked at Rick, who appeared as puzzled as she was herself.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The drawing,” Brent said harshly.

She walked over to the easel. “What? The shadows on the building? The wolf? The... sketch of the man?”

“The man,” he grated out.

“That’s just Inspector Trusseau, the forensic specialist in from Paris.”

“Tara!” She was startled when her name was called from the doorway by a soft, feminine voice.

Ann’s.

She was amazed to see that her cousin was up; she was a classic, fabled beauty, pale and gaunt, clad in a flowing nightgown, holding on to the door frame.

“Ann!” She started to hurry to her cousin, afraid that she would fall, she appeared so ashen and fragile.

Ann waved her away.

“That isn’t Inspector Trusseau,” Ann said impatiently. “Tara, don’t you ever pay attention? Don’t you remember? I pointed him out to you at the cafe! That’s Willem.”

“Willem?” Tara said.

“Yes, that’s Willem.”

“No,” Brent said, and she had never heard his voice harsher, or seen him so tense, for he stood there, his fists knotted at his side, his eyes transfixed upon the paper. “It isn’t Trusseau, and it isn’t Willem. It’s Andre-son,” he said, and the word spit from his lips as if the man were the greatest abomination ever to walk the earth. Evil incarnate.

He didn’t explain further. He suddenly stiffened as if a bolt of lightning had traveled through him, let out an expletive, and turned, heading for the door.

Tara raced after him, catching his arm. “Brent, wait! What are you talking about?” He shook her off as if she were an annoying raindrop, but his eyes fell upon hers. “I can’t wait, I’ll explain later. Your grandfather ... something is happening. Now!” CHAPTER 17

Sick with worry, hurriedly Lucian entered the apartment.

Instinct informed him that whatever had happened, whatever evil had been there, was gone.

“Jade?” He called her name, silent prayers filling his heart and mind and he looked around.

He found her, slumped on the ground, by the balcony doors. The open balcony doors. He stooped down, hands shaking as he reached out to shift his wife’s hair from her face, to find her throat, feel for a pulse.

She groaned softly as he did so, rolling onto her shoulder and her back, looking up into his eyes, blinking, half rising.

“Oh, God, Lucian! I failed.”

“Sh, sh!” he said, drawing her carefully into his arms, eyes searching over her for any sign of injury.