Serpent's Kiss

FOUR

Rune held still as he savored the feel of Carling’s pliant body in his arms, her cool cheek pressed against his.

She tingled along all of his senses. The weight of her curved body rested in his arms, and her skin felt unbelievably soft against his own weather-beaten cheek. The spiced fragrance she wore plucked at his imagination with images of distant places, and underneath that, she carried the delicious, sexy scent of an aroused woman. The clever dangerous volatility of her mind roused him to razor-sharp alertness, and the smoky hint of her Power brushed along his like a sleek black cat winding around his ankles. It made his claws itch to come out. He wanted to take the delicate lobe of her ear between his teeth and suckle at it. He wanted to claw at the walls.

He knew he had to curb this fascination he had developed for her. In fact, as soon as he had an opening in his hectic schedule, he planned to get right on that. There were so many reasons for him to do so it made him tired just to think of listing them all. Carling’s little gesture between light and shadow might have pissed him off, but that symbolism also held all the weight of the complex differences between them in terms of race, lifestyle and political allegiance.

He also knew he had not been wrong. He could still feel the sensuous length of her arms as they had wound around his neck earlier. She had kissed him back and she had liked it too much. That was the reason for the shock he had seen in her eyes, and it had everything to do with why she had slapped him.

And she was dying. Everything inside him shouted in outraged denial against it. It didn’t seem possible. All the evidence pointed to her being in perfect health. Her energy was too vibrant, too vital.

Not only that, she had been a fact of his existence for far too long. At first she had been a vague rumor he had heard about a desert tribal queen in North Sahara. Then she had become a reputation, as she rose in rank within the Vampyre communities of the ancient Mediterranean. During these last few centuries in North America, as various Powers in the Elder Races carved out their political niches and geographic boundaries, she had become a reality in power-brokering inter-demesne relations.

He sensed her intention as she began to move. He let her go before she had a chance to think he held her for even a moment too long.

His mind sharpened into crystalline lines of logic as he turned to the issue at hand. He said, “I would like to know what steps you’ve taken and what research you’ve done. There’s no point in going over ground you’ve already covered.”

“Of course,” Carling said. She frowned as she considered him. Then she apparently came to some decision. She told him, “Come with me.”

He fell into step beside her. She led him a different way through the house. Rhoswen had disappeared with the dog, perhaps to rest. While Vampyres could and often did remain awake throughout the day, sometimes for days at a time, it was typically as much a strain on them as staying up all night was for most humans.

Carling led him out the back through a bright sun-drenched vegetable garden, where overripe tomatoes, green peppers and cucumbers spilled to the ground. She took him down a short path to a stone cottage nestled in a copse of eucalyptus and palm trees. He could feel the Power in the building as they drew close. It was saturated with a sense of her feminine presence.

She stopped at the arched wooden door, took hold of the door handle, and spoke a word. There was the small sound of a metallic click. She pushed the door open.

She said, “I have another office in my town house in the city, but I prefer to work on magic or Power-related issues here, where I can better control the consequences of any unforeseen events and there aren’t so many other people around.” She gestured in invitation.

He stepped inside and looked around with acute interest. The cottage was bigger than he had first thought. It looked clean and airy with polished oak floors. The main room and short hallway were painted a mellow sage green, with cream trim. Two armchairs were pulled in front of a fireplace, and there was also a wooden table and benches, clean bare countertops, a wood stove, a sink and cabinets.

Carling strode down a short hallway, and he followed her past a small modern-looking blue-tiled bathroom and two other rooms, one painted a warm orange and the other a rich gold. Both rooms held tall wooden bookshelves that were filled with books. Rune caught a glimpse of one shelf that was comprised of cubbyholes that looked to be filled with scrolls of papyrus. He was quite sure he was looking at one of the rarest collections of magic lore in the world, amassed, no doubt, over many centuries of patient research and effort.

Carling stepped into a third room where a mahogany desk and leather chair were placed strategically near French-style doors. The room’s neutral tones brought the eye immediately to the small private walled courtyard, where a brilliant profusion of flowering plants burgeoned just on the other side of the doors. The rest of the room was filled with file cabinets and what appeared to be a large old wooden wardrobe carved with symbols that seemed to shimmer. The front doors had a metal lock that was tarnished with age.

When he looked at the carved wardrobe, something crept along the edges of his mind. It was a dark oily perversion of a feeling. His lip lifted in an instinctive snarl.

Carling slammed her fist into the wood as she walked past and said, “Shut up.”

The whispering stopped abruptly.

Well, now that was just too much to pass up without comment. He didn’t even try. He said, “What’s in the wardrobe?”

She glanced at him. “Books that don’t behave.”

Misbehaving books? Not bothering to hide his skepticism, he said, “Uh-huh.”

She gave him a narrow-eyed look and went back to the wardrobe to unlock it with another Power-filled word. Then she opened the doors wide, stepped to one side and gestured with a snappy flip of her fingers. “See for yourself.”

The interior was filled with shelves, and what certainly did appear to be books. Rune stepped closer, angling his head in order to read the spines. There weren’t any titles printed on the spines. These books were hand-stitched and very old.

That one—was that . . . ? The whispering started again, very low, at the edge of his consciousness. He reached out and Carling grabbed him by the wrist. After the first hard squeeze, she pushed him away gently.

“These should only be handled with gloves,” she said. “Their magic is too dark and invasive.”

“You make them sound infectious,” he said. He glanced at her. “That one is not made of leather.”

“Well,” she said, “it is a certain kind of leather.”

His eyebrows plummeted in a fierce frown and his nostrils pinched in distaste. “Your magic doesn’t feel black like this.”

“That’s because it isn’t.” She shut and locked the doors again. “I’ve made my fair share of mistakes over the centuries, but I’m glad to say turning to Powers that black hasn’t been one of them. They demand too high a level of sacrifice. They eat everything you give them and then they take your soul as well.”

“Then why do you keep these?”

The look Carling gave him at that had turned quizzical. She walked to her desk. “Do you not study the tools your enemies use?”

He folded his arms across his chest and frowned. “Yes, but generally those tools are not . . . infectious.”

“Where would treatment methods for the Ebola virus be if it were not studied? This is no different and, believe me, I take precautions. Thankfully the need to consult those resources is rare, which is why they sometimes get restless. Things that are made with black magic are hungry and they are never satisfied.”

“You talk about them as though they’re sentient.” He glared at the cabinet, the hackles raised at the back of his neck.

“I think they are, at least semi-sentient. Something lingers of their creators, along with something of the souls of the victims that were sacrificed in their creation.” She sat at the desk and opened the lowest drawer, which was unlocked. He could see it contained files labeled in a neat hand. She pulled out a few notebooks and closed the drawer. “This is the distillation of the last few centuries of work I’ve done on trying to find a way to halt the progression of Vampyrism.”

He regarded her with a keen gaze. “And halting the progression of the disease is more preferable than finding a cure, because a cure would make you human again?”

“Theoretically. Unfortunately too much of this is still theoretical, because there really is no known cure. And there are serious issues and questions should a ‘cure’ ever be found.” She handed the notebooks to him.

He opened the top notebook to look at the first page. It was written in the same neat hand that had created the file labels. “I would want to know how a cure would be tested,” he remarked. “And where, and on whom.”

She shrugged. “Perhaps a big medical facility with a focus on research might take it on, like Johns Hopkins University. There might be enough Vampyres who are unhappy enough that they would be willing to take some risks, but there has been no code of ethics developed for clinical trials because there’s nothing that has been successfully developed enough to test.”

“What are the other issues that need considering?” he asked.

She regarded him for a moment, as if collecting her thoughts. Then she said, “What are the consequences of a potential cure? Could a ‘cured’ Vampyre be turned again, and if so, what would be the results? Or would it be irreversible for a Vampyre, like Vampyrism is now for humans? Would a Vampyre simply revert back to being human? What would be the state of their health when they reverted? Would they become as they were before? Some Vampyres were terminally ill from other diseases before they were turned. Or would there be other complications such as, for example, advanced or accelerated aging, or a compromised immune system? And would those complications increase in severity according to the age of the Vampyre involved?”

He shook his head. “In those scenarios, the cure would quite literally kill you.”

“Yes.” Carling gathered her long dark hair together and twisted it into a long rope that she wound into a knot. She pinned the knot into place with two pencils from the desk, her movements fast and economical.

Rune’s gaze lingered on the heavy sable-colored twist of hair lying on Carling’s elegant neck. He wanted to see her pin her hair up again, and he fought a sudden puerile urge to pluck out the pencils. Her hair would spill down that hourglass back, the silken ends splashing like midnight water against the womanly swell of her trim, shapely ass. She would give him that quick annoyed look of hers, or maybe she would be angrier. Maybe she would try to slap him again, and he would catch her wrist and yank her to him . . .

Arousal sank sharpened claws into him and dug in deep. His body hardened and he turned away to hide it.

Walking over to the French doors, he opened the top notebook and flipped through it then took a quick look at the others. There were perhaps two hundred and fifty pages, all told, which was concise, given the amount of time and effort she had put into the research. She had called it a “distillation,” which would have meant at some point she had gone through it all and stripped out everything extraneous.

He went back to the first notebook and read a few lines. He tapped a finger on the page and murmured, “This is not light reading.”

“I could summarize verbally for you,” said Carling. “But I don’t recommend it.”

He didn’t want to listen to any verbal summary before he’d had a chance to look at the details of her research and come to his own conclusions, but he was curious about her reasoning, so he asked, “Why not?”

She gave him a bitter smile. “I no longer trust my mind and neither should you.”

The pain in her dark eyes was terrible. He noted the stiff way she held herself and knew better than to offer a physical gesture of comfort. He took a deep breath and let it out slow and easy. “Fair enough,” he said after a moment. “Do you want me to read it here?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. Her gaze flickered and fell away. She looked out the window at the small courtyard. “We have the island to ourselves. You may read wherever you are comfortable.”

“All right.” He willed her to let her rigid spine relax, for the pain to ease away. More to distract her than from any real sense of hunger, he said, “Got any more of that chicken you cook for the dog?”

Rune was just too . . . something.

In the kitchen, Carling shoved several large pieces of cooking flesh around in the skillet and glared at them. For the second time that day, the warm scent and sizzling sounds of browning chicken filled the air.

He was too what? What were the words that should go next?

She glanced over her shoulder at him. Just by sitting at the massive country-style table in the industrial-sized kitchen, he made the room and furniture look almost normal. With those long legs and wide shoulders, that lean torso and his typical quick strong, confident stride, he dominated every room he entered.

He was definitely too large. Check.

His head was bent over the first notebook. He rested his forehead on the heel of one hand as he read. His shoulder-long hair had dried from his morning swim. The careless tousled length made her want to get her hairbrush and smooth the tangles out. His tanned, chiseled features were intent. The sharp high blades of his cheekbones were balanced by the strong straight nose, a strong lean chin that had something of a stubborn bent to it, and that elegant cut mouth of his that was so wise in sensuality.

Well, he was obviously too handsome. He was the rock star of the Wyr, famed throughout not only the Elder Races but also the human society for his good looks, so all right, goddammit, check.

Fine lines framed the corners of his eyes and that sinful mouth. She thought of how those lips felt as they hardened over hers, how he had speared into her with the hot thrust of his tongue. She let her eyes drift shut as arousal pierced her body with an intensity that brought along with it a new wave of shock. Just the memory of that one kiss shook her to her foundations.

Yes okay, he was far too sexy and charismatic for his or anybody else’s own good, so check. Carling had always found it ludicrous, even infuriating, how so many otherwise sensible and intelligent-seeming females apparently lost their minds whenever they came near him, and no matter how he affected her, she was by gods not ever going to become one of the vacuous hordes. She would jump off the nearest cliff first.

She sighed. Actually that would be a pretty meaningless gesture. Even though she was now at the end stages of the disease, it would still take more than just a simple dive off a cliff to kill her.

The cooking chicken snapped and popped, and a splatter of grease hit her cheek. The sting was negligible compared to the searing agony of the sun, but it was enough to catch her attention. Her eyes flew open. The small burn had already healed by the time she wiped the spot of oil away with her thumb. She poked at the chicken with the . . . the implement—spatula, damn it!—and flipped the pieces so the other side could brown.

Back to Rune.

He was too quiet. He moved with a cat’s sinuous predatory grace. Added to that, he was fast enough to make her heart freeze if it hadn’t already stopped beating. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and sucked on it as she thought.

Could she take him in an outright fight? She was faster and stronger than most. She could take her progeny Julian, the official King of the Nightkind, and that was a claim not many creatures could make. She had turned Julian during the height of the Roman Empire, and he was quite an old, Powerful Vampyre in his own right. But she didn’t think she could take Rune without a serious struggle and investing in a considerable expenditure of magic.

She sucked harder on her lower lip. He was here as an ally with the intention of helping her. There was no reason whatsoever to think things would come to that. But just in case, she should do a little research on what might be the right spells to use in battling a gryphon. It never hurt to be prepared, and it never hurt to fight dirty if the situation called for it. The best way to take any of the really ancient, Powerful creatures was through the element of surprise.

There was the quiet sound of a page turning, the only sound in the kitchen aside from the cooking meat, and the infinitesimal sound of Rune’s calm unhurried breathing. The page had turned ten times since he had started, and she knew very well what kind of dense material he was reading.

She had learned the laws of logic from Aristotle himself. She had studied each scientist who had furthered the development of the scientific method. Those notebooks Rune read held some of her finest thinking. They contained historical fact, rare accounts of oral history and snippets of information from everything she could possibly think of to get her hands on that might fuel her research.

She had acquired fabulous wealth over the course of her life. She owned various properties scattered throughout the world in places such as New York, London, the French Riviera, Morocco and Egypt’s Alexandria. She owned irreplaceable historical artifacts, and diamonds and sapphires the size of duck’s eggs, but her finest treasure was currently spread out on the table in front of him.

A page turned. Now he was on page eleven and he had not yet asked a single question for clarification. So he was far too clever as well. A clever male was a dangerous one, and all that much harder to surprise. She would do well to remember it.

She sliced into the largest piece of chicken and checked the middle. The meat was white all the way through and crispy dark on the outside. He was the type of creature who would enjoy that. She piled all the pieces onto a plate and removed the skillet from the stove.

She glanced over her shoulder. Rune had sat back in his chair. He lounged with his long legs stretched out, watching her with his full attention. Which was, one-on-one, in the quiet solitude of the sunlit kitchen, quite a considerable force of nature. He drew on her like a magnet. She picked up the plate of steaming meat. She looked at it and back at him, and she spoke a word and the meat cooled. Then she walked over to set the plate in front of him.

She had a bizarre experience as she approached him. It started first with this thought: what an exotic thing it was to place a cooked meal in front of a waiting hungry male. No doubt it was something millions of women did daily, but throughout the several thousand years of her existence, she had never before been one of them.

Rune gave her a slow smile, his gaze very male and lit with appreciation, and it stirred something inside. What was that? Distracted, she poked at herself, like poking at a sore tooth. That was another strange thing for her to be feeling, what was it?

Pleasure.

He smiled at her as she placed the meal in front of him, and she felt pleasure.

The muscles in the pit of her stomach tightened, like a snake coiling to strike. She opened her mouth, to say what, she didn’t know. Something scathing, a suitable put-down, something by gods not vacuous, or she would have to throw herself over the nearest cliff just on principle alone—

Rune’s smile had deepened and it carried a hint of puzzlement. “What did you do just now?” he asked. “It was a spell of some sort. I could feel it but I didn’t understand it.”

Confused, the snake in the pit of her stomach fumbled and lost the ability to strike. She blinked and glanced at the stove. What had she done? She said, “I cooled the meat.”

Rune’s eyes danced and his lean tanned features lit with laughter. “You . . . cooled the meat for me?”

“Rasputin cannot eat the chicken when it is too hot,” she said, frowning at him. “It seemed logical that you would not be able to either.”

“Of course. How remarkably—thoughtful of you.” He put a hand over his mouth to cover an explosive cough. “You named the ankle-biter Rasputin?”

The sense of his amusement was intoxicating, like champagne must be for humans. She regretted never having had the opportunity to drink champagne when she was human. She had been a Vampyre for a very long time before she had first heard of the drink.

She raised an eyebrow. “Your attempt to hide your amusement is futile. And Rasputin seemed an appropriate name, since he is apparently so hard to kill.”

She had met the original Grigori Rasputin once, as she had traveled through Russia to consult with a certain hermitic and irascible witch. She had found Rasputin to be an odd, intense man. He had been undeniably human and very likely insane, but anyone who could survive reputedly being stabbed, poisoned, shot multiple times, mutilated, and badly beaten before finally drowning, deserved a certain amount of respect.

“And,” murmured Rune, “the ankle-biter’s more than a bit rabid.”

Now both her eyebrows rose. “I do not find him so.”

“Of course not,” Rune told her, his tone cheerful. “You rescued him, you’re female and you cook him chicken. That makes him yours, heart and soul.”

Her mouth tightened. “He’s a ridiculous creature.”

“He’s a dog,” he said, his wide shoulders lifting in a shrug. “That’s what they do.”

She crossed her arms under her breasts. Only later did she recognize it for a defensive gesture. “I did not ask for his devotion.”

Rune’s gaze darkened into an expression she didn’t understand, so she had no words for it. He said gently, “You know, there isn’t anything wrong with simply being kind for kindness’s sake, or other creatures responding to it.”

This conversation had not only turned uncomfortable, it was unnecessary. She looked away from his penetrating gaze. “Do you require anything else that will help you read?” she asked, her tone frosted with ice.

“No,” he replied. His tone was as easy and relaxed as the rest of him. “Not a thing. Thank you for the chicken.”

“Fine.” She turned to go but found herself unable to step across the doorway.

Being kind for kindness’s sake.

Now the tightening was in her chest. She pressed a hand to her breastbone, bewildered. She no longer knew her own body. It was betraying her in a thousand inexplicable ways whenever she was around this male.

She forced herself to say, “Thank you for staying and trying to help me.”

Twenty feet away, he took a breath. He replied quietly, “You’re more than welcome, Carling. It’s my pleasure to do what I can for you.”

Those words. He gave them to her so easily, like a gift. They were far more gracious than she deserved. She fled before her body could betray her in some other way.

As soon as Carling’s tantalizing and distracting presence left the kitchen, Rune was able to hit his stride with the text.

He also ate every scrap of the cold meat she had cooked for him, and good gods, it was pretty awful. Somehow she had managed to wreck the simple task of browning chicken in a skillet. The outside was charred black, and the inside oozed juice that was still pink. If he had been human, he would have been concerned about salmonella poisoning. As it was, Rune wasn’t a picky eater and had eaten some terrible meals in his time. His tastes had changed when he had first learned to shapeshift and socialize with other species, but he was actually not averse to eating raw meat when necessary, and he had endured any number of campsite disasters.

He started to chuckle again when he thought of her cooling the meat for him the way she did for the dog. Then he remembered how she had held herself when he had spoken of kindness, averting her face and eyes, and his laughter faded.

Both Wyr and Vampyre societies could be brutal ones. Sometimes conflict could only be settled violently. All of the sentinels were enforcers of Wyr law, but as Dragos’s First, Rune was the ultimate enforcer. If Dragos was ever actually not in a position to do so, it was Rune’s responsibility to hunt and take down even the other sentinels if they ever went renegade. The other sentinels were his friends, partners and comrades in arms. He was glad it had never come to that, but he never forgot the responsibility of his position.

For all of that, Rune was really an easygoing male most of the time, and quick to both laughter and affection. He was that rarest of creatures, a man’s man who had no problem admitting he enjoyed chick flicks and women’s fashion. They brought out things in women he adored, from the spiraling of emotions to mysterious heights and depths, to the flowering of wonder-filled feminine pleasure as a woman tried on new outfits and she discovered for the first time in the mirror that she was, in actual fact, beautiful.

From what he had seen, Carling was not quick to either laughter or affection. She did not inspire thoughts of comfort or cuddles. Had she once possessed those qualities, or had her experience of life really been that harsh and unyielding? He frowned. The scars covering her body told their own tale.

When he tried to imagine her giggling with a girlfriend, it bent his head. Rhoswen clearly worshipped her, and it was obvious Duncan felt something for her too, but as far as he could tell, those relationships were not on any kind of in-depth, equal footing. He suspected most women felt threatened by her, as well they should. Life had fashioned Carling into a sleek, lethal weapon, the double-edged kind that would cut off the hand of anyone who dared to wield it if they should try to grasp hold unwisely.

Taking that kind of weapon would take a hard, firm hand, from one who knew how and when to hold on with a strong grip, and when to let go and let the weapon free to cut where it would. No one mastered such a weapon. If one were lucky, one might gain respect, trust, alliance, an agreement to work together.

Carling was so shielded, and she had built up her personal arsenal over such a long period of time, he doubted if anything would change her at this late date. In that realization, at last he found the conceptual frame he needed in order to curb his fascination for her. There was simply nowhere for his fascination to go, and nothing for it to latch on to in any long-term way. She was brilliant, gorgeous, deadly and even quirky, but she would not allow someone to get too close, not even a dog.

Fair enough. Sometimes pinnacles were so narrow and elevated, there was only room for one at the top. If she managed to live for so long with such isolation, she must like her own company. As far as he was concerned, he was happy to help her out if he could, and he would be happy to move on when it was over. And it would be over somehow. They would either find a way for her to survive, or they wouldn’t. As Duncan pointed out, people die all the time. Sometimes old, long-lived creatures died too.

Those thoughts produced a clench in his gut, but he ignored it. One way or another, this stop on the island was just an odd blip in his road, and he would do well to keep that thought firmly at the forefront of his mind. His real life waited for him back in New York, where he had good friends and any number of people who loved him.

He read until late afternoon, when he went on the hunt for something to drink. There were two chains at the kitchen well. One was attached to an empty bucket. Curiously he hauled on the other one and brought up a stash of Corona in a metal basket. The bottles of beer were quite chilled from resting at the bottom of the well. Score one for the thirsty Wyr.

He grabbed a couple and lowered the rest back into the well then went back to his reading. Scientific journals were more Dragos’s schtick, not his. Carling’s research was undeniably difficult reading. Whenever he reached a chemical or magical equation, he simply memorized the formulas without trying to decipher or understand them at this point. But he had thought he would find slogging through Carling’s notes to be a mind-numbing chore, and that wasn’t so. The process she had gone through pulled him in, almost in spite of himself.

Many creatures, human and otherwise, approached matters of magic in different ways. Throughout history, magic had been shrouded in mysticism, and sometimes outright religion, and many of those religious or mystical practices were still in use. Others practiced magic as a matter of folk tradition, much like the herbalist lore in indigenous societies that had been passed down by word of mouth for generations.

Given her roots in early Egypt, he guessed that Carling would have originally learned her magic from the standpoint of religion. By the nineteenth century, Vampyrism was, in large part, no longer viewed as a mystical curse but as a disease, and her approach to solving the issue was correspondingly scientific.

Her analyses were cool and precise. Upon learning the symptoms of the end stages of the disease and the challenges she would be facing, her attitude was unflinching. How humans lived with the knowledge of their own mortality was beyond him. He tried to imagine what it would be like to learn he was mortal, that his time was measured and must come to an inevitable end, and he simply couldn’t. If he was ever killed, he would go into his death with astonishment and incomprehension. Among all the other reactions she elicited from him, Rune had to admit to a certain grudging admiration for Carling’s courage.

But each research path she took came to a dead end. Her attempts to isolate the infection that caused the disease failed.

So what was wrong? What logic path or experiment had she not considered? He could see nothing among the elegant lattice of thought laid out so meticulously on the pages, and yet something niggled. What was it that bothered him? He wasn’t going to try duplicating any of her processes. He didn’t have the ability to replicate any of the experiments she had chronicled. She was the scientist, the clear expert in this field. He took it as a matter of faith she had been as meticulous in her experiments as she was in her handwriting. If something failed, it failed.

So it was something else that bothered him. Was it a premise or a conclusion?

The light was fading in the kitchen when he finally admitted he needed a break. He pushed away from the table and stretched his stiff neck and shoulders. He had almost a hundred pages left to read, but he had reached a point where he was no longer absorbing the information. Some fresh air might help clear his head, and his body needed to move.

He went outside and walked through the gardens, around the house toward the cliff. It was nearing sunset, and the shadows thrown by the foliage were elongated. The twists and angles of the shadowed tree limbs cut exaggerated dark paths across the lawn.

He walked along the waist-high stone wall that bordered the edge of the cliff, and he looked out over the water. The sun was an enormous blazing orange ball. It seemed to grow larger as it neared the horizon. Like Carling, the island was wrapped in its own strange, solitary existence. This piece of Other land gave the perfect illusion that nothing else existed except for it, the cobalt ocean and the limitless sky. He took in deep breaths of the salted air and pretended he was up there, high in the air, flying over the water until all sight of land disappeared.

Then he felt something ripple, like a breeze fluttering against his skin, and everything shivered and changed. He blinked hard and stared around him, as he tried to figure out what was different.

The flaming sun still lowered in the west, an Icarus who flew too high and died his daily death. The ocean was still cobalt blue, darkening as the daylight faded. He turned. Cliff, wall, garden, shadows, great sprawling, crazy-gothic house . . .

. . . and beyond the house, far in the east, were electric lights, like a spray of stars that had committed mortal sins and had fallen from heaven. They lay strewn in a smoldering carpet on a distant, barely visible land.

Wow, so that’s what it looked like on this side, when the veil between this land and the Bay Area thinned. He strolled eastward along the wall as he soaked up the strange sight. The illusion of land was immense, sketched in transparent lines across the entire east. Through it the ocean was clearly visible. The double horizons were dizzying.

“Sentinel?” Rhoswen’s sharp call came from the direction of the kitchen door, the eastern side at the back of the house. “Sentinel!”

The Vampyre sounded upset, even urgent. He broke into a jog. By the time he rounded the corner, he was at a flat-out run.

Rhoswen stood in the doorway, Rasputin tucked under one arm. The powder puff with teeth broke into a frenzied barking when he appeared. Out of patience for the dog’s histrionics, Rune bent, bared his teeth and growled a deep-throated warning. “Behave.”

Rhoswen stared at him. Rasputin froze, his frenzy stopped in midbark. The whites of his eyes showed around shiny black irises. He looked like a startled stuffed animal.

“That’s better,” Rune muttered grimly. He patted the little dog on the head. “Good boy.” He straightened. “Now, what’s wrong?”

“I just woke up a few minutes ago,” Rhoswen said. Her hair was mussed, and she had a crisscross of pillow lines on one cheek. “I went to check on Carling. I thought you should know—she’s faded again.”

Rune grew grimmer. He said, “Show me.”