Soon enough she spotted her car right where she'd left it, in a conveniently located pull-off near a riverbank. The spot was intended for anglers in need of a place to leave their vehicles while they walked the river, fishing. But the season for fly-fishing had long since passed, and it didn't look as if another vehicle had been near the place. The tire marks in the gravel were the ones she'd put there herself when she'd left the car a few days earlier.

She hurried to it, her keen eyes scanning it for nicks or dings and finding none.

Utana came right along beside her, reaching for the passenger door. But she held up a hand, and said, "Wait. Don't touch it yet."

Utana frowned, and she knew it was hard for him to take orders. Well, if he were going to ride with her, he'd better get used to it. They weren't in his den of fake devotees anymore. And yet she softened her barked command. "It could be dangerous," she explained.

He nodded, took two backward steps and stood with his arms crossed over his chest, watching her as she inspected her beloved baby.

"What must I promise, Brigit-what would be...good enough, as you say, to make you tell me where the Chosens are imprisoned?" Utana asked.

She was momentarily confused as she moved slowly around her car, bending over to peer beneath the wheel wells, dropping down on all fours to inspect the undercarriage. Without pulling her head from beneath the car, she said, "I want you to promise me you won't kill them. Not any of them. Ever."

He was silent, so she came out from under the car and rose up to look at him. He was standing a few feet from the hood. His head was tipped back, his eyes searching the sky. "How can I promise you that I will disobey the dictates of the gods?"

She rolled her eyes and crouched down again. "I don't believe the gods want you to murder innocent beings, Utana. And if they do, then they aren't gods at all. They're demons."

"Brigit, take care, lest they unleash their wrath upon you as they did me."

She popped up again. "No, you know what? I'm right about this, and you need to listen to me. Your gods, they must be good ones, to inspire such devotion. And yet you're going around claiming that they've ordered the genocide of an entire species. I would think they'd be furious with you for that."

He dropped his head and met her eyes, a frown marring his brow.

"What if it wasn't them?" Brigit asked.

He looked at her over the top of the car, blinking as if she were speaking words he had yet to learn. "What meaning has such a question? If not the gods, then who? Who sentenced me to centuries of living death and slowly growing madness?"

"Maybe no one did," she said. "Maybe it was just an unforeseen side effect of an immortal being beheaded and cremated. Did you ever think of that? Maybe if that desert witch hadn't burned your body to try to free your soul five thousand years ago, you might have revived, healed, reattached your severed head and been fine?"

He considered it. She saw the wheels turning behind his eyes. "But the gods allowed it. They allowed my suffering."

"The gods allow all kinds of misery, Utana. Innocent children get terrible diseases, or die of starvation or in senseless wars. Surely that doesn't mean the gods are punishing them. It might just be that...shit happens, Utana."

She got slowly to her feet, moving closer to him. Maybe the healing touch of her hands had had some impact after all. She'd never seen him thinking this deeply about the possibility that he had been wrong.

"Or maybe," she went on, "just maybe, all of this is part of some greater plan. Maybe you didn't remain conscious all those years so that you could murder the children you created. Instead, maybe you were allowed to live on so that you could see the beautiful race that sprang from you. The wonderful, powerful, miraculous family that you fathered. Maybe the gods thought you deserved that chance, and that the centuries of suffering would be worth it to you."

He shook his head slowly, turning away from her, as if her words were too much for him to process.

Sensing a powerful wavering in his stubborn beliefs, she hurried around the car and stood close to him, her legs almost touching his. Lifting a hand to his cheek, she made him look down and into her eyes. "Maybe it was the only way for you to be here now, Utana. With me."

She hadn't planned that part. It had sort of burbled up out of her, along with an inexplicable rush of hot tears that welled up in her eyes despite her rapid blinking.

His hand rose to push her hair away from her face, and his eyes plumbed hers so desperately that she could literally feel the yearning in him. The longing for her answers to make sense, to be believable to him. And she realized in that moment, for the first time, that he wanted another way out of this. He wanted her to be right-or anyone to be right, besides him.

But would he tell her that? No, of course not, the stubborn jerk.

"I will consider your words, my beautiful Brigit."

"I need you to do more than that," she whispered. "I need you to promise me that you will not kill my people."

"I will consider your words," he repeated. "And this much I will promise. I will never harm you. You have rendered me incapable of that." He lifted his eyes to the heavens, as if awaiting a bolt of lightning to come down and take him out. When it didn't, he seemed more emboldened. "And I find I wish to make yet another concession. I will not use this trap set by Nashmun and his people to kill the vahmpeers. I will...I will make a truce with them until this matter is settled and the Chosens are safe."

She searched his face, seeing relief there. Just putting off the task seemed to take a load off his mind. "How do I know you won't turn the beam from your eyes upon them the moment the Chosen are free?"

He took a step back from her, made a fist and thumped it hard against his chest, right over his heart. "I vow to you, Brigit, I will aid your people in rescuing the Chosens. And I will do no harm to them. When the task is complete, we shall go our separate ways, your people and me. And only when we meet again will I resume the sad mission my gods require of me. If, indeed, I determine that it is their command. I swear these things on the name of Inanna, who will strike me down should I break my vow to you. For you are so like her, you must surely be beloved of her."

She was taken aback by that. "I'm...like Inanna? A goddess?"

He smiled only slightly, but the amusement in his eyes was impossible not to see. "So very like her. Warrior goddess, enchantress, her temper equaled only by her beauty."

Brigit looked into his eyes and knew he wouldn't swear on Inanna unless he meant it. "I believe you."

His eyes held hers, his hand gently moving through her hair. "You should always believe me, Brigit," he said softly. "For to look upon your face, or into your eyes, and speak lies to you would be impossible for me." Their bodies seemed to tug at one another until suddenly they were pressed together and he was bending to kiss her. His mouth caught her lips, moving over them. He kissed her long and slow and tenderly. And she melted inside.

When he lifted his head at last, she said, "All right. We'll do this together." Her heart felt lighter, and she wondered if she could do it, could put aside what he had done, what he still might do, to her people. Could she forget about all of that just for a little while during this...this truce?

She'd certainly managed to forget it last night. And whenever he kissed her. Or touched her. Or looked into her eyes.

"Tell me now, Brigit. What do you seek upon your...car?" He nodded at her T-Bird.

"Tracking devices or explosives, or anything they might have put on it, if they noticed it parked here and were suspicious." Seeing his puzzled frown, she explained. "Tracking devices would enable them to follow us, to find us wherever we go."

"Amazing."

"Explosives would just blow us to bits-like a beam from your eye."

"Ah, I see. And have you found any of these things?"

"No, I don't see anything." She moved away from him again and took her keys from the hidden magnetic box underneath the rear license plate. Then she hit the button to open the hood. Quickly she moved to the front of the car and leaned in, looking over the spotless engine and again seeing nothing amiss.

She closed the hood, nodding. "I think it's safe. I don't feel as if anyone has tampered with it, and I don't see any evidence that they have, so..."

"So then we go."

"Yes. We go." She got behind the wheel. Reaching across, she first slid the passenger seat all the way back, then opened his door from the inside. Utana got in. Then she quickly started up the car, pulled a U-turn and drove on.

It was a huge relief to Utana to have put his merciless, cold-blooded mission aside for a time. He had no intention of breaking his word to Brigit, and was in fact grateful that he had a reason to hold off on carrying out the dictates of the gods.

The blood that already stained his hands was a burden that was rapidly becoming too heavy to bear. He had killed many. Granted, he had come to believe that at least one of Brigit's claims was utterly true: that his sanity had been eroded by five thousand years of living death. He'd been buried alive, trapped with the ashen remnants of his physical body inside a limestone statue, unable to see or to feel, but conscious.

And only later, thousands of maddening years later, when the statue had been unearthed by modern man, had he discovered that he could still hear.

And he'd heard so much.

People had come and gone in the various museums where the statue had eventually ended up on display. He'd heard their conversations, their arguments, their whispered confessions to one another. He'd been moved from nation to nation, had listened to people speaking in tongues he had never heard before. And he had absorbed the languages, one and all, learned them, listened and tried to make sense of every word and line that was spoken. Gods knew he'd had little else to fill the void of time.

But the nights, oh, the endless, soundless nights. Those were the worst times of all, with their echoes of all the silent years before the statue had been unearthed. For at night the museums were devoid of visitors, enshrouded in deathly silence, with no possible way to measure or sense the passage of time. And no way to know when the words would return, or if they would return at all.

Sometimes the occasional click-clack of what he later realized were the security guard's slow, measured steps would remind him that he was not alone in the universe. Other times, nothing would.

During those endless times madness had taken him over, though he hadn't realized it then, when the only thoughts in his mind had been prayers. He'd begged his gods to release him from the pit, his black prison of eternal darkness. He'd promised over and over that he would do whatever they asked of him, if only they would grant him the unthinkable bliss of release.

And so they had.

He had emerged enraged, wild. Senseless, really. Only moments after he had been reawakened, he had heard the one called Lucy relating the words of someone else, someone who had written, perhaps upon one of the ancient tablets of his own time, that he had been cursed by the gods for sharing his immortal gift with King Gilgamesh long ago. And later he'd absorbed the information contained on the tiny device in her bag-in a book called The Truth-which claimed the vahmpeers were little more than soulless beasts with an insatiable thirst for the blood of man, beasts that killed at will without remorse. He had learned that this race of blood drinkers had sprung from Gilgamesh himself. Gilgamesh, whose immortality had been bestowed upon him by Utana, in direct opposition to what he knew the gods had commanded.

He had come to believe that only by undoing the sin he'd committed then-the sin of sharing immortality with King Gilgamesh, who'd shared it with others, who'd shared it with others, on down through the ages, creating a race of immortal night-walkers-only by undoing that sin, could he ever be pardoned. And so, from the moment of his resurrection, he'd held only one goal in mind: to kill the vahmpeers and thereby redeem himself in the eyes of his gods.

What he had since learned about the vahmpeer race made him very sorry that he had acted in haste. And now he wondered, what if Brigit were right, and it was all a mistake? What if he had misunderstood what the gods required of him? What if everything he had done to the vahmpeers had been for no reason whatsoever?

Had he slaughtered innocents?

Had he murdered his own children due to nothing more than a mistake?

Had he annihilated Brigit's friends and beloved ones...for nothing?

The notion churned in his belly, clawed at his heart. How, for the love of the gods, could he live with himself if that turned out to be true?

And yet, he prayed that it was. For even though he could not undo the harm he'd already wrought, at least he would not have to wreak any more. And in truth, he was unsure whether he were capable of any more killing. Even if the gods insisted upon it, he might very well be unequal to the task. To murder the people Brigit so loved, when he felt compelled to protect them instead-he did not know if he could do it. And therefore he might be doomed to return to his living death-perhaps at any moment, should the gods realize how shaky his resolve had become.

He tried to soothe himself by watching the scenery as they drove along what Brigit told him was a "highway," and by marveling at all they passed. A great city, with buildings as tall as ziggurat pyramids and monuments that stabbed into the sky. How they made them to stand so tall was beyond him. The ziggurats had been wider at the base, narrowing in steps toward the cella at the very top, where the gods resided. Some of these buildings they passed by were the same width at the bottom as at the top. How did they not tip over?

After that they drove through countryside. Rolling meadows, forests and breathtaking mountains.

"Your land is so green," he said at length, needing to distract himself from the dire thoughts in his mind.

"It's beautiful, isn't it? We do have desert, far to the west. But here on the East Coast, it's very green and lush. Those are called the Blue Ridge Mountains," she said, pointing at the rising peaks around them.

"Ah. Blue Ridge. It is a good name."

"Yes, it fits them."

"And this road," he said. "Has it no end? How did your people ever manage to build such a fine, smooth road for such distances as we have traveled already?"

She glanced sideways at him, her eyes amused. "We've only gone about sixty miles, Utana."

He did not know how far a mile was, nor did he care in that moment. He was struck breathless by the smile in her eyes and teasing curve of her lips. Her sky-blue eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled, and they sparkled when they were unhindered by fear and worry and anger.

"We have many, many people and lots of great big machines. There are roads like this one almost everywhere in our nation."

"Amazing. And what of these...lines that have been painted upon their surface?" he asked, pointing.

Brigit explained traffic laws, lanes and passing rules, and the meanings of the various signs to him for the next twenty minutes, until he thought he understood most of it. It was a good way to pass the time, and eventually he said, "I will try it."

She blinked at him. "Try...what?"

He tapped the steering wheel with his forefinger.

"You want to drive?" She shook her head. "No. Look, this is a serious mission we're on here, Utana. We've got lives depending upon us. Hundreds of innocent lives. This is no time for me to be giving you driving lessons."

He frowned at her. "Would we not still be moving in the same direction?"

"Well, yes, but that's beside the point."

"How it is beside the point? We keep moving forward, we lose no time-if I go too slowly, you will tell me. If I cannot go fast enough, you will retake the helm. Let us find food, and when we resume the journey, I wish to try...drive."

She closed her eyes very briefly, then leaned over and reached past him to open the glove compartment. She pulled out the car's manual and dropped it into his lap. "Read that, and then put your hands on the car and absorb its vibes or whatever it is you do to inhale information like air. And then I'll let you drive after we eat breakfast. Very briefly. Very briefly, Utana. In a parking lot, where there's lots of room."

"But...that would slow down our pace."

"It won't matter. It'll be daylight soon. We can't meet with the vamps until nightfall anyway. And we won't waste more than five minutes. Maybe ten."

He went silent, staring at her. "You are taking me to meet with the vahmpeers?"

She looked at him, then away again. "I think it's the best thing to do. If we can convince them to accept the truce you offer, we can come up with a plan to free the Chosen without putting the vampires at risk."

His throat was dry. The notion of facing the people he might very well have so deeply wronged-or might very well soon have to kill-made his stomach rebel and his chest feel tight.

"Utana, you're going to have to make your peace with them sooner or later."

"Am I?" he asked.

She nodded. "I love them. I love them, Utana. Haven't you figured that out yet?"

He nodded, awash with yet a new layer of guilt. To distract himself, he placed his hands on the owner's manual of her precious vehicle-yes, he knew she adored this machine-and closed his eyes to absorb its contents. He did not need to do the same with the machine itself, for he already had. It was likely, he thought, that he knew more about the car than its proud owner did.

Brigit was grateful that Utana had stuffed the suit he'd so detested into the pillowcase along with several of his preferred robes. Her belly-dancing outfit was in there, too, she noticed, as she dug through the makeshift rucksack.

She insisted he take the time to exchange his regal robes for more ordinary clothing before they got out for breakfast, and then she forced her eyes to stay on the road while he struggled to change in the tiny passenger seat. At least he looked passably normal when they walked into the Denny's at 6:00 a.m.

Two hours on the road and they were barely a half hour from where they had begun. But she'd deemed it necessary to head in the opposite direction for a time, and to change course several more times, before finally heading toward her ultimate destination: Maine, where her family were holed up, along a route that would take them past St. Dymphna's Psychiatric Hospital for a look-see.

She was nervous as hell about him meeting her family again. They were going to be furious with her for not killing him. But when she explained, they would have to understand. He'd been ill. What he had done was no more his fault than the uncontrollable tics of a mortal with Tourette's syndrome.

They would understand. They would forgive her. And eventually they would forgive him, too.

Yes. There was no question about that. What else could they do? They were her family. They loved her.

Setting all of that aside, she walked beside Utana into the restaurant, where the air was thick with the succulent scents of bacon and maple syrup and fresh coffee. Her stomach growled.

The place wasn't crowded, but there were more customers than she would have expected at this early hour. No one gave them a second look as the hostess led them through the place to their booth. Scratch that. No one gave her a second look. Everyone looked at Utana. Not because he was odd to them, but because he was so big, and so freakishly good-looking. Men watched him with wariness in their eyes, maybe sensing the innate danger in him. Women watched him with blatant admiration.

They slid into a booth, and the hostess laid their menus and silverware, rolled up in napkins, on the table and said their waitress would be with them shortly, before scurrying away.

Brigit picked up a menu, opened it and felt her stomach rumble.

A waitress was on them almost instantly.

"Coffee?" she asked, full carafe in hand.

"God, yes." Brigit turned her cup over, then glanced at Utana, who was taking in the place with fascinated interest. He was looking at everything, the people, the tables, the food, the kitchens, and he was sensing and smelling and feeling it all, she knew. His first time in a restaurant-well, except for the one he'd demolished in Bangor.

He'd come a long way. What a strange journey this must be for him. She reached across the table and turned his cup upright, as well. "Him, too. You'll like this, Utana. Trust me."

He nodded, meeting her eyes as the waitress filled his cup, as well.

The woman dumped a handful of tiny plastic half-and-half containers on the table and said, "Be back in a minute to take your order."

Then she was gone.

Utana stared at the black liquid in his cup. Raising it, he sniffed and then wrinkled his nose. Then he tasted it, just a sip, and grimaced.

Brigit bit back a grin and told her heart to stop twitching spasmodically every time he did something so damned adorable. "Watch me," she said.

He did, and she peeled the paper seals off of two of the tiny creamers and poured them into her cup. He did the same. She took two tiny white packets of sugar from the rectangular dish stuffed full of them and added them, as well. He followed her lead, avoiding the blue and pink packets, and using only the white, as she had. But he tasted the sugar first, on his fingertip, and his eyes grew huge.

"This...it's sweet."

"Yes. That's the point." She picked up her spoon and stirred her coffee.

Watching her every move, Utana did the same.

Setting the spoon aside, Brigit lifted her cup and took a sip. Then she closed her eyes. "Mmm. I needed that."

Setting his spoon aside, too, Utana took a sip of his own. And then he grimaced again, wrinkling his nose.

"You don't like it?"

"It is bitter. Perhaps more..." He took another white packet and read the label. "Soo-gar," he said.

She shook her head. "Sugar," she corrected, but he ignored her, pouring five more packets into his cup, stirring and tasting after each one, before finally nodding.

"Ahh. Now it tastes good."

"Oooohkay."

"Mmm. Yes. Good." He drained the cup and set it down. "Where is the food?"

"They will prepare it in the kitchen, which is back there," she said, pointing toward the doors beyond the counter. "And then they'll bring it to us, but not until we tell the waitress-that's the lady who was just here-what we want." She opened his menu and placed it back in front of him. "Here. These are our choices."

He looked at the images of the food and nodded. "They look...so real."

"Very convincing, aren't they?"

"There is so much. What is good?"

"All of it, Utana. Trust me on that."

He looked skeptical, probably doubting the wisdom of her taste buds, after the coffee.

Pursing his lips, he nodded. "Then I will ask for all of it."

Her brows rose, and she peered over the top of her menu at him, but he was still engrossed in his. "How about this? Since I've had just about everything they serve here, why don't you let me order for both of us? Would that be okay?"

He smiled at her. "That will be very...okay with me. But keep in your mind that I am very hungry, Brigit, and that my capacity for food is far greater than yours."

She nodded. "Understood."

St. Dymphna Psychiatric Hospital Mount Bliss, Virginia

Roxy's shift had begun early. 7:00 a.m. But that was all right. She'd been spending almost all of her time at the hospital, just to stay on top of things. She'd fallen a little bit in love with some of the patients. Particularly little Melinda Hubbard, a girl who, she had decided, was not only one of the Chosen but also a powerful psychic.

The girl's mother, Jane, was neither. Her sole purpose in life was to protect her little girl. Roxy respected that, even if the woman had taken a huge misstep in bringing the kid here. Who the hell could blame her for trusting her own government?

Roxy was enjoying a cup of coffee and working a jigsaw puzzle with Melinda, while her mother showered. The rooms weren't bad, actually. The workers here had gone out of their way to make the place look less like a hospital and more like a hotel. Each room had a little round table and a couple of chairs. TV sets were mounted high on the walls. The railings had been removed from the beds, and nightstands with clock radios and pretty lamps and doilies had been set up. Really, they were pretty nice. You know, if you could get past the knowledge that you were being held prisoner, anyway.

Roxy thought most of the inmates were starting to figure out the prisoner thing. There was an air of restlessness permeating the place. People had asked to leave and been told no. People had asked to go outdoors and likewise been denied. It wasn't sitting well.

Jane emerged from the bathroom, a thick towel around her head.

Her back toward the hidden camera Roxy had pointed out in the front corner of the room, she whispered, "I don't know how much longer I can stand being here, Roxy."

"It won't be much longer." Roxy picked up the remote and cranked up the volume on the TV set, just in case. "Senator MacBride ought to be making her report soon. This place is going to be shut down in short order, you mark my words."

"You did well getting her out here," Jane said. "I'll always be grateful for your help."

"Yeah, well, we haven't been sprung yet."

Roxy lifted the remote to turn the volume down again, then froze, her eyes glued to the screen as an announcer gave the grim news that Senator Marlene MacBride had been found dead in her Washington, D.C., apartment that morning. Cameras jostled for a shot of a body bag being carried from a posh-looking building to a waiting ambulance.

"Oh, my God," Jane muttered.

The reporter went on. "No cause of death has yet been released to the public, pending autopsy, but a source close to the senator claims she was murdered by a vampire. Senator MacBride had recently been named head of the newly formed Committee on U.S.-Vampire Relations, and sources claim her initial report would have strongly favored funding what's been called 'A full-on, no-holds-barred effort to contain and monitor the Undead.'"

"That's not what she was going to report at all," Roxy whispered. "She came here. She knew..."

The little girl looked up at her, her huge eyes far too knowing.

"Don't be scared, Melinda," Jane said, hugging her daughter close. "We're going to be all right."

"I know we are, Mommy. That lady senator wasn't supposed to help us anyway. Someone else is. A guy. A really big guy. He'll be here soon." She sighed and lowered her head. "And then he's gonna die. Just like that lady senator did, and that makes me feel really sad."

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