"I take it you taught him to drive?"

Brigit nodded, still staring into the empty space, now that the T-Bird was out of sight.

"Bad idea. I guess you're stuck with me now, sis." J.W. slammed her shoulder from behind as only a brother would do. "Only question is, would you rather storm the castle, just the two of us, or head back to face Rhiannon and explain to her just exactly why it is you went soft?"

She glared at her brother and said, "Neither." Stomping to the passenger door of his pickup, she yanked it open and said, "Get in and start driving, J.W. We're going after him."

"We'll never catch up," he argued, but he went around the truck and climbed in. "He's got way more horsepower than we do."

"Horsepower, yes. Gas? Not so much." She climbed in and shut the door, as her brother started the engine and pulled the truck into motion. "We've been on E for the past twenty miles. I was about to stop for gas when he started picking up vibes from the Chosen."

"And I take it you didn't teach him the finer points of pumping gas while you were supposed to be blowing him away?"

"No, I never quite got around to that."

"What did you get around to?"

She felt her brother's eyes on her, heard the question he was really asking. If she looked him in the eye just then he would see the answer she wasn't ready to give. So she stared straight ahead and said, "He'll run out in another ten miles, give or take. If we hurry, he'll still be with the car."

J.W. sighed, and she supposed her nonanswer was all the answer he needed. He was her twin, after all. The person closest to her in all the world.

And his lack of faith in her had been like a blade to her heart. She wasn't sure she could ever forgive him, even when he finally came around to realizing that she was right. He'd put a rift between them, and she didn't think he even realized it.

But this wasn't the time to address it. Not now.

Utana drove Brigit's car, his skills increasing exponentially with each passing mile. The process was not difficult for him, and that wasn't something he was particularly proud of. It wasn't as if he were somehow responsible for the superior intellect with which he'd been born. Nor for the gift of immortality given him by the gods, nor for the centuries upon centuries of life that had enhanced his mind even further. None of it was his doing.

Driving this machine, however, filled him with pleasure. If there had not been so many problems on his mind, the experience would have been one of pure bliss, he thought. Much like the experience of possessing Brigit's beautiful body had been, although not nearly as powerful. In that case, even the worries plaguing him had been unable to interfere.

They were interfering now.

His pleasure in the power of the automobile, its instantaneous response to his every command, was diminished by the questions tormenting him.

And there were many.

Utana had tuned in to the mind of his beautiful Brigit while she'd spoken with her brother. Her twin. He had heard the words they exchanged, yes. But, too, he had felt the emotions. James's anger. Brigit's heartache.

Her brother, the person she loved most in all the world, had bade her choose-between him and his family and Utana himself.

Utana had opted not to force such a difficult choice upon her. And perhaps that was only partly an unselfish act on his part. It was true that he did wish to spare her a difficult decision. Partly, though, he feared which choice she would have made. Surely she would not alienate her family any further by consorting with him. Not when protecting her family had been her reason for remaining with him all along.

She hadn't killed him. Perhaps it would have been better for them both if she had. Truly, his feelings for her were mixed up in his mind-and heart-and he knew not how to make sense of them, nor sort them out.

He knew one thing, however. He had not lied when he told Brigit he could not murder her. He knew that without any doubt, and if the gods insisted that her life be taken, then he was doomed to return to the living death he'd suffered.

Nor did he want to take the lives of those she loved. And if he were honest, he no longer believed himself capable of doing so-of causing her that kind of pain. So if the gods instructed him to spare her, but to immolate the rest-well, he did not think he could do that, either.

Hell, he wasn't sure he was able, now, to take any of their lives. The vahmpeers. The race he had unintentionally created. And perhaps his mind would be easier if he just admitted as much to himself and gave up struggling with the decision. For deep down, he knew, the decision was already made.

Blinking slowly as he drove, he heard himself whisper, "Yes. The decision is already made. I cannot kill them. I cannot." He looked at the distant horizon. "And I will not."

Drawing a deep breath that expanded his chest and filled his lungs, then releasing it slowly in a long, long sigh, he realized that he felt a sense of relief. As if the weight of the very world had been lifted from his shoulders. A weight that dangled now, menacing and ominous, overhead. He knew the decision he had finally made was the right one. But he feared that in the making of it, he had doomed himself to return to an inescapable and unbearable hell.

"Only when I die," he told himself. "And so I will simply find a way to remain alive. For as long as I possibly can."

A smile tugged at his lips as that heavy weight dangling above him seemed to evaporate and float away. Temporarily, at least.

And then the car spat and bucked a little. It sputtered and coughed, and then its engine died entirely. He depressed the clutch to let it coast off onto the side of the road as Brigit had done when she had stopped to talk to her brother, seeing now the logic in doing so.

But once he brought the vehicle to a safe halt, out of the way of other cars that might come speeding past, he could not start the engine again, no matter what he did.

In only a moment, he knew the reason, felt it through his hands on the steering wheel. The liquid called gasoline, on which the vehicle fed, had run dry. It needed more.

Utana got out, feeling lighter, despite the setback of being on foot. It was good, having made this choice. He was almost eager to tell Brigit about it. But he knew, too, that his troubles would not end there. Her people-his people-would not easily forgive him for what he had done. Perhaps he could make it right, however, by rescuing the Chosens and protecting the vahmpeers from the trap being set for them. Surely Brigit had told James about that by now. Surely the vahmpeers would not attempt to go there tonight. They would wish to take time to form a plan.

Therefore, he would go tonight. He would free the Chosens. And when it was done, he would seek the forgiveness of the Undead.

And after that, regardless of the results his effort reaped, he would try to live this life with as much pleasure and bliss as he could manage, knowing that when it was over, the wrath of the gods might very well await him.

"So be it, then," he said softly. "So be it."

He walked away from the car, leaving it there, keys inside. Then he trudged off the highway and across a weed-strewn lot, heading back in the direction he'd come, but trying to do so off the beaten path and out of sight.

When he reached his destination, the hospital called St. Dymphna, where the Chosens were being held, he went into the woodlot to the building's left. He crouched amid the trees, concealed by the vines that had twined themselves around the fence. Making himself as comfortable as was possible, he waited, and he watched, and he listened. And most importantly, he felt.

This, he thought, was going to be easy.

Brigit stood beside the T-Bird, turning in a slow circle as the wind blew her hair into a tangled mess. "Where the hell is he?"

"Probably gone back to Scarface to report in," J.W. said. "He was probably working for him all along, Bridge. Just playing you, so that you'd lead him to the rest of us."

"You're wrong." She knew better.

Didn't she?

"I am? That's what you were doing, though, right? Bringing Utana, the guy who's supposed to annihilate us, straight to our door?"

She closed her eyes, lowered her head. "You keep pushing me, bro, and I'm going to have to knock you on your ass."

He moved closer to where she stood. "Let me take you home, Brigit. Just let me take you home."

"We don't have a home. Or are you forgetting that just about every safe house in vampiredom has been torched by vigilantes?"

"Home is where your family is, sis. They're all waiting for you. And they'll forgive you for not blasting him into a thousand pieces. Hell, they'll probably be relieved to find out you have a heart after all, even if you did choose a damn poor time to start using it."

"Fuck you, J.W."

"James. I keep telling you, it's James."

She sent him a look. Then she pursed her lips and shook her head. "We can't go all the way back to Maine. The Chosen don't have time, and I don't think Utana does, either."

"Scarface won't kill him until he has what he wants from him. No worries on that score," her brother said. He opened the T-Bird's door, reached in to remove the keys, then closed it and hit the lock button.

"He won't go back to Gravenham-Bail, anyway," Brigit insisted. "He'll try to free the Chosen all on his own, and he's going to get into trouble if he does. He has no idea the kind of security or the weapons the DPI will have waiting for him in that place."

J.W. shrugged, turning to face her. "Maybe that's not a bad thing, Bridge. Maybe they'll manage to do the job for us that you couldn't bring yourself to do. Maybe they'll send him back to the grave, where he belongs."

She slapped him. She slapped him so hard that he rocked backward, catching himself against her precious car and probably scuffing up the paint. And then she stood there, her eyes beginning to glow with vampiric fervor and rage. Her fangs had elongated automatically with her anger, and her heart was pounding in her chest. There was an urge inside her to tear her brother apart. She'd never felt that way before-not about him. Her twin. And it frightened her.

"My God," J.W. said, staring at her as if seeing her for the very first time. "You love him."

"You don't know shit about what I feel. Or who or what he is, for that matter. But I'll tell you one thing-James. You wouldn't exist without him. None of us would. He's our creator, and neither you nor anyone else has the right to judge the man. Much less return him to an endless existence of darkness, of paralysis, of sensory deprivation. It's a living death-the most cruel and inhuman punishment anyone could imagine. No one deserves that. No one!"

She turned and stomped back toward his truck. "I'm going to the nearest gas station to get a can of high test and a funnel. You can ride along with me or wait on your ass here. I could care less either way."

"And then?" he asked, hurrying after her. He caught up just as she reached for the driver's door and gave her a shove she wasn't expecting. Then, as she stumbled out of the way, he climbed behind the wheel.

She raced around to get in the other side. "And then I'm going after Utana, to try to keep him from getting himself killed," she said, as she got in.

J.W. started the truck and put it into gear. In a moody silence, her brother drove to the nearest gas station. Neither of them spoke a word the entire time. He went inside to buy the gas can, then returned to fill it up and stow it in the truck bed. She waited in the cab. She was angry. Furious, far more so than she had ever been with him before.

As he started the engine and pulled onto the highway again, she said, "I do not like being this angry with you, J.W."

His jaw twitched. He didn't meet her eyes. "I don't like it, either."

"I'm sorry I hit you," she said.

He was silent for a long moment as she watched his face, saw the struggle there, and the way his Adam's apple swelled and receded like a wave as he swallowed. "I'm sorry I said what I did. And that I forgot for a minute that...you're my sister. My twin. And that we're the only two of our kind. And that no matter what else happens...we're supposed to stick together."

She felt hot tears stinging her eyes and thought how stupid it was to cry like a girl over something she should have known was coming. She and J.W. always had each other's backs.

"So?" she asked.

"So let's go find Utana. And then we'll bring him to meet the family-the elders. Let him have his day in court, so to speak. He's got a lot to answer for, but maybe-"

"We can't take him to Maine, J.W. We have to get the Chosen out of government hands before the DPI and Scarface do something awful to them. You know they'll want to make them scream-the louder the better-to lure the vampires to come to their aid."

"I know. But we don't have to go to Maine."

She lifted her brows and stared at him. "I don't understand."

"Everyone was worried about you. And feeling the energy of the Chosen, too. They're already here-in Virginia. At the plantation."

Utana crouched in a woodlot just beyond the chain-link fence that surrounded the place they called St. Dymphna. He hadn't yet learned who this particular saint was, but he understood what saints were in general: enlightened beings who no longer lived, favored by the god of this time. Demigods, in a way. Humans prayed to them, and they were said to intercede on behalf of the faithful.

If this Dymphna were looking down on what was being done in her name-and he presumed this saint was female, as the statue in front of the hospital named for her was a woman-he thought she would surely send bolts of lightning down upon the place. Which must mean she wasn't watching. Or maybe the gods of this world were false. He'd seen no evidence of their existence so far. In his day, the gods had been everywhere. Interacting with man in every moment of every day of his lifetime. The Anunaki were involved in every aspect of life. The singular god of today seemed all but invisible. Present in name only, like a figurehead. As if there were no more life to him than to the statues that represented his saints.

In Utana's time, even the statues contained the living essence of the Anunaki. They were fed and washed and clothed, those statues. The people of today seemed to care little about serving their god. Or maybe he simply had yet to see it, he thought. For surely no race would neglect its deities so.

As he crouched and observed, he admired again the beauty of the building. Many of the buildings today were plain and cold, large smooth rectangles lacking imagination or design. But others were breathtaking, in this time. Oh, not as spectacular as the ones from his beloved Sumer. The temples, the statues, the ziggurats. But nice. This one spoke of age-relatively speaking. It was, he sensed, more than a century old, and built to last a good deal longer.

The doors in the front were arched on top and possessed inserts of the glass that was so prevalent in the architecture of this time. Utana had yet to see a building without it. More importantly, those doors were guarded by soldiers.

Here, on this side of the tall fence, red-green vines had twined themselves around and through the links, providing him with cover. The woodlot was vacant and had been left untended. Its uneven rows of trees were littered in between with weeds and shrubby brush that offered camouflage, as well. He was very well hidden. It was a good vantage point from which to observe, and he couldn't help but think that, had he been in charge of this place, he would have sent men to clear this lot. Truly, Nashmun had overlooked a vital aspect of his strategy.

In front of the building, there was nearly nothing of the earth. A concrete walkway bordered the curving drive. In the center of that curve, between the building and the road, stood the fountain with the woman carrying the oil lamp. Little birds, carved of stone as she was, perched on her arms. She was beautiful. And in front of the outer gate there was a large square of chiseled stone, with the words St. Dymphna Psychiatric Hospital carved into its face.

He crouched there in the woods, his position giving him a good view of the front and left side of the building. There were no guards on the side. No entry, either, other than the windows and a side door that looked impenetrable. The windows on the lowest floors were barred. The rest were not.

He watched for a while, then moved farther along the fence to give himself a view of the back. Manicured lawns spread like green carpet behind the place. There were flower gardens and shrubs, and footpaths that wound among them. Small tables stood here and there, and Utana deduced it was meant to be a place of peace and rest for the patients who normally lived in this building. Safely enclosed in the mesh fence, they could enjoy being outside.

And there, angling to the ground from the building's rear, were those glass panes Brigit had called "skylights" stretching over the basement.

He saw no sign that the gardenlike back lawn had been recently used. Nor had it been tended well. Leaves littered the tables, benches and footpaths. The grass was shaggy, not neatly trimmed as modern man seemed to prefer it.

His haunches were growing sore from crouching, and the modern pants he wore were uncomfortable in this position. Utana straightened, thinking on how he would get inside, whether it would be better to try to enter covertly, or whether it might be best to simply blast the front doors open and obliterate anyone who tried to stop him.

He rather preferred the former. He was tired of violence, of killing.

"Hello, my friend."

Startled, Utana turned quickly.

Nashmun stood facing him, looking him up and down, and Utana regretted allowing himself to be so caught up in his reconnaissance that he failed to sense his former vizier's approach.

"How did you find me?" he asked.

"I knew you'd come here. Brigit was snooping in my computer, so I was fairly certain she had found out about this place. And about the people who've taken refuge here."

Utana blinked. "The Chosens within the walls of this place are prisoners, not refugees."

"No doubt that's what she wants you to believe. I am well aware of who she is, you know."

Utana averted his eyes. "She is a dancer."

"She is the most sought-after subject in all of the world, Utana. She is a mongrel, part vampire, part human. And we need to bring her in. To study her. For the good of all mankind."

Utana felt his blood heat at the notion. "You will stay far from her, Nashmun. Or I will kill you."

Nash blinked twice, then nodded as if in understanding. "She has confused you. I understand, Utana. It happens to the best of us. She's very beautiful, after all, and you're a man, like any other."

"I am unlike any other."

"You know what I mean." Nash clapped Utana on the shoulder. "Where beautiful women are concerned, we're all pretty much alike, aren't we?" He was smiling as if there were no enmity between them. "Come with me, will you? Let's talk a while."

"There is nothing I want to hear from you."

"No? Well, perhaps there's something you'd like to hear from them, then." He nodded toward the asylum as he spoke. "The Chosen. Come on, I'll take you on a tour of the place, introduce you to some of the refugees. Let them tell you in their own words why they're here. How does that sound?"

Suspicion buzzed loudly in Utana's brain, and he examined the man's face, his eyes, tried even to hear his thoughts, in search of an explanation. "What trick is this you are attempting now?"

"No trick, Utana. I simply want you to know the truth, so that you'll reconsider completing your mission, and help me wipe out the scourge of vampires from the planet once and for all. It is your destiny, you know."

"Only the gods can say what is my destiny."

"Well, they're not very talkative in this day and age, my friend, so you might just have to figure it out for yourself. Come inside with me. Listen to what the Chosen have to say."

After a long moment, Utana nodded. He'd wanted to get inside. What better way than by invitation?

"What the hell is he doing with that SOB?" James whispered.

Brigit stood on the road beside James's truck, feeling as if her heart had just been hit with a sledgehammer as she watched Utana walking side by side with Nash Gravenham-Bail of the DPI into the St. Dymphna Psychiatric Hospital.

When they'd pulled onto the shoulder out front, James had opened the pickup's hood to make it look like an ordinary bit of engine trouble, rather than like a pair of quarter-blood vampires spying on the DPI's baited trap. Brigit had left her car a mile away, gassed up and locked tight, outside a Dunkin' Donuts. She had fully expected to find Utana here. But she had thought he would be casing the joint, planning his attempt to rescue the Chosen. Not consorting with the enemy.

"Bridge?" J.W. put a hand on her forearm to get her attention.

She blinked the stupid hot tears from her eyes and shook her head. "I don't know. I don't know what's going on here."

"But you know who that is, right?"

"I know who he is. That's Scarface."

"He was there when they shot Lucy."

"I know, J.W."

"Well, what the hell is Utana doing with him, then?"

She blinked away the blur from her vision. "He picked Utana up outside Bangor a few days ago. Convinced him that he was some kind of diplomat, acting on behalf of the president. I followed them to a small airport, where they took off in a private jet. He took Utana to a D.C. mansion where they let Middle Eastern royalty stay when they're in town. Treated him like a king."

"Shit, they're going all out."

"I convinced Utana that they were bullshitting him. Or...I thought I had. He left with me. But now, I don't know. I just... I don't know what the hell is going on, J.W."

"Well, I do." He slammed the hood of the truck down, grabbed his sister's arm and led her to the passenger side. "He's still working with the bastard. Leaving that mansion with you was part of the plan. You bring him home to the family and that scar-faced DPI scum follows right behind him, leading them straight to us."

"Nash was having me arrested when we left. Utana...he saved me."

"Why did he have to?"

She blinked twice, then averted her eyes.

"He took your power, didn't he, sis? The same way he took mine. He did, didn't he?"

Lowering her head, she nodded just once. "Only because he was afraid I'd try to kill him with it."

"So if he's so damn reformed, why hasn't he given it back?"

"I...he will. We were just discussing it, in fact, when you showed up and interrupted."

He stared at her for a long moment, then heaved a deep sigh. "Look, I can see that he's got you tied up in knots, Bridge. Maybe he's even worked some kind of mental manipulation on your mind, but I'll tell you now, you're not seeing things clearly here. You're too close to this to see it, but it's obvious from the outside."

"No."

"He tricked you into leading him to us. Or almost did. He's still working with the DPI. You just saw him with your own eyes, walking along practically arm in arm with that bastard." He took her shoulders in his hands and gave a gentle shake. "He's still planning to wipe us out, Brigit. Don't you see that?"

Her tears spilled over then, and she was furious-with herself, with her brother and with Utana most of all, for making her want to believe in him so very badly that she couldn't listen to logic or reason anymore.

"Shit." J.W. looked straight up. "I was right. You're in love with him, aren't you?"

She didn't answer. J.W. lowered his head to meet her eyes, and she imagined he saw the reply shining from them.

"Dammit, Bridge, I'm sorry." He folded her into his arms and held her against him. "I'm so sorry. I know it hurts. And it clouds your vision. You can't see straight. There's a reason why they say love is blind. You've gotta trust me now, okay? I'm your brother. You don't have any reason to doubt my motives or question where my loyalties lie. Trust me, okay?"

"I...I trust you."

"Okay." Releasing her, he opened the truck door. "Get in. I'm gonna take you home. Or at least to what we're calling home for the moment. You need to be around your family. You need to heal and get your head to stop spinning."

"But...but what if you're wrong?"

He made a face as if she were an idiot, then softened it with love. "Go on, get in."

Brigit got in.

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