FOUR

On the ride back home, I feel the effects of the six Scotch and Cokes I drank. I have to focus on the road to stay on it. But a much more powerful cocktail plagues me: the mixture of happiness and guilt I feel in my heart.

Sitting with Matt and Teri, drinking, talking, eating, listening to Matt play his music, simply being in their company, made me feel like I was with family. What a strange and wonderful experience. It created a mysterious bubble. Even though the club was packed, it was as if the three of us spent the evening alone around a delicious fire. Most of all, it made me feel we belong together.

So says my heart, while my head shouts, Beware! Nothing good can come from interfering with their lives. Plus there is nowhere for the relationship to go. In the end my energy would overwhelm them, my money, my immortality. I am too much of a boss—long ago I recognized this flaw in my character—to hold back from directing their lives. Already I want to call people I know in the entertainment industry and arrange auditions for Matt. He has the talent—he just needs a break.

How easy the fantasies roll inside. How rich his life would be if he was able to work full-time in a field he loved, producing beautiful songs, selling millions of copies while making millions of dollars. Teri wouldn’t have to sleep in a dorm, but could have a house of her own. She could go to Harvard for her undergraduate degree and then go on to Yale Medical School.

Yet all the glorious things I imagine I can do for them are exactly why my brain shouts for me to stop. A young man like Matt could lose his inner confidence by not struggling for success. And Teri’s humble beginnings molded her into the sensitive human being I love. It is difficult for most people to realize, especially parents when it comes to their children, but suffering is often a great gift, not the curse most humans assume it is. The people I admire most have all suffered.

There is a spiritual dimension to struggle as well.

Krishna once said that few people focused on him intensely except when they were in pain. Of course, the remark was impersonal. Krishna was not referring to his form, the events of his life, or even his words when he spoke of himself. He was not a god in need of praise. His idea of worship was infinitely flexible; he saw all deities as himself. Nevertheless, he felt pain gave humans the greatest incentive to focus on the supreme.

It helps me, simply to remember Krishna.

I suddenly feel more balanced.

I come to a compromise inside. I’ll see Teri and Matt for a few years, maybe ten, no more, and then I’ll vanish from their lives before they realize I’m not aging. Under no circumstances will I ever let them know who I really am. Also, I’ll limit how much I spoil them. They’ll never enjoy their success if they don’t have to fight to get it.

By the time I reach home, I feel I can make the relationship work.

I’m fifty yards from my garage when I hear a faint whistle sound.

I throw myself lengthwise across my front seat.

My back and front window explode in a shower of glass. The bullet must have been unusually powerful. The windshields are supposed to be made of bulletproof glass. If I had moved a hundredth of a second later, I would have been missing a head. And even I, Sita, who have the blood of Yaksha and Kalika pumping through my veins, could not have survived such a wound. The person who just fired must know that. He must know exactly what it takes to kill me.

Bullets pound my car. Several hit the windshield. Many more are aimed at the trunk. The sniper is using armor-piercing rounds and is hoping to penetrate the length of the car and kill me that way. He doesn’t know that, by wild chance, I bought a large amount of tools yesterday and have yet to remove them from my trunk. For the first time in my life, my laziness has saved my life.

I want my assailant to think I’ve been hit, so I take my foot off the gas pedal and let my Porsche roll toward the garage door. Fortunately, it veers slightly to the right, bringing me closer to the safety of the house wall. I decide not to press the button that will open the garage door. Instead, I let the front end of the car hit the wall before I leap through the passenger door and make a beeline for the side of the house. My path leaves me exposed for a mere ten yards, and since I can move fifty times faster than any human being . . . I should be safe.

Yet I’m only halfway to the corner of my house when the back of my right thigh suddenly feels like a mass of liquid fire. Somehow the sniper has shifted his aim from my car to my leg in a thousandth of a second. It might be a lucky shot on his part, but I seriously doubt it.

I have to throw myself around the corner of the house. But that doesn’t stop his insane barrage. His bullets are not merely armor-piercing, they must be made of some kind of exotic metal—purified uranium perhaps. They blast through the plaster as if it were made of butter. It’s only when I near the side door that the contents of my garage—another half dozen vehicles—begin to act as a shield against his weaponry. Finally, he must realize he no longer has a shot at me, because he suddenly stops firing.

I open the side door and limp inside the garage.

I collapse on the floor. Blood pools around me in the dark. His bullet has not merely hit my leg, it’s torn away a chunk of flesh twice the size of my fist. By blind luck, he missed the major artery that runs down my leg. Yet he’s pulverized my sciatic nerve, and even I, who can heal instantly from almost any wound, will need time to rest and replace a major nerve. Until then I’m crippled, and he’s still out there, probably closing in on my position.

I force myself to quiet my breath so I can hear what he’s doing. He’s in the woods—I can tell that much right away. But I’m surprised to hear him stay in the trees and not press his advantage. Then I realize just how smart he is. He doesn’t know for sure I’m wounded, and even if he can see my blood, he can’t know the extent of my injury. No doubt he’s afraid to expose himself by crossing the open field that lies between my house and the trees.

I stop breathing altogether and am able to ascertain his exact position. He’s southwest of my house, two hundred yards into the woods. Again, I have to congratulate him on his caution. Even if I had a sniper rifle in hand, he would be a difficult target. It would be hard to get a clear shot through so many trees. But because he’s the one in the woods, and has no doubt cut away clear angles to my house, the reverse is not true. At present, he has the advantage.

I can’t hear anyone else in the forest. Good.

I can tolerate a tremendous amount of pain, but my ruined leg is pushing me to my limit. The tissue struggles to knit back together, but there’s simply too much missing. Ideally, I need a series of transfusions to speed up the healing process. But I doubt my assailant will let me take a blood break.

I think of my upstairs vault. My only hope is to get to my weapons. It’s agony to stand, but I force myself to my feet. My world spins. There’s a cabinet nearby, filled with bathroom supplies, and I grab a roll of toilet paper and hastily wrap it around my wound. Blood immediately soaks through the paper, and I reach for another roll. The bleeding finally begins to slow. It’s not much, but it’s something.

I limp into the house, trying to move as silently as possible, and take a flight of stairs to my bedroom. I’m surprised he continues his cease-fire. I keep expecting his exotic bullets to slam my west walls. Perhaps he wants me to feel hopeless before he spends any more ammunition.

My hope is crushed when I see my chest of drawers lying facedown on the floor and my vault door sitting wide open. The vault’s been raided. He left the ten million in cash but removed every single gun.

That vault was supposed to be impenetrable.

And I didn’t even sense he had been in my house.

Who the hell is this guy?

A mass of bullets suddenly strikes my west bedroom wall. I’m fortunate I hear them coming—otherwise, I would have been cut in half. My foe’s switched weapons. It seems his armor-piercing sniper rifle’s no longer good enough for him.

He’s turned a Gatling gun on me.

The invention of the Gatling gun goes back in time to the battle of Gettysburg and the Civil War, which surprises most people who see it demonstrated on the deck of an aircraft carrier or a navy destroyer. The weapon’s so impressive—most people assume it must be a modern creation. The first time I saw it in action, I wanted to buy one. I love dangerous new toys. But I never was able to find a seller.

Basically it’s made up of a long barrel that’s continually fueled by a dozen or more revolving ammunition chambers. It can easily fire a thousand bullets a minute. The navy uses them to create a wall of flying lead that can detonate any missile launched at their ships. A modern Gatling gun is one of the most deadly weapons on the planet.

Now, to my great misfortune, I have the same wall of lead aimed at my comfy two-story house in the normally peaceful Missouri countryside. As I rush to my stairs, I see a three-foot circular hole rip open behind my bed. It takes an instant to transform my mattress into a dizzy cloud of down feathers. The bullets soar the length of my room and ricochet inside my empty vault. That’s where my assailant assumed I was standing.

I have one chance. I have a second, smaller vault hidden beneath the carpet in my living room. It doesn’t contain as many exotic weapons as my upstairs compartment, but it’s lined with lead, and it’s possible my assailant missed it when he was inside my house.

Dragging my wounded leg downstairs, I tear away the carpet with my nails and hastily spin the dial on the floor vault. I’ve lost so much blood, I have to struggle to remember the combination. But when I finally pull open the door, I feel a wave of relief.

A break at last! My foe has overlooked this vault. I take out a couple of .45 semiautomatic Glocks and stuff them in my belt, along with three throwing knives. But my eyes feast on the one Barringer sniper rifle I have left. It has a powerful sighting scope that’s equipped with a laser, which works well with my superhuman vision.

I grab as many clips of armor-piercing bullets as I can carry, a dozen. Since each clip holds twenty rounds, I figure I’ll have 240 chances to kill my foe.

He must suspect I’m no longer upstairs, because he suddenly shifts his Gatling gun to the living room. Once more, I’m fortunate my ears are able to anticipate his change in attack. Before the bullets even strike the living room, I shove a sofa and china cabinet against the wall to give me a brief umbrella of cover. Then I retreat back to the garage, essentially putting the house between me and him.

I have to go on the offensive. I’m pretty sure he knows I’m a vampire, because chances are he’s a vampire.

It’s the only thing that makes sense. No human being should have been able to hit me when I ran from the car to the house. Sure, it could have been a lucky shot, but what are the odds of that? Just the fact he was able to drag a Gatling gun into the woods indicates how strong he is. The weapon weighs a ton. No, he has to be a vampire.

But who made him? Yaksha would never have done so. He would never have disobeyed his vow to Krishna. And as for Eddie Fender—who for a time had access to Yaksha’s blood—I destroyed him years ago. The only source of vampire blood that seems remotely possible is the U.S. Army.

Joel Drake—an FBI agent I’d changed into a vampire—was the unwilling guest at a secret government facility outside Las Vegas. It’s true I wiped the damn place off the face of the earth with an H-bomb, but it was always possible the general in charge of the camp had shipped vials of Joel’s blood to the Pentagon before I exploded the bomb. Certainly the government connection would help explain where the vampire in the woods had obtained a Gatling gun.

Still, I have my doubts. I even have doubts about climbing on the roof, which would give me my best shot at the guy. My reasoning is simple—he will expect me to go up on the roof. If I fail to take him down with a single shot, he can casually spray the roof with his Gatling and splatter my guts over the grass, all the way down to the lake.

No, I must outwit him. I have to do the unexpected. I’m a sitting duck as long as I’m stuck in the house and he has plenty of ammunition for his supergun. I have to get to the woods, that will even the odds. I assume I know the area better than he does—after all, I live here. If I can reach the trees, I might even swing the odds in my favor.

True, my leg’s healing at a phenomenal rate, but I’m still crippled. I’ll need at least a minute to reach the trees, and he’ll spot me long before that. Unless . . . what? Can I create a diversion of some type?

A minute of frantic concentration gives me a plan.

Stage one—I have to transform my house into a big firecracker. I have materials that can do the trick: natural gas, a propane tank, the gasoline in the cars parked in my garage. But the key, the trigger, will be the propane tank. Unfortunately, I know enough about the gas to know it won’t explode—like such tanks always do on TV—simply by hitting it with a bullet. My trigger will need a trigger.

The powder in my sniper bullets is not ordinary gunpowder. It’s been soaked in nitroglycerin—that’s what causes the bullets to fire at such a high velocity. Working quietly, I unload two clips of bullets and spread them on an oil rag on the concrete floor. My hands are strong—I’m able to pull the caps off forty rounds without effort. Once I have a pile of powder available, I tie it into a ball and soak it with oil so it will stick to the side of the propane tank that stands outside my garage.

Next, I creep into the kitchen and turn on all the gas burners in my stove and oven. But I kill the pilot light, so the smell of gas begins to fill the room. At the same time I listen to what my assailant is up to. It sounds like he’s using the pause to reload his guns. He probably figures that I’m dead meat—that it’s only a question of time.

Back in the garage, I siphon off the bulk of the gasoline in the tanks of my cars into empty Sparkletts water bottles. The bottles hold five gallons each—I have only four. But I have over a hundred gallons of gasoline at my disposal, so I have to make several trips, back and forth, to spread the gasoline all over my house.

However, I leave each car with at least a gallon in its tank.

The cars are the trickiest part of my plan. When the time is right, I plan to launch them away from my house at different speeds and directions. They are a major part of the diversion I’m trying to create. I use rope and a complex combination of knots to rig the steering wheels to the gas pedals. I’m not worried my Porsche will block the way of the escaping cars. Just before I jumped from it, the Porsche veered to the right of the garage door.

Ah, the garage door—it is almost time to open it. Unfortunately, I have to launch the cars as soon as I open it or else he’ll just blow the vehicles up inside the garage. For that reason, I start all six of the cars before I open the door. It’s a delicate balancing act. The cars are in gear and ready to go. It’s only the closed door and the cramped space that keep them in place.

Once more, I stop and listen to what my opponent is up to. He appears to be doing likewise. He must have supernatural hearing to know I’ve started the cars, more proof that he is a vampire.

I stuff what clips I have left into my coat pockets and swing my sniper rifle over my shoulder. At last, I’m ready to make my dash for the woods. I have no idea what my odds are, but I like the many layers in my plan—the levels of deception. If I do die tonight, after walking the earth for almost two million nights, then no one can accuse me of not putting up a good fight.

I push a button and the main garage door opens. The cars take off like hungry rabbits, all in different directions. I’ve rigged each steering wheel separately. Some are pulled to the right, others to the left, some to the far right, and so on. Watching them race away, I’d swear they were driven by six different drunks.

I run out the side door, near where my blood covers the floor. My assailant immediately begins to fire on the cars, using his Gatling gun. He can’t see me leaving the house, not yet, because I’m still in its shadow. The steep outline of the roof protects me, and I know I’ll remain invisible until I reach a small rise three hundred yards away. Yet that’s only a third of the way to the trees, and I know he won’t take long to slay all six cars and realize they were nothing but a ruse.

Yet, for the moment, he seems quite happy to blast away at my vintage models. A glance over my shoulder shows me the mess he’s making of my Mercedes. The black sedan finally explodes when he hits the gasoline tank, and I watch as he shifts his aim onto my Ford Expedition that I use to haul supplies in. For now, he is pretty confident I’m in one of the vehicles.

My limp is clumsy, but I can still run twice as fast as most people. I’m fortunate to reach the low rise on the ground just as his supergun falls silent. Another five feet and the house will no longer shield me. Plus he has finished with the cars. The six burn like smoldering tanks on a lost battlefield. He has not been fooled. I can feel him scanning the area. He knows I’m not dead.

I drop to one knee and take aim at the propane tank, specifically at the wad of gunpowder I have attached to it. By now, a choking cloud of natural gas has filled the house and mingled with the fumes of the hundreds of gallons of gasoline I have soaked into the floor and the furniture. My firecracker is ready—I have only to light the fuse.

I put my laser scope on the oily ball and fire.

One shot, that’s all I need.

The house explodes in a red and orange mushroom cloud.

I turn and run toward the trees.

The size and glare of the exploding cloud gives me further cover. But my foe has already guessed what I’m using it for, and he rakes his bullets through the smoke and fire. He can’t see me, not yet, but he can guess where I am and where I’m going. For that reason I don’t make a beeline for the woods. Instead, I veer slightly to the left, taking a path that’s longer but hopefully safer. Almost instantly I have confirmation of the wisdom of my course. Off to my right, the ground erupts as the Gatling gun seeks my flesh.

I feel the anger in my foe. Feel it in the way he fires.

He knows he has been tricked, and he does not like it.

I almost make it. Once more, he may have gotten off another lucky shot, or else my bright mushroom cloud burned too fast and left me exposed. I suppose it doesn’t really matter how he’s able to hit me. All I know is that when the bullet slices through my right side, through my liver, I’m in serious trouble.

Like normal people, the worst place for me to get shot is in the head or the heart. I’m not sure if I could withstand such a blow. A bullet through the liver is almost as bad. The reason is the large number of arteries and veins in the organ. The blow to my thigh has caused me to lose a lot of blood. But this hole in my liver has turned me into a red geyser. I’m just entering the woods when I’m hit. It’s all I can do to run another twenty yards and collapse behind a thick tree.

The pain is worse than before. I feel burning, like the leg wound, but also an immense amount of pressure. I struggle to remain conscious. I know I must slow the bleeding, but it’s hard to move. Eventually, I manage to wiggle out of my leather coat and tie the arms over the hole. But the wound is on both sides, the front and the back, and I know his bullet has torn at least one major artery. It makes me sick to think of how scrambled my insides are, and I realize I cannot count on my body’s ability to heal itself.

Pulling my coat slightly down, I reach up and stick my fingers directly into the hole. I want to be sick, but I fear if I vomit, I’ll throw up a piece of something that I need. My fingers are not steady; they shake as they probe for the lacerated artery.

But eventually I find it and pinch it shut on both ends with the tips of my nails. Almost immediately the massive blood loss stops. I keep telling myself, if I can just stay alive a few minutes, I might be able to heal enough to where the shredded ends of the artery mend.

I’m doing surgery on myself. With my fingernails as scalpels.

God, how I wish I could black out and wake up in a hospital.

Sitting against the red-smeared tree, I concentrate on three things. First, I have to keep my fingers steady. I literally will them to stop trembling. Next, I focus on my breath. Long, deep breaths are best. They slow down my metabolism. Finally, I listen for my opponent. He probably knows he hit me; he may even be able to follow the trail of my blood to this very tree. Yet I’m deep enough in the woods to prevent him from using the Gatling on me. He would just waste his ammunition tearing apart trees.

I’m not surprised to hear him come to the same conclusion.

I know because I hear him begin to hike toward me.

He’s cautious, this guy. He doesn’t consider hiking across the open field to reach me. He knows if I’m still alive I can shoot him dead from a mile away. No, he stays in the trees, in the shadows, steadily circling around the field and my burning house.

My place continues to blaze like an insane asylum’s bonfire. The townsfolk probably didn’t hear his guns, but I’m sure somebody must have heard the house explode. We’ll probably have company soon in the form of police and firemen. I don’t know if I should root for them to hurry. Chances are my foe will kill them the second they arrive.

He’s halfway to my position when I feel the two ends of my torn artery finally fuse together. It may sound gross, but it’s a delightful feeling, because it tells me I will live. At least until he shoots me again. I’m grateful to be able to take my fingers out of my liver and tighten my coat sleeves back over the wound.

With my liver healing, I’m able to sit up and listen more closely to his movements. I note how often he stops to listen, how unsure his step is. I still believe he’s a vampire, but I know already my hearing is superior to his. I can hear his breathing, his heartbeat. Yet at best I think he has only a vague idea of my location.

My big ears don’t make me cocky. I’m still seriously injured, and if we end up fighting hand to hand, he’ll probably win. The fact he’s coming after me means he’s confident he can finish me off. Once more, I feel my best hope is to do the unexpected.

I decide to climb a tree.

With my side leaking and my thigh burning, it’s the last thing I want to do. Also, once I’m up in a tree, if I fail to kill him or seriously injure him with my first shot, then I’m doomed. But my gut tells me to take the chance, and I have learned to trust my gut, even when it has a hole in it.

Quietly, oh so gently, I slip off my boots and use my sniper rifle to prop me up. I can’t climb the tree I’m leaning against—it stinks of blood. But I can’t go far, I’m weak and nauseous. Besides, the more I move, the greater the chance he’ll hear me. Yet I deliberately head deeper into the woods, which will directly place me in the path he’s following. I soon find an old fern that looks promising.

I wrap the strap of my rifle around the barrel and bite down hard on it so there’s no chance the weapon will sway and bump a branch as I climb. Holding the gun this way keeps my arms free. I’m lucky my hands and feet are unharmed. I’m able to scamper up the tree fairly quickly. It’s the tallest tree in the area, and I don’t stop until I’m two hundred feet above the floor of the forest. I snuggle inside a handful of tightly placed branches, hoping the raw wood will offer some protection. Because I assume he has infrared equipment, I use the damp leaves to smear my bare skin with as much liquid as possible, trying to reduce my heat signature. I concentrate on my head; it gives off the most heat.

My view of the woods is vast, but I cannot see my opponent, not even using the infrared feature on the rifle’s scope. Still, I can hear him approach, and I notice he’s veered in the direction of my previous position. My blood, I think, he must smell my blood. That’s good—he’s heading toward a spot I have a clear shot at.

The waiting seconds are hard on me, and I wonder if I’ve grown soft in my old age. I keep flashing back to Teri and Matt. If I die tonight, I’ll never have a chance to get to know them, and they’ll never know what became of me. I’ve no doubt my foe is anxious to collect my body and my blood.

He’s two hundred yards from my previous position when he stops. I note how he slows his breath. He’s probably trying to scan the woods with a similar infrared scope. I wish I had more water to soak in. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s stopped along the way and drenched his entire body in a stream. He’s still not showing up in my scope.

But I can still hear him. I know when he starts to move again. To my surprise, he’s now heading directly toward me! Chances are he has better heat-sensing equipment than I do. He must have caught a glimpse of me in the tree. Very slowly, I turn in his direction, trying to catch even a flicker of him in my scope. All I need is one shot. . . .

I catch a glimpse of his foot, but it quickly disappears behind a tree before I can take aim. The move reassures me. He’s moving like a hunter who knows approximately where his prey is, but I doubt he’s seen me in the tree. I have chosen my spot well. The damp compactness of the branches is also dispersing my heat signature.

I make a bold decision. I turn off the laser sighting on my scope. I can aim better with it on—like most people—but I fear he’ll spot the laser even at its lowest setting.

For a long time, he stands behind a tree, then he suddenly leaps behind another. He moves too fast for me to get off a shot. I continue to follow his movements more with my ears than my eyes. I assume he knows in which direction I wait, because he’s careful not to let a vulnerable limb stick out. Still, there’s a huge difference between knowing my general direction and knowing my actual position.

He continues to head straight toward me!

The gap between us shrinks. A hundred yards, fifty yards, twenty yards . . . He stops thirty feet from my tree, and it’s obvious he still doesn’t know where I’m hiding. But I can’t see him! I can’t get off a shot!

However, his close proximity makes me rethink my strategy. From the start I’ve only been interested in killing him and surviving. Unfortunately, his death will tell me nothing about who sent him. But if I could disarm him, take him alive, question him, I might learn a great deal. I need information; I especially need to know who he’s working for.

My knives. I love knives, and I applaud my wisdom in removing three sharp ones from my vault and tucking them in my belt. If my foe truly does not know where I am and he steps from behind the tree where he’s standing, then I’ll have a clear shot at him. I can easily take his head off with my rifle. But to use my knives, to have full use of my arms, I’ll have to stand.

He’s so damn close he’ll probably hear me.

The decision weighs on me. Should I just kill him and survive the night, or should I risk dying but maybe find out how to survive the next year? It’s really a question of how quietly I can move and how sensitive his ears are.

I decide to risk it. Slowly standing, I jam my rifle against a nearby branch. I’ll reach for it the instant I release the knives. Of course, if the knives don’t stop him, the rifle will do me no good. There’s no question his reflexes are as good as mine. He’ll shoot me before I can reach for the gun.

I hold a knife in either palm. Right-handed, left-handed—both hands work the same for me. My goal is to cut the nerves between his shoulders and his arms. If I’m successful, he’ll lose control of his hands and be helpless. The armor-piercing bullets in my rifle are too powerful for such delicate surgery. A hit with one round would blow off his arm. The knives it must be.

Quietly, I suck in a breath and raise my arms over my head.

I stand still as a statue.

A minute later he tries slipping between two trees.

I let the knives fly. He hears me move, there’s no question, and I’m pretty sure he hears the knives approaching. But he hesitates a fraction of a second, and that’s all it takes. The knives catch him on the front side of both shoulders. The blades are long, eight inches each, and I’ve thrown them with such force that they sink all the way through his body and poke out his back.

But he’s a fighter, this guy, I have to admire that. Even with the knives cutting off his nerves, he tries to twist his body so his rifle’s pointed at me. He almost succeeds, but before he can fire, I have my rifle in hand and blow out his left knee. The bullet almost amputates his leg. The combination of wounds, to his upper and lower body, sucks the life out of him, and he drops his rifle and falls to the ground. Still, he reaches for a weapon in his belt.

“Stop!” I shout from the tree. “Move and I’ll take off your head!”

He freezes. Quickly I climb down, but I’m not in such a hurry that I relax my aim. He’s clearly an experienced killer; he’s still dangerous. Once on the ground, I circle cautiously, my rifle held ready, keeping a distance of ten yards.

He’s tall, extremely well muscled, with bronze skin and dark hair cut close to the scalp. His thick black eyebrows and eyelashes remind me of someone from another time and place. He’s dressed completely in black. He sits on the ground with a hand pressed over his wounded leg. He’ll have to possess my rejuvenating powers not to lose his leg.

His expression’s difficult to read. He breathes heavily; he must be in terrible pain. Never mind his leg, the knives piercing the nerve bundles in his shoulders must be agonizing. Yet he doesn’t moan or whimper. He shows almost no emotion. He’s spent half the night trying to kill me, but to my surprise I feel a wave of sympathy for him. I admire a worthy adversary, and he’s one of the finest I’ve come up against.

“Who are you?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer. I notice an unusual watch on his left wrist. At first I assumed he was trying to stop the flow of blood with his left hand, but now I realize he’s trying to keep the dial of the watch pointed at me. Could it be a weapon?

“Raise your arms, now!” I snap.

He tries to follow my order, but his arms flap uselessly. Still, his odd watch is no longer pointed at me. I move closer and sniff the air. The shock I experience right then forces me to take a step back.

He’s not a vampire!

How do I know? He doesn’t smell like one. All vampires—even the disgusting Eddie Fender—have a faint smell of our creator, Yaksha. This man smells more human than anything else.

There’s another reason I know he’s not a vampire. This close, I can hear the subtleties of his heartbeat, things I could not hear at a distance. A vampire’s pulse, even under stress, is extremely regular. One might say the sine wave never wavers. This man’s heartbeat is slightly erratic. True, his heart pounds with a strength much greater than an ordinary mortal’s, but the rhythm is more akin to a human’s. The same with his breathing. It’s not as smooth as it should be.

“What are you?” I ask.

He glares at me. “Kill me.”

“Are you so anxious to die?”

“Kill me.”

“No. I want to talk. You owe me that.”

He sneers. “I owe you nothing.”

I cannot place his accent. His English is perfect—the majority of people would assume he’s from England. But I hear other lands in his words.

“Why the hostility?” I ask. “You attacked me.”

“With good reason.”

“What have I ever done to you?”

“I know what you are.”

“Maybe you do. But whoever you are, I mean you no harm.”

“Liar!”

“I speak the truth. You can hear the truth, can’t you, when it’s spoken? I honestly don’t know who you are.”

My remark surprises him. He chews on it a moment.

“Can I rest my arms?” he asks.

“Yes. But keep your watch pointed away from me.”

His arms drop to his lap. “Can you pull out the knives?”

“I will if you answer a few of my questions. Agreed?”

He shakes his head. “It’s not allowed.”

“Allowed? You say that like you report to someone. Who?”

He shakes his head. He won’t answer.

I move closer. “Look, I’m serious when I say I mean you no harm. But someone sent you here to kill me, and frankly, that pisses me off. If you don’t start cooperating, I’m going to do things to you that will hurt a lot worse than that leg and those knives.”

He lowers his gaze, his eyes focus on his watch.

“I’s toad bein, jar?” he whispers softly.

I recognize the language, but only because I spent time in ancient Egypt. That was back in the days of Suzama. I doubt my attacker and whoever he’s talking to know that. My foe just said, “It is her, is it not?”

A voice replies via the watch, in the same forgotten dialect.

“There’s no doubt. You’ve done well.”

“Can I end it?”

“Yes. Now return to the Eternal Goddess.”

“All glory to the Eternal Goddess.”

The words are no sooner out of my assailant’s mouth than he twists his jaw to the right side and bites down. I hear a tooth inside his mouth—it can’t be a normal tooth—explode. Instantly I catch a whiff of something acidic in the air and leap back. A glowing cloud of red gas expands around his body as he exhales. The fumes are extremely corrosive. Within seconds his face melts away, his clothes catch fire, and his body begins to burn with a ferocity I’ve never seen before.

The blaze is as short as it is fierce. A minute later it’s gone, and so is the man. All that’s left is a pile of ash. Whatever he used to kill himself belongs to a technology more advanced than anything I’ve encountered.

Yet somehow he’s connected to ancient Egypt. The clue gives me small comfort. I still don’t know who or what these creatures are and why they want me dead.