“It’s best to forget it.”

“But you haven’t forgotten.” Beneath her fingers, the tattoo seemed to burn.

Zane squeezed his eyes shut. “No. I can never forget.”

Her hand went to his cheek, cupping it. He jerked for a split-second, then placed his own palm over her hand.

“Why do you want to know about it?” He opened his eyes and gazed at her.

“Because I want to know who you are.” She collected all her courage to speak the next words. “Because I’m falling in love with you.”

A flash of despair lit in his eyes. “Oh, God, Portia. Please don’t … You’re young. This is your first experience. You don’t know what you’re feeling.”

Portia shook her head. Her feelings toward him were intense and honest, and most of all, very clear: it wasn’t simply desire that held her captured in his arms, it was something deeper and more potent than anything else she’d ever experienced. “I know what I feel.”

“You don’t know me.”

“Then help me get to know you.”

He stared at her, his jaw tight, his chest heaving as if he had trouble breathing.

“Please,” she whispered. “Tell me who you are.”

Zane closed his eyes in a motion of surrender. “Promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“Don’t judge me for what I’ve done.”

She leaned to kiss his lips in agreement. There was a sense of desperation when he kissed her back, and a reluctance to let go of her. She reacted by shifting closer.

“I was human when I entered Buchenwald. I escaped it a vampire. Between those two events lie five years of misery, pain, and death. The first two years in the camp was hard labor, working in an armament factory, supporting a cause I didn’t believe in. We lived in miserable conditions, and I thought I was in hell. But then they selected me and my sister for another program.”

“What program?” Portia echoed.

“They called it medical research, but it was much more than that. It was evil."

***

“The barracks looked no different from the others where the general inmate population was kept, yet inside the wooden structure, hell had been recreated. Rooms, or rather cells, lined the entire length of the building. On the other side, laboratories with ominous looking glass containers with mysterious contents gleamed in their sterility, belying the otherwise squalid condition of the camp.”

“It must have been horrible,” Portia interrupted.

Zane nodded. “Unimaginable. Are you sure you want to know about this?”

“Yes. Go on. What happened in those barracks?”

“Here, the prisoners were fed well. Their bodies were clean, and the doctors in attendance monitored their health on a constant basis. On its surface, it looked like a state-of-the-art hospital with every type of medical equipment available in the early 1940s. Any casual visitor would have seen nothing more frightening than two dozen inmates dressed in hospital whites, rather than the striped prison uniform worn by their fellow prisoners in the other barracks.

“But these men and women didn’t count themselves lucky; each and every one wished they’d never been picked from the vermin-infested barracks where the rest of the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and political prisoners were kept. Had they known what would be their fate, they would have gladly returned to the hard labor that the other, more fortunate ones, were performing daily.”

Zane felt Portia holding her breath in anticipation.

“But they’d had no choice. They selected my sister Rachel and me in 1942, two years after we entered the camp. The day they brought us to the research barracks was the day I saw my parents for the last time. I don’t know what happened to them after that.”

Portia’s hand stroked over his arm, comforting him.

“My hair was no longer than half an inch by that time, but they shaved what remained so they could attach the electrodes they used for some of the experiments.

“The medical chief of the facility was Dr. Franz Müller. There were four other doctors working under him. They did everything he demanded. Nobody questioned his methods. Even the commandant of the camp, Standartenführer Hermann Pister, didn’t interfere. Müller was given free reign. His official orders were to conduct experiments that would help the German military in the recovery of their wounded soldiers. And mostly, it was what all these doctors did, not only at Buchenwald but also at other camps like Auschwitz and Mauthausen. Müller was as cruel as Mengele, and as mad as the Führer himself. But worst of all was his obsession with two things: immortality and a master race.”