FLEMING

DUGAN held the shiny-clean scalpel rock steady between his fingers, looking down with that damned permanent smile that had never before reached his eyes. They glinted now. He was a truly happy man.

You know what comes next," he stated.

I had no way to brace against it. I'd been to the brink and over. I couldn't go there again.

Eyes shut, I gave up.

My mind slipped away and hid in that perfect summer hour, adding more detail. The cool water contrasting with the hot breeze, shade tree overhead, sunbeams streaming through the leaves, birdsong... good, good, but I needed company.

Leaning against the tree was Escott, coatless, shirtsleeves rolled up, waistcoat unbuttoned, no tie. He sipped lemonade from a tall glass, his attention on the green fields around us. He looked surprisingly at peace.

Bobbi was in the stock tank. She held me, kept me from sinking. She wore a skin-hugging swimsuit... I couldn't fix on the color. It kept shifting from red to blue to yellow, sometimes black. None of them seemed right on her, but this was the first time I'd ever seen her in sunlight. It made her blond hair glow and set off the green sparks in her eyes.

She smiled like it was the world's first day and bent to kiss me. I felt her lips and knew if she stayed with me I would be all right.

Something stung my left wrist, kept on stinging, harsh as a wasp.

I held fast to my illusion for a few more precious seconds, then had to see what hurt.

It was and was not what I'd expected.

My wrist hung out past the edge of the table, and Dugan had sliced into it, but not to strip away flesh. He was hunched over holding a glass under the wound, collecting the blood.

My initial shock and disgust were overwhelmed by elation. He wasn't going to skin me, just drain me dry. That wasn't as painful. In the end I'd just fall asleep.

As deaths went, it was the best I could expect.

I smothered my relief, but while one part of me celebrated an easier passing, another part seethed with blind fury for what he was doing. I tried to pull away, but of course the metal held. The hot shock was more remote this time. My body was slowing down in reaction to the blood loss. I could feel my strength literally rushing out.

Dugan's smile was genuinely warm. "Things got so very interesting the other night, didn't they? The hospital. Your friend was so sick. I was there."

How...? One of the reporters? But they'd left. The only other one...

"You are quite the catalyst for calamity, aren't you, Fleming? First that actor shot, then your partner hurt. What a terrible beating he had. I troubled to get close to your little group, and it was just too easy. You're all so tidily wrapped up in your concerns. You looked right at me once, but didn't really see. No one notices a humble janitor with his bucket and mop."

He had that right. Too late now to feel stupid over it. The wig, thick glasses, and a big mustache to hide his distinctive mouth had done the trick.

"Such a remarkable event transpired that night. The whole hospital was gossiping about the dying patient who was made to drink blood, then had a miraculous recovery."

The cut inside my wrist healed shut, leaving a welt that would fade if I lived long enough. The glass he held was a laboratory beaker with measurement lines up the sides. He'd drawn off at least a cup of my blood. Much more than that had dripped to the floor when I fought to get free. I was dizzy from the loss.

He straightened, sniffing the contents of the beaker.

"How generous you were to save his life-and letting me know for certain how to change mine for the better."

I wanted to smash his smile to the other side of his head. Underestimating him... not smart... damned stupid in fact.

His self-absorbed ramblings... I'd not paid them the proper attention. Now they made sense; he hadn't been lecturing just to hear his own voice. I understood now.

He wanted to turn himself into a vampire.

Dugan correctly interpreted my revulsion. He leaned in close. "Remember when we first spoke in your office? I told you then I wanted you for a very simple experiment-nothing that would offend your sense of morality. You should have listened." He thumped a finger sharply against the rod. It made my arm twitch, tearing the skin again, and more of my life leaked away. "All I wanted then was for you to get into one of the larger banks for a modest withdrawal. They wouldn't have missed it, and it would have been of considerable help to me. But you had to be difficult."

God, I was so hungry. Bloodsmell was everywhere, and I couldn't touch it. I had to fight to stay focused.

"I realized there would be no effective way to control you; therefore, my best course of action was to acquire your abilities myself. I did a bit of research, but there is appallingly little information available, and much of it is suspect. However, your friend's misfortune gave me all I really needed." He lifted the beaker. "I'm estimating that it will take three nights to effect the full transformation. The folklore is in general agreement on that point, though it's mixed up with religious nonsense. Now you know how long you'll be here. Once I'm like you, I will let you go-I know you don't believe that. You dealt me some very shabby treatment, but really, I was never your enemy."

I'll carve that on your gravestone.

"Be assured, I'll have a long head start before you're set free. I know you won't be persuaded to a sensible neutrality toward me, but I truly have nothing against you. You're no different from any other animal succumbing to instinct. You lack the capacity for-"

"Ya want in the union?" I asked. My voice had turned reedy. It was hard to draw in enough air to speak. "Why dint ya say so? I'da put th' word in."

"You waste yourself."

No doubt. I needed him to underestimate me.

"And you can't even see it. But you have my word: three nights, and I'll let you go. Oh-your friends won't miss you. I repaired the damage made when I broke into your little lair. I also left a suitably misleading message with that detective fellow's answering service. They're under the impression that you've gone off to do a bit of thinking. Exasperating, perhaps, but they won't look for you."

Would Escott question that? Or Bobbi? The way I'd been acting lately...

"This won't be pleasant for either of us, but I will be civil to you for the duration. Once this is over, you'll never see me again, and that should be some consolation."

Dugan raised the beaker to his lips and took his first taste. It must not have been to his liking, to judge by his expression. He had to force himself.

He drank all of it, which was more than was needed. A sip would do the job-if it worked. I stared the way you do at a car accident. It's bad, but you can't stop until you see the worst. What would it be, a dead body or a dying one? I was the one dying, though. I'd lost so much life, and he was drinking away the rest.

Yet as I lay there, weak and starving, I began to laugh, very softly.

He's got it wrong.

I used up what little strength remained, laughing.

If he thought me insane, well and good.

His eyes were strange, very bright. It would be hard getting him to think I was crazy. He was so far gone himself.

"What is it?" he asked. Suspicion from him now. I had to be more careful.

"You..."

"What?"

Huh. Had to finish it, give him a reply. Something to mislead. "You... look funny, Gurley Hilbert." I trailed off drowsily. Not an act-I was shutting down the same as I did at dawn.

He disliked the distortion of his name, but his smug smile returned. I hoped that meant he thought himself to still be fully in control of this two-legged animal. Hell, he was in control, but it wouldn't last. He'd made a big mistake letting me get so weak.

"That pettiness doesn't matter to me. You don't see that I... I don't-"

Then he abruptly broke off, falling from the chair, whooping and gagging.

Drinking blood is not something people just do. There's only so much an ordinary human can take before getting sick. Even with my change making the stuff taste good, it had taken months before my mind got used to the idea itself and accepted it. How much worse was it for this fastidious, fancy-pants society swan. You can't think too much on the process, and Dugan was obsessed with his intellectual superiority. Whatever was going through his mind... he'd have to quash it thoroughly. Odds were he'd find it impossible. Minds like his had no off switch.

But was his reaction a result from taking blood in general or my blood in particular?

Until that miracle in Escott's hospital room, I'd have bet on the former. Not so sure anymore. A vampire's blood had saved a sick man from dying, but what would it do to a well man? Make him healthier?

No matter. The bastard's got it wrong.

This had happened to me before, but the woman who'd forced me to change her had gotten the ordering right. If Dugan had somehow made me drink his blood first, and then taken from me, I'd have been worried. He'd left out that step. We were both in strange waters with this variation.

I wasn't going to tell him about it, either.

Pyrrhic victory to Jack Fleming, maybe.

He moaned, but it sounded more like ordinary disgust than physical pain. Escott hadn't reacted, but he'd been unconscious.

If I could just lift up a bit to see what was-

Then my eyelids suddenly closed on their own.

Death's own silent chill seized my body.

A relentless progress, feet, legs, trunk, it was like being buried in snow, very snug, very final. I'd been through this before, too. Didn't like it, but better than getting skinned.

I'd expected this, but still felt a hurt surprise.

My death would mess up Dugan's plans. Cold comfort, but serve him right. He didn't understand how vulnerable I was to blood loss. He'd ignored things while I bled. He had literally talked me to death.

I sought that summer day, and it flooded around me, sweet and warm. Bobbi held me safe until it was time to drift free.

It was very like those moments when I went invisible, but even that formless state had weight, keeping me bound to a physical world. Now I shrugged it off, lifting above myself, wonderfully light.

The clay I'd left behind was in poor shape. The face had gone terribly gaunt, fingers curled into grasping claws, outstretched arms so desiccated that the shape of the bones showed through the gray flesh. He'd been through much pain, but that was finished now. No more suffering for him, the poor bastard. The me that floated above him was unsure of what to do next now that having a body was of no further importance.

The other man in the room finally got off the floor and went to check on the remains. No amount of shouting or slapping of the face would animate that corpse.

The man rushed out of my field of view. I kept staring at me, reluctant to say good-bye. Once I left, that would be the end of it. No more ties to this world. No more...

Bobbi-she won't know what's happened.

That wasn't anything I could fix. What was done was done. I had to go soon.

I can't just leave her.

I hesitated. And thought. And thought some more.

And came to see what lay ahead.

What she'd go through-I couldn't do that to her. I'd carry the remorse with me forever. But weren't you supposed to shed that at death? Apparently not. I could deal with my private failures and mistakes, but not the wrongs I'd inflicted on others. Added up, they were worse than my time in hell hanging from the meat hook.

But this was out of my hands. Someone had taken my life and all chance to make things right with anyone. Bobbi would never...

The helplessness returned again. My regret had weight like a thousand anvils, and it dragged me toward the empty shell below. I hovered close to what had been familiar features. His mouth sagged, and his eyelids were at half-mast over dulling orbs. That was a dead man's face. I didn't want to sink into it and pushed away, just a tiny distance.

Bobbi will look for you and cry and wonder and worry and never know...

She deserved better than that. I couldn't let her go through what I had endured when my lover, Maureen, had disappeared. For years I'd searched, always wondering; the grief and anger and the not-knowing had eaten me hollow.

I brushed against the cold, leaden husk and recoiled. How could I possibly take up its burden again?

I couldn't. That wasn't for me anymore.

It was over; I had to leave.

At the end of the day, at the end of life, it's the same for us all. We get the answers we've always sought. Things are finally clear. Everything would turn out all right. Bobbi would go through a bad stretch but get past it. Decades from now, at some decisive future point, her time would come, and she would hover like this over her body. I'd be there waiting for her-

Unless she made the change and became Undead.

A small chance, but possible.

Then she would live on and always wonder and never know and perhaps blame herself, just as I had. Only she'd never find me. She would never find me.

I couldn't allow that.

I had to get back to her.

Desire and will added weight, and I sank lower. There was an invisible barrier between me and my cooling flesh. It seemed permeable, but I sensed that would not last long, growing thicker and more difficult to breach the longer I delayed.

With hard effort, I pushed past it and instantly felt the awful press of gravity dragging me into agony and blackness.

Reluctantly I came to, the taste of cold animal blood on my tongue and clogging my throat. I gave in to a convulsive choking swallow and got most of it down. Whatever reviving magic it possessed began spreading through my starved body. Everything woke up at once: the constant pain, the helplessness, the rage, and especially the hunger. That hurt the worst.

Someone held my head at an awkward angle and had a cup to my lips. He cursed as the stuff sloshed past my mouth. I got another gulp down and another, and then it was gone. I still hurt, still needed-

"More," I whispered.

Dugan stared. There was a smear of my blood on his cheek. "It's disgusting."

"You're the one... who wants this."

He didn't move. He seemed to be having second thoughts.

"More... or I die."

"You won't. You're immortal."

There's no arguing with an idiot. My eyes shut again, and I didn't respond when he slapped me.

That worked. He hurried away and returned with more blood. I didn't want to gorge, but couldn't stop. My previous out-of-control overfeedings had been to sate an addiction; this was pure survival. That was what I told myself, and from the way the stuff gusted through me, sweetly filling out the corners, it was the truth. I'd come that close.

After several trips upstairs and back, Dugan must have run out of stock; he stood over me for a time, watching and asking variations of "Are you all right?" at intervals until I mumbled at him to shut up.

That seemed to reassure him. He went up and didn't return. He left the basement light on. An oversight, perhaps. What had happened must have spooked him badly.

That made two of us.

I kept still, resting, recovering, thinking of ways to kill him. None seemed a brutal or painful enough payback.

My brain cleared; I listened to his movements, heard the splash of water. Yeah, things had gotten very messy; he'd want to clean up. Wish I could. This place had running water, electricity, I'd not yet heard a phone. It was information, perhaps useful, perhaps not.

Then he paced. Restlessly, uneven, up and back in a not-very-large room, to judge by the number of steps he took.

Then things went quiet. I thought he'd fallen asleep until a very faint scratching sound came through the floor to me... a pen on paper. The son of a bitch was writing.

What would it be? A harrowing and heroic account of his first feeding? Perhaps another essay arguing the social practicality of killing off inferiors or maybe a scientific record of his reaction to my blood. How about a grocery list? Memo to self, stop at butcher shop for another gallon...

I'd recovered enough to laugh again, softly.

The other me turned up again at last, walking into view the same as a real person. He looked sad now. He was right, I'd had my opening to escape and chose to return. Neither of us had reason to believe Dugan's promise about freedom on the third night. He would kill me and put what was left where it would never be found. Bobbi would still never know... No, dammit. Stop thinking like that.

I would figure out something. I would get back to her.

Things had improved, such as they were. I'd taken in enough blood to ease my belly pain and allow me to think. I didn't feel very smart at the moment and looked to my benign doppelg��nger for suggestions.

He shrugged. "What would Kroun do?"

That one was easy: not get caught in the first place.

His extra caution, not letting even me in on where he spent his days, had worked well. Of course, Dugan didn't know the man was a vampire, having assumed I'd been the one who saved Escott.

Unless Dugan wanted me to think that. No, let's keep this simple. He would have said or asked something by now. He had a trapped audience; there was no way he could resist crowing about his cleverness.

Had Kroun been here, he'd probably have tried hypnosis. It wouldn't have worked. Hurley Gilbert should be locked in the booby hatch down the hall from Sonny. Even if I'd been free and clear of giving myself a fatal headache from the attempt, the old evil-eye whammy didn't impress members of their club.

"Anything else?" I muttered, confident that the other me had the benefit of my internal reply.

"What about Escott? How would he get out of this?"

He'd be dead if his arms looked like mine did now. Otherwise, he would listen, learn, and use any little shred of information to his advantage.

Dugan's pen scratched away, fast and without pause. He was just bursting with thoughts tonight. He liked dark green ink on thick notepaper. When done writing, he used his handiness with origami to fold the paper into whatever shape he wanted, which was a very unique way to file things. Was the upstairs of this place filled with little paper sculptures, each one bearing his thoughts? He could make cranes, giraffes, boats, and once left a small paper coffin where I would find it. He'd not written on it, but I got the message that he would be back. Too bad for me I'd let other concerns crowd it out.

"How about Dugan himself?" asked the walking-around me. "What would he do?"

Manipulation. That was his specialty: getting people to go along with him against their better judgment. No one even thought to disbelieve him, such was the effect of his brand of charm. He exploited their weak points. He had plenty of his own I could use against him, but he would be suspicious of anything I said.

On the other hand he knew he was a genius, while I was little more than a talking animal. I'd already played on that. Giving him what he expected shouldn't be hard.

I winced. I wasn't good at that kind of thing.

"Better learn quick, then," said my friend who wasn't there.