5 Years Later

Dante woke to the sounds of crackling flames and the smell of smoke. It was so like a fragment of his oldest nightmare that for a moment he believed it was just that, a dream memory come to haunt him, and he didn't stir. But then he felt the heat and the sting in his eyes. He sensed the angry flames and knew they were real.

He sat up fast, too fast, then had to blink in order to clear his swimming head. Night had not yet fallen, he realized dully. He was still weak with the languor of the day sleep. His limbs felt heavy as he turned himself sideways in the large bed and let his legs fall to the floor. They tingled in rebellion when he put weight on them, but he lumbered anyway, stark naked, across the lush carpet, toward the bedroom door. He didn't go far. He didn't have to. Flames snapped and snarled beyond the door, and its gleaming finish began to bubble and sweat.

Dante's nose burned with the smell, and his mind whirled with questions. This was not a coincidence. He turned toward the window, tugging back the heavy draperies, then ducking to the side as the sunlight seared his exposed skin. It hung low in the sky, that blinding yellow death, but it was there, dammit. If he went outside, he would roast.

If he stayed in here, he would do likewise.

The door groaned ominously, swelling inward before its pregnant belly burst, giving birth to hungry flames. Smoke wafted in like a great black ghost. His flesh sizzled. Growling deep in his throat, Dante tore the drapery from its rod, wrapped it around him like a shroud and dove through the glass.

The ground didn't give an inch but met him brutally, knocked the breath from his lungs, jarred his teeth and rattled his bones. He rolled, got to his feet and ran blindly as he felt the sun heating his skin through the fabric. There was motion to the left of him, then an impact as he slammed bodily into what felt like a car. Brakes squealed, and someone shouted a curse to the accompanying blast of a horn, but Dante just kept moving. He had to peer through the opening in the fabric to see where the hell he was going. Across the pavement, yes, this was right. He ran flat out, off the road, across the weed-strewn parking lot, his bare feet blistering with every searing step as he raced toward the shore. The sunlight beyond the drapery was beginning to penetrate now, and he could feel his flesh blister. Damn, damn, damn. Head down, bare feet pounding, drape clutched around him like a cloak, he ran.

There was a sound. A whirring sound, and then something skewered his arm. It felt as if a red-hot blade had driven straight through. He stopped dead at the stunning pain, groping beneath the drapery with his one functioning hand and feeling a shaft, like a dowel, embedded in his upper arm, warm, thick blood pulsing from the point of entry.

"I got him!" someone shouted. A man's voice.

A dead man, Dante thought viciously. He forced himself to keep moving. Then his feet touched water and he pressed onward, sloshing to knee depth, then mid-thigh. The cool salty wetness was like heaven on his flesh. God, he was baking. A few more yards and he pitched himself headlong into the Atlantic and swam deep. He let go the drapery, but it hung, tugging at the shaft in his arm until he tore it free. Pain screamed through him, but there was no time to acknowledge it. He swam, as deep as he could go, and still deeper, until he couldn't feel the sun heating his skin any longer.

Then he rolled, his body brushing the sand and shells and assorted litter on the bottom and stirring up a watery cloud as he looked above him, toward the surface. The sky beyond the water was still pale, but growing ever dimmer. The water cooled and soothed his heat-razed flesh, but his arm was alive with pain, and in a moment he realized the clouds in the water were taking on a pinkish hue. He glanced down at his arm. High on the outside, halfway between shoulder and elbow, the bolt he'd all but forgotten was still piercing him. Blood oozed steadily from around it, blossoming in the water.

The maniac had shot him with a crossbow.

Dante lifted his arm and saw the bolt sticking out the underside. Lovely.

Gripping the bolt with one hand, he pulled it free, swearing the damned thing was a mile long, grating his teeth at the intensity of the pain as it slid through his flesh. Jesus! Mortals would never know pain like vampires did. Never.

He dropped the bolt to the ocean floor, but the blood still flowed. And it would continue to flow until he bled out, unless he found a way to stanch it. The wound would heal only with the day sleep. If he lived that long.

He reached down to the sea's bottom, scooped up a handful of the muddy sand and, mustering every ounce of tolerance he had, packed the stuff into the hole in his arm. The pain was excruciating. He howled with it, but in the depths, who could hear? He packed the sand in from both sides of the wound, then plucked a handful of coarse seaweed and wound it around his arm. Using his teeth and one hand, he knotted the rope-like stalks.

He was weak from the pain, his lungs starving for air, and though he would not die for the lack of it, it was nearly impossible to convince himself not to inhale.

When he looked up again, the sky was dark, and he whispered a silent thanks to whatever sorts of angels watched over the undead. He pushed his feet into the ocean bottom, just a little. Slowly, very slowly, he let himself float to the surface. When his head broke through, he sucked in a deep breath. It felt heavenly, filling his lungs, clearing his head. He pushed his dripping hair off his face and scanned the shoreline.

"He's got to come out sooner or later."

Dante followed the sound of the voice to its owner, a man who stood on the shoreline, waving a flashlight around over the surface of the water. He was looking seventy-five yards too close to the shore. Thinking like a mortal, applying mortal limitations to a creature who laughed at them.

"If he does, he'll kill us both," said another man. "The sun's gone down."

"But-"

"We failed. You have to know when to admit defeat and walk away, Raymond. Otherwise you won't live long enough to try again. After dark, they're in control. You understand? The night is our enemy."

Gazing through the darkness, Dante spotted the second man on the shore. The left side of his face, between the cheek and the eye, was mottled and scarred, pulling the eye itself into a grotesque pout. Higher, there was a pink patch where no hair grew on his head.

"Put the light out," the scarred man ordered.

The other one, Raymond, obeyed. "How can he stay in the water that long? Huh? I didn't think they could breathe underwater like freaking fish or something."

"They can't. But it would take a very long time for one to pass out from lack of oxygen."

Dante pulled his arms through the water, moving silently, steadily closer, eager to rip out their throats and drain them dry. He'd lost a substantial amount of blood. He could replenish himself at their expense. The two were certainly courting his wrath.

But before he could reach them, they hurried away. He heard doors slam, a motor start up, and then saw the lights of a car as it left him. No longer bothering to move slowly or quietly, Dante swam until his knees dragged in the sand. Then he got to his feet and waded out of the cold ocean. As he stood on the shore, ankle deep in the water, stark naked and cold as stone, he looked back toward the flaming torch in the night that had been one of his favorite homes.

"I'm going to have to kill those two, whoever the hell they were."

"Dante?"

He knew that voice, and he waited there, dripping wet, his arm screaming in pain, until Sarafina stepped out of the shadows. She was beautiful, as always. Dressed in a full skirt of black lace, scalloped at the bottom. A white peasant blouse pushed down to bare her milky shoulders. Colorful silk scarfs at her waist and in her black, curling tresses, trailing her like comets' tails whenever she moved. She wore too much makeup. Always had. Thick black liner and dark shadow gave her a menacing appearance, and the long, curling bloodred nails added to that. But she was a Gypsy. She embraced the stereotypical image that went with the blood. It was her gimmick.

She moved closer, gripped his shoulders, making him wince, and kissed his face, his mouth. He felt her warmth and smelled a fresh kill on her breath.

"You're all right?" she asked when she finally released him.

"I've got a hole in my arm, but it will keep. The bastards burned my house."

"Did you see them?" she asked.

He nodded. "They're gone now, or they'd be dead."

"Did one of them have a scarred face?"

Looking at her sharply, Dante nodded. "You've encountered them?"

"Him, at least. He was following me one night in Rome. I'd have ripped out his throat if he hadn't realized I'd spotted him and run like a rabbit."

Dante sighed. "The man is a pest."

"The man needs killing."

Rolling his eyes, Dante managed a smile, in spite of his pain. "You think every mortal needs killing, Sarafina."

"Thirty of our kind have been murdered in their sleep, Dante. And other fires like this one have come close to claiming more. Someone knows our secrets." A chill went through him-at her words, or because of the cold, he wasn't certain which. "Let's go someplace where I can get dry," he told her. "We'll talk there."

"Yes. You'll draw a crowd soon enough, standing out here naked."

Taking his arm, Sarafina led him to a black limousine that was parked around a bend in the road, put him into the back seat and slid in beside him. Dante almost smiled at the extravagance.

The driver said nothing of the sopping wet, naked man his employer had apparently plucked from the waves. He didn't even look directly into her eyes when she spoke to him. He was well trained, Dante thought. Very well. Maybe too well. Pushing a button so the glass partition opened just slightly, Sarafina said, "Take us to the apartment, pet. And turn up the heat back here."

The driver's only reply was a nod as the glass slid closed again. Then the car was in motion.

Sarafina picked up a large crocheted shawl and proceeded to rub Dante's shoulders, chest and hair with it. "I think it's that dreadful DPI," she said. "They have to be behind this."

Dante sent her a quelling glance, then jerked his head toward the man in the front.

"Oh, don't be ridiculous, love. He can't hear me with the partition closed, and even if he could, he wouldn't repeat a word."

Dante glanced again at the man in the front. He was very pale, very thin. His eyes seemed hollow. He couldn't see the man's throat, but the fact that he wore a turtleneck beneath his navy-blue jacket spoke volumes. Dante looked at Sarafina again. "You're not supposed to use them as slaves, 'fina. It's bad form."

She shrugged. "At least I don't kill them outright. Unless they displease me. Stop changing the subject. What do we do about this organization?"

He shook his head slowly, debating whether to put the poor mortal out of his misery when the ride had ended. Then again, what good would it do? Sarafina would only find another whose mind she could bend to her will. The more often a vampire drank from a mortal without killing them, the more addicted the mortal became, until he was little more than a mindless subservient worm, like the driver, craving only the feel of his mistress's fangs sinking into his flesh.

"DPI was destroyed five years ago," he told her. "The government stopped funding the project after that. It no longer exists."

"Then who is hunting down vampires?"

He shrugged, looking away.

"More interestingly, who is giving them their information? How do they know where we rest, where we hunt, where we live? Even DPI, with all their research, didn't have this much information on our personal lives." She dropped the damp black shawl on the seat between them. "That is the person we need to find, Dante. Whoever it is, we need to kill them... slowly, I think. I'd like to see them writhe for a while first."

She pushed a button, and the glass between the front and back seats slid open once again. She leaned closer to it. "Your wrist, my pet. Your mistress is hungry."

Smiling wanly, the driver lifted his arm, poked his hand through the opening. The sleeve of his jacket was already rolled back, and several puncture wounds littered his forearm. Gripping his forearm with both of hers, Sarafina sank her teeth into him and sucked at him for a long while. Dante looked away but couldn't deny the hunger stirring inside him.

She lifted her head, licked her red lips clean. "Would you like some, Dante? My pet is quite delicious."

"You're cruel, Sarafina. Kill him and have done with it."

She lifted her brows as if wounded, then turned her attention back to her driver. She licked his forearm clean of the trickles of blood left behind and gently rolled his sleeve down again. "Here we are, love. Pull over right here."

He nodded, pulling the limo to a stop. Then he got out, came back and opened her door.

They were on a highway. Traffic rushed past in a blur of lights and motion. Sarafina didn't get up. Without so much as looking at him, she said, "I want you to do something for me, love."

"Anything," the driver whispered. He was a tall man, Dante noted. Dark hair sprinkled with gray, a thin, angular face and a beakish nose.

"I want you turn around, and walk out into the middle of the highway."

The driver stared at her, not directly at her eyes, but somewhere below them.

"Sarafina-" Dante began.

"Do it now," she said.

Dante closed his eyes and swore under his breath. The driver turned and stepped out into the oncoming traffic. His body was hurled about a hundred feet when it was struck. By then, though, Sarafina was behind the wheel and driving away.

She never even looked back.

"I just don't understand why you won't move back to L.A., Morgan. You have everything you wanted. You could return in triumph now, just the way you always said you would."

Morgan paced across the marble tiles of the great room, heels clicking with every step. She wore a loose-fitting teal blouse and matching pants in brushed silk that whispered over her skin when she moved. She loved the way it felt. "I like it here," she said. "Come on, David, even you have to admit I've done wonders with this place in five years' time."

"I'm beginning to wish I'd never sold it to you," he muttered, half under his breath. He eased his large frame into a claw-footed antique chair, looking around the great room as he did. She knew he had to admire what he saw. The plasterwork ceiling had been freshly redone, right down to the cherubic angels in the corners and filling the concave dome directly above them.

She took the seat across from him, handed him a pass of iced soda. Her own glass looked identical, res, despite the early-morning hour, there was vodka mixed with hers. She needed the strength. She loved I avid, but dammit, she wished he would just leave.

She didn't care about anything except getting back to her journals. To the fantasies and the man who had written them. God, to go a single waking hour, much less a day, without wallowing in his mind was nearly unbearable. She never left the house anymore. She never wanted to. And when she slept-oh, God, it was best when she slept Because he was so much more real in dreams.

"I have to admit, I'm confused," David said, taking the soda, sipping it. "I thought it was all decided. You were going to hide out here, lick your wounds, write your blockbuster, make your fortune and come home to reclaim everything you'd lost."

"Ahh, yes. And restore honor to the De Silva family name." She smiled just a little.

"If I'd known you could write the way you can, and as quickly as you can, I have to admit, I'd never have let you come out here in the first place."

Morgan averted her eyes. "I couldn't write like that. Not out there. I found my...inspiration, for want of a better word, here. In this house. I couldn't work anywhere else. I can't, David. I won't."

"That's superstitious nonsense."

No, she thought. It wasn't. Dante was here. She felt him here. Her own beautiful madman. God, he-his diaries, at least-had given her back her Me. And yet, they had stolen a part of it, too. The man who'd called himself Dante had captivated her mind, her soul, in some dark way she had yet to understand. He was real to her. He was more than a long-dead lunatic who had written down his insane delusions. He was real. He lived... inside her somehow. Inside this house.

But she couldn't explain any of that to David. Instead she stared up at the crystal chandelier she'd had installed in the great room and wondered how close she had come to the one that was there originally. When Dante had lived here.

It hadn't been easy to restore the house. And it hadn't been cheap. But thanks to the box office success of the first two films in her vampire series, she had been able to afford to do exactly what she wanted. And that included hiring period experts to help her plan her restoration, to make it as accurate as possible. Although much, much more luxurious.

Her third film had been out for exactly eight weeks, and it had already made Morgan wealthy beyond her wildest dreams. David, as well. And now they waited to see what other dreams might be realized.

Morgan glanced at her watch. "Isn't it time yet?"

"Close enough, I suppose. Come on." David got to his feet, held a hand out to her. She took it and let him pull her up. "God, Morgan, you've got to put on some weight. You're not an actress, you know."

She smiled at him, hiding the weakness in her legs, the slight rush of dizziness that often hit her when she got up too quickly. "You can't be too rich or too thin," she quipped. "Besides, if all goes well, I'll need to look good in some designer's idea of a dress in a few weeks."

Right. As if she would leave this place, even for that.

They walked across the tiles to the double doors that opened into her office. The fireplace had been converted to gas now, and the first thing Morgan did upon entering was turn it on. Lush oriental rugs covered the newly refinished hardwood floor. The desk was a reproduction, the computer state of the art. And the walls were filled with images of Dante. Charcoal sketches she'd done herself, rather than stills from the films. The actor who played him did a wonderful job, of course, but he wasn't Dante. She knew Dante.

There was a sketch of him as a small boy with huge dark eyes, peering up at a beautiful Gypsy woman who danced beside a campfire. There was another of him sitting at this very desk, brooding over his journals.

"This is almost creepy," David said, shivering a little as he crossed the large room, took a seat and picked up a remote control. "God, don't you ever get sick of him?"

Morgan paused near another drawing, her eyes locked with the staring, sightless eyes of the subject "I know every line and contour of his face," she whispered. Then, as the silence drew out, she shook herself, forced a smile. "Of course that's impossible. It's all what my mind has created from the raw materials in the di-in the screenplays. But it seems real. I see him in my dreams as clearly as if he were real." She smiled. "I even know the sound of his voice."

"Writers," David muttered. He pushed a button, and the antique replica cabinet's doors slid open, revealing the big-screen television set behind them. He hit another button to flick it on, and one to set the channel. "I'd get sick of him," he said. "Real or not."

"I could drown in him and not get sick of him," she said. "Sometimes I think maybe that's what I'm doing. Drowning in him."

When David didn't answer, she glanced his way, saw him looking at her oddly. Morgan gave a little laugh to ease the worry from his eyes. "We creative types are supposed to be eccentric. Don't scowl like that, you'll wrinkle."

He looked away with a sigh, but his gaze froze on the television screen, and he snatched up the remote, thumbing the volume up higher. "Here it is!"

The famous couple at the podium took turns reading from a list, and Morgan thought the brief spot took longer than any two-hour feature she had ever sat through. She slugged back her drink and waited until they got to the part that interested her.

"In the category of best original screenplay, the nominees are... "

A hum seemed to fill her head, the room, her ears. She couldn't hear what they were saying any longer, but suddenly she saw her name on the screen along with four others. "Morgan De Silva, for Twilight Hunger."

David surged to his feet, hugging her hard against him, smiling and laughing and twisting from side to side as he held her. Morgan surrendered to the rash of darkness that swamped her brain and simply went limp in his arms.

She was lying on the chaise when she opened her eyes again. David sat close to her, patting her hand. "There you are. It's all right. I guess this meant more to you than I realized."

"It's not that... " she began. Then she recalled what had just happened.

God, it was true. She was nominated for the top award in the film industry. For work that wasn't even her own. She had never expected it to go this far. And yet, she had, in a way, known it would. It had to. The stories were too good not to be recognized as such. There was something... transcendent about them. Something that touched the audience on a level that was almost visceral in its intensity.

"Are you all right?"

She nodded but didn't bother trying to sit up. This was very odd. She had expected to feel... jubilant at this moment Wasn't this beyond her dreams? Wasn't this supposed to fix everything that had been missing from her life? Why did she still feel so empty inside?

"You're going to have to come back to L.A. with me now," David said. He pushed one hand through his thinning honey-blond hair, which was getting gray at the temples. "There are going to be parties. Receptions. Interviews. You should be seen."

The thought of leaving this place set her heart racing. She shook her head quickly, fighting back her panic. "I can't leave now."

"But-"

"The new one is at too delicate a point right now, David. I can't stop working on it without losing my momentum. And I can't work anywhere else. So I have to stay right here."

He closed his eyes slowly, as if attempting to digest her words.

"I should be finished with it by the time of the actual ceremony. I'll be able to come out for that I promise."

His eyes popped open. "But you need a dress. And hair and...honey, people plan for months to get ready for this one, special night. God, if this had happened to the girl I knew five years ago, she'd have insisted I fly her to Paris to shop for a gown. And probably would have bought three of them before making a final decision."

Sitting up, very slowly, so as not to induce the return of her familiar lightheadedness, she met his eyes. "I'm not that girl anymore."

"No," he said. "You're not. You've changed, Morgan. And not for the better. You've practically become a recluse."

She banked her anger. He was right, and if she spoke her mind, she would tell him to go home, so she could get right back to her reclusiveness. Crawl back into the velvet darkness of Dante's world. She hated not being enmeshed in it, missed him like a lover when she went a day without wading through his life, processing it through her own mind and soul, and onto her computer screen. Changing his memories, his deepest thoughts, into lines and stage directions, so that he could come to life on the screen. It was almost as if she were somehow trying to resurrect him from death by giving life to his memories.

Not enough. God, it was never enough.

"I've made you angry," David said.

"No. No, I'm just... overwhelmed." She smiled up at him. "So are you taking me out for breakfast to celebrate or not?"

Lifting his brows, he sighed. "Yes, of course I am. How soon can you be ready?"

She forced herself to look happy. To play the role of the excited honoree, eager to celebrate the achievement of a lifetime.

The truth was, she just wanted to get it over with and return to her house. His house. To be alone with the nonexistent man who haunted her, day and night. Heart and soul. Who possessed her mind.

Dante.

The man who had written volume upon volume in the first person, and who had, she was convinced, believed every word he had written.

He had believed he was a vampire.

She almost wished it could be true.