Prince Radu was bored. Bored Transylvanians are bad news; bored Transylvanians to whom some well-meaning idiot has given a pad of paper and a pencil are a menace. He was in the middle of writing a sestina about gloom and despair, with some elegantly Byronic hints of romance. Elle and Jay had left him alone in the employee lounge while they discussed the case with Zed, and His Highness had promised them a personal recitation of his best works on their return. They seemed to be taking an unconscionably long time in Zed's office. Ah, well. He wondered what rhymed with "fulgurous." Batrachian and squamous were hard enough. Hey, "squamous" and "fulgurous" were close enough to match.

Earth girls were easy, he reflected, scribbling in elegant Gothic black-letter script, having to go over and colour in the letters with his ballpoint pen. Most of them, anyway. Agent Sea had put on a damn good act. Of course, the attack at the hotel had to have been the work of a bunch of loonies—no one would really want to kill him, obviously, he was much too attractive. It was sweet of the terrans to be so concerned, but there really wasn't the need. He wished they'd just get finished with their paperwork, or whatever, and let him go back to the hotel; they were holding the Costume Ball that night.

He chewed meditatively on the end of the pen, reducing it to punctured and mangled plastic. There had been something very familiar about the individual who'd shot at him. He couldn't quite place it; he'd been so startled by the whole incident that his memory, which was normally photographic, wasn't very clear. He yawned, showing off dentition that would shame most sharks, gave up trying to remember and applied himself once more to his poem, which was shaping up nicely. He'd sketched in a working title at the head of the page, with little curlicues and drawings of coffins around it: Twilight of the Heart.

Elle, Jay, Zed and several other agents stood around Zed's white formica desk and argued. There had been no sign of any other intruders by the time they had arrived on the scene; all they saw were the two corpses of the shooters who had tried to retire Sea and assassinate His Highness. Not particularly enlightening, since both of them were blasted into anonymity—both definitely physiologically human, though, according to the spectral tracer.

"She would have felt them," said Elle crossly. "She should have been aware that they were there; it seems as if they took her by surprise. I don't understand how humans could shield that well."

"Maybe they got some kinda telepathic training facility out west, or something," said Jay. "You know, testing this kinda stuff, like in Firestarter."

Zed gave this the look it deserved. "We'd know. There must have been others," he said. "What about the other two aliens who bought those weapons? The Carbonizer—we've got that, but what about the stripped Cricket? Where is it? And where the hell are those two ETs?"

Agent Esse straightened her tie. "You want us to go check out the area again?" she asked. Zed nodded, and she and her partner Cue headed out. That left several agents still standing by the desk and waiting for orders.

"Elle, Jay, you run a comprehensive search of this island. Full perimeter lockdown. No ET gets into or out of Manhattan, you got me?" They clicked their heels and hurried out, glad to escape. The atmosphere in Zed's office had been like a thundercloud massing above their heads. "What about Sea and Kay?" Jay asked, nervously, as they went to the munitions locker. "Should we go see if......?" He let it trail off.

"I don't know," said Elle bleakly. "I kind of want to know a little more about what happened back there." She hefted a Blastech EE-3 rifle and handed him a Phaser—the one he'd gotten back when Kay blew that bug in two, five years back, the one he called Beauty. He took the gun, grunting under its weight.

"Like, why didn't she sense that they were there?" Jay asked, leading the way down toward the medical unit. "Me too. And when I last saw her she was muttering something about black hair with streaks in it and doppelgangers."

Elle blinked, following him. "Say what?"

"I don't know. I'm gonna find out."

They found Sea sitting up in bed and looking a lot brighter than she had, if a bit white and worn around the edges, and Kay in shirtsleeves, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth in direct defiance of every possible rule, telling her dirty jokes. Both looked up as Jay and Elle entered, guns cradled tenderly in their arms. "Damn," said Sea weakly. "We surrender."

Elle smiled; it was good to see the other woman looking so much better—and even more wonderful to see Kay finally relaxing. She'd begun to think she might have to shoot him full of Thorazine or something to get him to ease up. "Sea," she said. "Welcome back."

"Thanks. You look like you're going somewhere?"

"Yeah, back to work. I just had a couple questions." Elle pulled up an egg-chair; Jay leaned against the wall, exchanging questioning looks with Kay.

"Go ahead."

"Well.......you said you didn't feel the presence at all until you were right there in the line of fire?" Elle rested her chin on her hand. Sea fingered the bandaging on her shoulder, absently.

"Yeah. It was like one of those horrible realizations that comes too late—like when you know the car's going to go over the cliff, or you know you can't make it through the door before it closes......I could feel everyone else, though. The Prince—he's impossible to ignore—and the kitchen staff, the bellhops, the convention-goers all over the place—it was a constant background noise. But this guy—it was as if he didn't even exist. It was the same with the one who attacked us in the suite."

Kay frowned. "His gun sure as hell existed."

Elle winced, scowling at him. "Thank you, Mr. Sensitivity. Sea—is it possible he just knew how to shield very well?"

"I don't think so. I really don't. It's not as if we humans have a lot of practice at this. I mean—his mind was as closed to me as........." She trailed off, looking extremely thoughtful and so pale that Kay's hand closed over her wrist. Elle frowned.

"What is it?"

"Nothing. Well, maybe nothing. It just came to me......the only people I've met recently whose minds feel like that are.......were......His Highness's two servants. The identical pair."

Kay cleared his throat. "The two you warned me to look for. We didn't find them."

"Yeah," she said. "I didn't like them. It wasn't them who shot at us, of course. But I didn't like them."

Elle nodded slowly. "I'm having flashbacks. Kay, you having flashbacks?" Jay and Sea shared a what the fuck are they talking about now? look, before Sea blinked and rubbed at her forehead.

"Damn," she muttered. "Elle, you project harder than you think you do. I don't believe it, it's total science fiction, it's impossible........"

Kay chuckled dryly and took her hand in his. "Sea," he said, "three months ago you knew humans were alone on this planet. Don't assume things are impossible."

Jay scowled at his ex-partner, recognizing part of the speech. "What the hell are you guys talking about? What's impossible?"

Elle grinned at him. "You remember seeing that training film about the Transylvanians, don't you?"

"What, the one with the dude in heels and a wig, the mad doctor dude who was making monsters? Yeah, but I don't....." He folded his arms, regarding the three grinning faces. "Oh no. You're not saying these Transylvanian guys are making human beings?"

"Well, that was the main event being depicted," said Kay. "'I've been making a man with blond hair and a tan,'" he quoted. Jay winced.

"Shit, you're serious," he said. "You really think these dudes are making humans and sending them after the Prince?"

"I don't know," said Elle. "But it would make sense......they're not normal humans, they could be trained by the Transylvanian adepts to control their shielding....they'd be expendable and useful as assassins........"

Kay cut in smoothly. "And they could be made to do anything their creators wanted."

Sea sighed. "It's not that I'm concerned with," she said. "I'm more worried with who is behind this and what it has to do with those ETs buying weapons from Jeebs."

"We need to find that last guy. With the Cricket." Jay stood up. Elle followed suit.

"He's right. We'll send word as soon as we find anything."

Kay sighed and put out his cigarette. "Go on, then," he said. Sea looked over at him with a stab of regret.

"You should go too," she said. "You'll go nuts hanging around here; you should be out on the streets doing your job."

Elle and Jay left tactfully, with a last glance at the pair of them. Kay scowled at her.

"Shit, woman, do you honestly think I'd be any better off driving around out there and running into stop signs because I'd be worrying about you the whole time?" he demanded. She coloured, looked away.

"This is going to be a problem, isn't it," she murmured. He sighed, lit another illegal cigarette.

"Sea......I can't pretend this isn't happening, or that it isn't real." The look he turned on her was so astonishingly powerful, so filled with desire and fear and urgency, that she couldn't speak for a moment. She reached out and caught his hand, held it in hers, aware of the gun-calluses on his palm, the strength of the bones.

"I never expected to love you," she said quietly, looking down at their clasped hands. "I never expected to meet you after that first freak occurrence in the Bronx. But I did meet you again, and I did fall in love with you, and against all expectations and likelihoods, you love me too. I'm not willing to give that up, Kay. Not now."

His hand tightened in hers, almost enough to hurt. He didn't say anything for a few moments: when he did speak, his voice was rough, almost shaking. "Neither am I," he rasped. "This is the first thing in years that hasn't felt like a pretense. You make me feel—" he struggled for words. "You make me feel like I'm not a man who's been doing what he does for far too long. You make me feel....young, Sea. Alive. Like there's something to care about. I'd lost that."

She bit her lip. "Oh God, Kay—"

"Shhh. Don't." He swallowed. "We'll deal with it. Somehow we'll deal with it."

She nodded silently, still clinging to his hand, and then he'd wrapped his arms around her and she was clinging to him, his hand pressing her cheek against his shoulder, her arms tight around his neck. From very far away she could hear—and feel—the rumble of his voice as he said "We could even be.......better agents, better partners, because of it." The whiteness was coming back in great swooping heaves. She knew she was passing out; she clung to him.

"........love you..............I love you........I love you.........."

***

Elle and Jay pulled their LTD to a stop outside the last hope they had. Millius had been in touch, giving them what information she could pull off her offworld sensors; this was the last known habitation of the two ETs who had bought guns off of Jeebs a few days before. Jay slipped his hand into his jacket, felt the comforting coldness of the Phaser in its holster. "Let's go."

Elle led the way up to the apartment, ran a scanning device over the door. "One lifeform. You want to do the honors?"

Jay grinned and backed up a few steps before hurling himself at the door and knocking it off its hinges, landing neatly in a crouch, weapon at the ready. He did a fast three-sixty, checking for targets, and motioned her in. "Gotta be hiding somewhere."

Elle nodded and flanked him to the left, her gun out. It looked like a normal black assault rifle, but Jay knew damn well it had the same basic firepower as a naval nine-inch on a really bad day. He cocked the Phaser and went to the right, jerking round a corner, kicking open another door. Bathroom. Scuzzy—cockroaches on the floor, brown ring in the toilet bowl. Nothing. The next door was a bedroom, and there he struck gold. A tentacle protruded from under the bed.

"Freeze!" he yelled. "Come out slowly with all your pseudopods up."

Slowly the tentacle extended itself, and then another, and another. The main bulk of the creature looked more like a tapeworm with extensions than anything else: it slithered out from under the bed in a nasty sick snakelike motion and curled itself up with its tentacles pointing at the grubby ceiling. Jay grinned to himself. Piece of cake. "Who are you and what the hell are you doing on this planet without clearance?"

Behind him Elle slid into the room, gun at the ready. The tentacled thing—his brain did a bit of fast recall and came up with the species name, Jiiraliian, class 3—swayed, aware that it was totally outclassed in terms of firepower. It began to gargle in a thick choking voice; there was a brief delay before the agents' UTs cut in and they could understand what it was saying.

"---don't shoot, don't shoot, I surrender, don't kill me......."

"Gimme some answers, wormy," Jay snapped. "Where's that Cricket?"

The thing motioned cautiously with a tentacle. "Second drawer from the top under the T-shirts....don't kill me....."

"We're not gonna kill you," Elle said, disgusted, and slid over to the drawer, extracting the field-stripped Cricket prototype and showing it to Jay. Firepower cut down a few fractions, inertial dampers off, a nasty little concealed weapon good for a few shots before it shorted out entirely. "Who were you gonna shoot?"

"It went wrong!" the creature squalled. "It all went wrong! We were just gonna take out the Prince and leave, no questions asked, no problems, but someone else got there first! Someone took the Carbonizer!"

"Who?" Jay demanded, not letting the thing out of his field of fire.

"I don't know!" it pleaded. "Some dude in black! Killed my partner and took the Carbonizer, I had no choice, I had to get out of there!"

Elle sat down, keeping the non-AK-47 on the thing. "Talk to us. Who hired you. When. Why."

"Can I sit down? I don't feel too good."

Jay motioned with the Phaser. "Don't try anything."

"Don't even think it," the creature gasped. It was grayish, green mottled specks blushing deeper green and paling again; a thin sheen of sweat covered it. "I wasn't in this for me, I was just getting paid, it was the Khi Brotherhood......."

"The crazy Davan fundamentalists?" Elle snapped.

"Yeah, the religious freaks, they said they wanted the Transylvanian prince out of the picture, they thought he was a moral threat to Dava," it whined. "Please, I'm just a hired gun, I didn't mean anything....."

Jay felt mildly sick. The thing's cowardice rolled off it like waves of stench. "Quit blubbering. The Khi brotherhood bought you and who else?"

"My partner, he's dead, he got splattered two nights ago, the guy in black killed him...."

"Guy in black," Elle said, looking at Jay. "What, a black suit like us?"

"No, some long black robe, long hair, looked like a Transylvanian......"

Jay cursed volubly. "The Transylvanians are behind this."

"We were all set for the hit, we were gonna sneak into the hotel last night and hit him then get the hell off this planet in our ship....." it gasped. "We were in the alley behind the hotel when this guy just comes running up to us and blows my partner away, I ran, I had no choice, I just wanna get off this planet, can't you give me a break?"

Elle pulled out her phone. "Zed, we got one of the conspirators. Bringing him in." She cut the connection and glared at their prisoner. "What about the Mertagensian?"

"Who?" the thing asked, genuinely puzzled.

"There was another ET on planet with an assassination weapon. We neutralized him. You're no connection?"

"No," it gasped, "me and my partner were hired by the Khi together, there was never any talk of a third party, am I gonna be killed?"

"Shut up about being killed," Elle snapped. "We're taking you in. Any other illegal activities you want to tell us about? We'll find out anyway, and it'll go easier on you if you tell us now."

"No," it assured them. "Just the one hit and then we're gone. My ship's hidden downstairs."

"Why are you still here?"
"I was afraid," it faltered. "The guy who hit my partner, he was a professional, I didn't want to get hit myself......I was gonna wait a little longer then leave......."

Elle sighed and put her gun away, tucking the illegal Cricket into her pocket. "Come on, you're going back to HQ for questioning, friend."

"There's one other thing," said the alien. "It........the guy who whacked us..........it.....it didn't register."

"Didn't register on what?" Jay demanded.

"It didn't have a mind. Or it didn't have a mind I could feel."

"Can you feel us?" Elle snapped.

"Oh yes, that's why I knew you were coming, that's why I hid, but this guy, he didn't have a mind.....I couldn't tell he was even there until too late........."

They exchanged glances. Elle pulled out her communicator again. "We got verification of Sea's data on the attackers. Same guy whacked the original assassin. Yeah. Looks like it."

Back at headquarters they offloaded their nasty prisoner and hurried up to Zed's office. "It doesn't look like the hit we anticipated and this hit have anything to do with each other," Elle said before they'd even been served with Sachertorte Sumatran Dark Roast. "This guy, when you can get him to stop shaking long enough to give you a coherent story, was hired by Khi. You know, that religious sect that's ruling Dava."

Zed scowled. "Dava's not a threat. Third-class satellite of a G-type star closer to the Horsehead than to Sol. What the fuck are they doing trying to assassinate a Transylvanian on our planet?"

"He was here," Jay put in. "I guess the Khi dudes were all like, let's get him while he's on a dipshit dirtball planet with no real interstellar force."

Zed scowled more fiercely, but nodded. "Yeah, you may be right. Neutral territory. Dave!" The lightspeed assistant blurred beside his desk, then solidified.

"Yessir?"

"Get the Twins to open a comlink to the Khi High Temple on Dava. I got a bone to pick with them."

Dave blurred out again. Zed turned back to his agents. "You think this is totally unconnected with the people who shot Sea?"

"Yeah," Elle said. "It looks like the guys who were sent here to kill His Highness ran into an internal plot a lot more sophisticated than they were."

"Is the Prince still here?" demanded Zed.

"As far as I know, unless he's turned into a bat and flown away."

"Get his ass up here. I need some answers."

Jay and Elle rose, suppressing groans. The Transylvanian ruler was hard enough to deal with when he was merely being contained in an interview room. To convince him to come and have another interview with Zed would take more persuasion than they had yet used.