It was said in no more than a whisper, a frantic hope that she was not wrong as she leaned against him, the paleness of her skin glowing faintly in the weak light. She was so close to him, so tempting in her utter innocence of his nature, of what he was. Blair was unaware of her dangerous position, of how it took every ounce of control for him not to respond to her nearness. He could hear her heart beating beneath her nightgown, feel its pulse in the fingers that gripped him. But it was her lips that intrigued him the most, for they spoke without hesitation.

"The party was pretty wild. I wanted to leave, but Gina wasn't interested. She'd just broken up with her boyfriend and wanted to make him jealous by flirting around a bit. There were some older guys there, from the sophomore class. One in particular was a little too forward with Gina. He was handsome, had a bit of an accent. Normally, she loves that kind of thing, but this time was trying to turn him off. There was something about him I didn't like, something in his eyes. I didn't think much of it at the time, because he left. I don't remember seeing him after that, but that doesn't mean much of anything. I barely remember that much."

Her eyes were swimming in shadows as they looked up at him. He could feel her warmth through the bedclothes. Her hair was in a disarray around her shoulders, smelling faintly of the shampoo she had used that morning. He realized it was Carmilla's shampoo, but on her, it was different, not so severe. Carmilla had to have every hair in place, her world perfectly arranged. Blair was much more comfortable in utter chaos.

"Had you ever seen him before?" he asked.

Blair shook her head. She would have remembered, his features had been distinct enough.

It was a movement that might have alarmed her if it had not been done so carefully, but the power of persuasion was with him as he reached up and touched the side of her face. Memories flooded into him in a series of hazy images that faded in and out of focus: a crowded room in the half darkness, bodies all around, gyrating to the obnoxiously loud music, drinks passing from hand to hand, a glimpse of the man attempting to speak to her friend, a face he had seen before. He could make out no more than a vague semblance of features, but it was enough that he knew who it was. He recognized the sharp cheekbones, the voice fringed with a hint of an accent.

There was more, much more … stumbling out into the parking lot, laughing as she dropped her keys and fished for them under the car. When she stood up, Gina had vanished. The laugh died in her throat as she turned around, looking for her in vain. A figure had loomed up and struck her across the face, sending her crashing to the pavement. Josef was pulling the threads of her mind hard, attempting to coax these images to the forefront, but the rest was in shambles … visions of a darkened alley, of someone holding onto her, of running out into the street, of approaching headlights and the squeal of brakes…

He had seen all there was to see, and when he pulled away, she was staring at him. The connection between them had been so strong that he could still feel her in his head, and it was apparent that she sensed it too. Blair touched the side of his face and then leaned in to kiss him. It was reactive, but there was no resistance, only a melding of thoughts and bodies as he drew her into his arms, parting her lips with such increasing intensity that she was trembling when he drew back. Her heart was pounding as she looked up at him, resting comfortably against the pillows, her hair spread out about her like a dark cloud and her neck glowing softly in the moonlight. For the first time in his life as a vampire, he had no desire to feed on her.

Leaning in to kiss her again, he was halted by the touch of her fingers against his lips. Her fingernails were black. He had never noticed that before. He wondered if she always had them that way. "You know something you are not telling me," she whispered.

"You would never believe me if I did."

He brushed the hair back from the cut on her forehead, running his fingers through her hair. Blair was perfectly at ease with his nearness despite the fact that she barely knew him. There was something about her that he liked. He wasn't sure that she even knew what it was, but it was abnormal, different from everyone else he had ever known.

"I'm a college student," she replied. "Try me."

"Do you believe in legends?"

"Some of them."

Propping his head up on his hand, Josef asked, "Good and evil?"

"Absolutely."

He rested his hand on her waist, searching her eyes. "God?"

"Yes."

"Then that raises the question of why you haven't pushed me away yet." Humor surfaced in his voice and caused her to smile. Blair had a beautiful smile whenever she chose to use it. He was surprised to find she was blushing. Mick had once said that a blush was more interesting to a vampire than a human, and it was true, but he had not seen one in such a long time that he had forgotten how attractive it was. Carmilla was so worldly that nothing phased her. He had not prompted a blush out of her for as long as she had known him.

Lowering her gaze, Blair answered, "Honestly, I don't know why you haven't been drop-kicked yet. No one else has ever gotten this far."

"I imagine they've tried."

Blair rolled her eyes. "That is what boys do."

"But you never gave in?"

She looked at the ring on her finger, gleaming silver in the moonlight. It was on the hand resting on the side of his face, cold against his bare skin. He wondered if that was not why she had broken up with her boyfriend. There were few men in the modern world who cared for abstinence. In the old days, you went to a brothel and destroyed your reputation for it. Now it was merely a case of a couple of dates and an available motel room. It took her a moment to respond, but finally she shook her head. "Mom sent me to some Christian camp when I was sixteen. They stressed the importance of eternal love and devotion, of making a match that would last through the centuries. It sounded appealing, so I put on the ring. I think they forgot to mention there was superglue inside the band. Despite numerous attempts, it hasn't come off since."

Closing his hand around her hand, he asked her with his eyes if she wanted him to pull it off for her. There was momentary hesitation and then she shook her head. He respected her for it. Indicating that he was going to go check the monitors, he left her in her room, closing the door softly behind him. Blair was unlike anyone he had ever met. Everyone seemed to be out to get something, and for a time he had thought that she was the same way, but that was not truly in her nature. Her boldness had been nothing more than an attempt to conceal how shaken she was by the whole experience, her hour long shower less for luxury than to give herself time to calm down and consider her options.

His thoughts turned to the man he had seen in her memories. Tervain. He had been one of the most dangerous men in Berlin when the war had broken out, a political assassin of such great ambitions that Hitler had immediately put his talents to work. In life, Tervain had been commonplace, but as a vampire, had gained an interest in violence. Not the normal kind of violence that entertained most young vampires, either, but the sickening forms of torture and dismemberment that had made him infamous. Josef had counted himself fortunate that their paths had crossed only once, for as much as he enjoyed the occasional blood sport, Tervain was abhorrent. The thought that he was now in the United States turned the blood in Josef's veins to ice. Everyone had assumed he had perished in the war, that some fortunate soldier had decapitated him, or perhaps burned to death in one of the concentration camps where he routinely practiced his torture techniques. If Tervain was murdering college girls, there was a purpose behind it. He never did anything without a reason, demented as his mind might have been.

There was no reason to indicate to Blair that he knew anything more than what he had shared with her. Fortunately, there was nothing to spur such a confession, as the following day passed without consequence. Carmilla had left what remained of the candy in the hall closet and it did not take Blair long to find it. She spent all of Sunday sprawled on the couch with the orange-colored bucket in one hand, and a pile of candy wrappers scattered across the floor. Though something had changed in her expression when she looked at him, for the most part she left him alone. He appreciated this. Needing sleep, Josef informed her that he was going to his office in town to make some private inquiries and once there, locked himself in, unplugged everything, and slept most of the afternoon.

It was almost twilight when he left the building, crossing the pavement to his convertible. Most of his associates had gone home and the city was becoming quiet as darkness set in across the landscape. Just as he reached the door, his cell phone rang. He had left Mick over a dozen messages and hoped to find him on the other end of the line, but it was another voice, one he had not forgotten over the seventy years that separated their conversations. The accent was still noticeable but the tone had not changed. Tervain's reputation was one for utter calm no matter what the situation, a fact that had driven his enemies mad with uncertainties and that put tremendous unease into everyone that encountered him in the street.

"So many years later, and you are still a businessman. I am impressed."

There was no movement in the lot, but Josef knew his adversary was nearby, watching from one of the rooftops. "You would think torturing Jews in Auschwitz would be more than enough to satisfy even your bloodlust, Tervain. But it is a major leap between gas chambers and knocking off co-eds. It seems like such a waste of your extraordinary talents."

"You have something I want, Josef."

"Whether or not you want her is not the point, it's whether or not you can have her, and the answer is no. You know how our kind feel about you. You betrayed too many of us during the war. One phone call and I'll have everyone on the streets looking for you. It's pretty hard to dismember someone when your head is rolling in the gutter."

Opening the car door, Josef slid behind the steering wheel and inserted the key into the ignition. He glanced over the rooftops surrounding the high-rise parking lot, hoping to make out a figure against the skyline. But there was nothing. Tervain was much too cunning for that. Not even Hitler had been able to take him out when the tables had turned. He had been the Reich's best-kept secret until after the war.

The voice that responded to him was cool, confident. Tervain knew the risks of revealing himself but also enjoyed tormenting others so much that he would never simply vanish without having completed his task. Whatever had brought Blair into his world, nothing would ever take her out of it again, not until one or both of them were dead. "I have known you a long time, Josef. You pretend not to care about anyone or anything, but the fact of the matter is, you care very much, particularly when it comes to the few people you choose to let into your elite circle. Make some calls, check up on your friends, and then we'll talk further about Blair."

The line went dead. There was a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. Pulling out of the parking space and speeding down to the ground level, Josef did not think until he had pulled up in front of Carmilla's office building. He was double-parked and any police officer worth his salt would leave a ticket within minutes, but that didn't matter as he pushed through the revolving door and asked the secretary at the desk if Carmilla Vandercourt was in. "She went out about an hour ago for coffee and never came back," was the casual response as she reached for a ringing phone line.

Damn Tervain. Damn him to hell. He was going to demand a trade, Blair for Carmilla, the one thing he knew Josef could not refuse. Even though he did not love Carmilla, he could not allow her to die, not like that. Not with what that psychopath would do to her. Though he knew it was no more than a fleeting hope, as he left the building he dialed Mick's number one last time. It rang … and so did a muffled phone just down the alley. It was faint and no human would have heard it, but he was in tune enough with his surroundings to sense it despite the mountain of garbage that covered it. It was coming from inside the dumpster.

Revolted that he was degraded to digging through trash, Josef started tossing thick black bags in all directions, sorting through the remnants of what a paper shredder had spewed out. Most of it was product but there was the occasional melted cheese sandwich or pork rind, not to mention all the gum stuck between post-it notes. The ringing stopped and he dialed the number again. It was near the bottom where he found not only the phone but Mick, his glassy eyes staring up into the darkening sky, a stake driven through his chest. His color was so bad that it was clear he had been there for more than twenty-four hours. Stakes could not kill vampires, but there could be irreversible emotional damage if they remained comatose too long.

Closing his slender fingers around the rough wooden piece of wood, Josef pulled it from Mick's chest. Immediately, the clouds cleared from Mick's intelligent eyes and he began to choke on his own blood, coughing it up as he painfully rolled over onto his side. "What … took … you … so long?" he asked through gasps of air. He was almost as white as the mountain of shredded legal documents that half covered him, badly in need of nourishment, and all but the pupils of his eyes were yellow.

"What, I have to baby sit you now?"

Mick was too weak to leap out of the dumpster on his own and Josef assisted him, helping him into the car. He glanced at the ticket stuffed beneath his windshield wiper and wadded it up and tossed it into the gutter. Navigating the narrow streets at as fast a speed as the law permitted, Josef dialed the number his friend had on speed dial. It was Beth. He didn't even had to look to know it.

"Mick, where have you been?" she demanded. "I have been worried about you!"

Looking across at his friend slumped in the passenger seat, Josef pressed the mouthpiece against his chest and mouthed, "Aww, she cares!" In response to Mick's scowl, he said into the phone, "Mick needs you. I'm dropping him off at his apartment. I need you to stay with him until he's recovered. How soon can you be there?"

With her promise that she would be arrive within minutes still ringing in his ears, Josef dropped off his friend at his apartment, helping him upstairs past the orange and white streamers that were coming off the walls, and the candy wrappers that littered the floor. Mick collapsed onto the couch as Josef went to the cabinet and removed the blood packets concealed there. He hated leaving Mick like that. More times than he could remember, they had helped one another out of impossible situations, near death experiences that would haunt him for centuries to come. But there was Blair to consider, and Carmilla. If he knew all the circumstances, Mick would want him to go anyway.

Beth's car was just pulling up as he left. He knew it was her by the beautiful blonde hair that bounced on her shoulders as she ran into the building. "He'd much prefer her as a nurse anyway," he remarked to no one in particular, and pulled out of the lot. It troubled him that Tervain had not called back, but it was in his nature to let people wait, marinating in the possibilities of what was to come. He had a feeling there was more to it than sheer meanness, and knew he was right when he returned to the house. Blair was seated on the couch with her head in her hands. He looked from her to the phone still off its jack and knew what had happened. When she looked over at him, her eyes were red but her mouth was set into a grim line. There was still dampness clinging to her long lashes, her face flushed what he did not doubt had been a recent flood of tears.

Tervain had told them to meet him on the roof of the federal building in an hour. Blair had already prepared herself for the inevitable; her things were within reach, stacked in a neat little pile. Rising to her feet and pulling on her designer coat, Blair flipped her hair out over the collar and handed him a pair of keys.

Josef took her by the arm, turning her to face him as she started for the garage. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you," he promised. She finished tying the sash of her coat and looked up at him. There was a sense of resignation in her eyes, as though she had come to terms with the nature of her impending fate. He expected a deep, heartfelt condolence, a reassurance that she would be at peace with whatever happened, but that was not Blair's style. There were no romantic flowery speeches or overt gratitude for hiding her the past two days, nothing beyond the two words she told him, accompanied with a broad and confident smile.

"I know."

He might have throttled her if it hadn't been so damned adorable.