Date:         Mon, 29 Nov 1993 11:51:11 EST

From:         Lisa McDavid <D020214@UNIVSCVM.BITNET>

Subject:      Heart within the Beast, rev.

 

Sharibet, Roland d'Agincourt and Kim, who will figure in later

parts of this story, appear by permission of their creator, Marian

Huntsman.

 

The LaCroix of this story is the Menelaos created by Karin Welss in

"Heart of Darkness."

 

Thank you, Marian and Karin, for permission to use your characters,

and for extensive consultations on this story.

 

Just to avoid confusion, this is a sort of "Forever Knight: the

Next Generation. The place is San Francisco, and the time is

approximately thirty years in the future.

 

 

     He stepped onto the campus just as twilight faded to true

night.  The street lamps caught the pale mane, cut in the likeness

of the crest his helmet had borne more than a millennium before,

and set cold fire to it.  Nothing in the dark clothes returned the

light, as he stood waiting in the shadows.

 

*****************************************************************

 

     It had taken longer than Cat had planned to get back to the

campus after her nap. She had thought about not going.  Only, Greg

would take it as a personal slight if he didn't see her in the

audience for his early music concert. Cat had sighed, dragged

herself up and into the first suitable clothes in the closet, and

made her way to the BART station.  It wasn't until she was coming

out at the Berkeley stop that she realized what her subconscious

mind had done.  Greg didn't like the midnight-sky blouse she was

wearing, and he had once threatened to burn the skirt that went

with it.  Cat grinned to herself.  Maybe she'd better stop telling

herself that a break-up would be too much on top of the general

disillusionment with the academic world. No, better yet, let her

outfit tell Greg.

     She hurried past the Faculty Grove, toward Morrison Hall, not

seeing the watcher in the shadow-enhanced darkness.  He smiled, as

he fell silently into step some twenty feet behind her.  The light

struck cold fire again from his hair, but his smile was colder as

he followed her.

 

*******************************************************************

 

     The smaller performance space was on the second floor. Cat had

seated herself on the far side of the playing platform, next to

someone. He didn't bother to notice details such as gender or

appearance. Instead he focused on Cat's seatmate's eyes, and

thought. Content didn't matter, as long as it didn't spill sideways

and alarm his quarry.

     More than sixteen-hundred years of the hunt ensured a perfect

hit.  The person beside Cat rose abruptly and moved away.

Continuing to project, just to discourage anyone with ambitions for

a place nearer the front, he strolled at leisure around the edge of

the platform to claim the seat.

     Cat continued her study of the program.  She was frowning at

something. Idly he wondered why.  That fabric suited her, and he

approved of the way the darker threads in the pattern made it

appear to be in secret motion.  Her father had had that kind of

appreciation of the subtle. He looked down at the single throwaway

sheet, trying to see what was preempting Cat's attention. Nothing

was visible to account for it.

     His most charming smile formed itself on his lips; he even

allowed it into his eyes.  He said, with apparent concern, "is

something wrong?"

     Cat looked at her neighbor.  An interesting type: a crest of

hair too white to be natural, pale blue eyes.  Vampires were always

interesting.  She hadn't seen one this close for years, although

she had occasionally passed one in the street. She smiled back and

replied, "Wrong? Not really. It's just that Greg will insist on

playing his solution to the Antonnini puzzle piece."

     "Is there something wrong with it?"  The watcher had never

been close enough to look into his target's eyes. Somehow he had

not expected them to be so large, and so dark a brown. Above all,

he had not expected to find himself listening to her response as

though it mattered.

     "It makes a pleasant noise, but then Antonnini usually does.

Greg can't have the right readings, because why should Antonnini

bother to encode something that ordinary?" Cat spoke casually, but

her internal antennae were quivering. Not only was he a vampire, he

was focused on her.  Cat repressed a smile.  Telling him that

projective hypnotism didn't work on her would only lead to

unfortunate consequences the minute she was alone.  No doubt it

would be equally unwise to inquire whether he had known Antonnini

during the Venetian Renaissance.  Instead she asked," Not everybody

knows about puzzle music -- are you a musicologist?"

     "Of sorts -- amateur division only," he answered. "Is that

your department?"

     "No, early music's just a hobby of mine.  I'm in Physics."

Cat, who had her namesake's compulsion to investigate, was

perfectly aware that he was trying to charm her.  Now, why? She

wondered.  He wouldn't need to come into a crowd to hunt. The Bay

Area attracted droves of street people.  Besides, she had seen

hungry vampires before, and he wasn't looking for food. Of that she

was certain.

     He hadn't expected to be fenced with. She was considering him;

he hadn't survived more than sixteen centuries without developing

an instinct for his prey's reactions.  If she had been merely

dinner, he would have sheered off, no matter how inviting the curve

of her lips, and the unusual fairness of her skin. She had an

unusual shade of voice, too. She was probably a mezzo -- damnation,

he would keep his mind on his plan!  He said, "What sort of

physics, Ms, or is it Dr..."

     "Dr. Knight, Mr. ...?" She could easily be traced through the

university catalog. Besides, some bait would be needed if she

wanted his current alias.

     "LaCroix."

 

     The performance ended in an encore for which he had not

applauded. Cat, applauding because she was visible from the stage,

couldn't blame him.  She had seen his eyebrows rise faintly at her

objections to the Antonnini piece, and she had not expected more

than a civil response. The fact that it was markedly uncivil didn't

really surprise her.  Tact wasn't a vampire trait. She had

suppressed a grin when LaCroix folded his arms and sat as if posing

for a cigar store Indian. She got to her feet and threaded her way

backstage.

 

     The young man, Greg, had changed back to street clothes by the

time LaCroix insinuated himself behind the public areas. His violin

lay discarded in its case, while he argued with one of the winds

about the next rehearsal time.  LaCroix's lips curled.  Really, a

very commonplace young man, with no extraordinary talent, and to

leave an instrument of that caliber unprotected ought to be a

capital crime.

     Cat was examining a facsimile Antonnini edition.  Suddenly she

sat up sharply. "That's it! It's got to be!"

     "Really, Cat, not now --" Greg began.

     LaCroix was at her side without, to all appearances, having

moved from the door.  "The Doriana?" He asked.

     "Yes!" Cat's grin wrinkled her nose.  "Look, if you assume it

isn't the way the music fits around the columns in the temple, it's

the decoration on the capitals ..." She put the book on the piano

and began to finger the keys. "It's a scale, and then if you assume

a relationship between the columns, you get --"

     "You get a lot of nonsense! Honestly, Cat, it's not a piano

piece,"  Greg's tone was condescending, and he snatched the score

out of her hands. "And you don't even play the violin."

     "I do."  LaCroix used his voice like a half-drawn sword. Greg

relinquished the book. LaCroix took Greg's violin from its case.

"You read me the notes as you think Gia -- Antonnini, meant them."

Cat began to do so. He played after her, slowly at first, then, as

the plan became clear, more swiftly, until he was playing alone.

     The entire backstage crowd, except Cat, stared.  LaCroix

appeared not to notice.  After he finished the last note he

unhurriedly replaced the instrument, rewrapped it, and fastened the

latches on the case.  Various individuals crowded forward,

retreated or exclaimed to their neighbors. No one approached

LaCroix. It was unnecessary to do anything as dramatic as a snarl.

Even in his mortal days most people had not cared to approach

LaCroix unbidden.

     He saw to it that no one remembered his exit from the room.

 

     Cat and Greg were outside, under one of the trees. LaCroix

slipped into the shadows to listen unseen. The conversation did not

appear to be congratulatory.

               "No, I'm not going to apologize!" Cat's tone was level.

LaCroix smiled to himself. So she'd inherited that trait, had she?

When Nick spoke like that, even vampires thought twice. "Did I tell

him to take your toy away from you?  Grow up, Greg."

     "Toy? That's my violin, and if you think I'm going to hand it

out to any stranger who takes your fancy -- Or is he a stranger?"

     Cat's fists clenched. "Would you like to explain that

statement in words of one syllable?" She spoke almost softly.

Behind her, LaCroix's smile became a grin.  Just about now, Nick's

eyes would have begun to transform to vampire gold.

     "I mean I've wondered if you were sleeping around on me, and

now I'm sure of it!  Cat's the right name for you; I'm just

surprised you bother to go home and get inside before you --"

Greg never heard his adversary behind him.  The hand that suddenly

clutched his shoulder hurt. He gasped, "What the hell?"

     "Tell me, young Greg," inquired LaCroix in a tone which

reminded Cat of dark silk, "do you plan to go on fiddling?" His

captive gasped out a bewildered affirmative.  "Then you'll need a

course in manners. We'll begin by apologizing to the lady.

Sincerely."

     Greg managed to stammer something incoherent about being

sorry. Cat looked past him at the vampire. "Let him go, please, Mr.

LaCroix. He's close enough to sorry; regret's not worth a broken

shoulder."

     She turned her attention to the younger man, who was trying to

raise the opposite hand to his collarbone without putting down the

instrument case. "It's certainly not worth risking damage to the

violin. He's got a Guaranari, in case you didn't know."

     Cat possessed herself of the case. "Come on, Greg. You can't

drive home like that unless you want to make it worse. Give me your

car card." The reply was only half-audible, even to LaCroix, but

the card was surrendered, and the unhappy couple began walking

toward Bancroft Avenue.

     LaCroix stood looking after them until they were out of sight.

His hair still blazed in the security lights, but something more

than shadow darkened his eyes. Finally he moved backward, into the

darkness.

 

******************************************************************

 

     In the second floor drawing room of a Victorian house, a

young, blonde woman who would have been tawdrily pretty if she

hadn't been pouting, strode restlessly around a room on the top

floor. If any of the neighbors happened to look out, none would

stare at the lighted window.  Number 15 had a reputation for

unpleasant hauntings.  No one could remember anyone living there.

The occasional inquirer, over the years, had been told that it was

tied up in a disputed estate.  Persistent inquirers had strange

accidents. Few people now admitted interest.

     "Faithful to your instructions!" said LaCroix, coming into the

room. "How commendable." He was carrying something that looked like

a bottle of wine, which he set on a table. The young woman hastily

got glasses and corkscrew from a cabinet. Decanting the blood into

a glass, she raised it to her lips.

               LaCroix allowed one eyebrow to rise slightly. "Really,

Alexandra, you're forgetting your origins. Since when does a

barmaid serve herself first?"

     Sulkily Alexandra handed the first glass to her master, then

poured herself a second. Cat would have replied with something

razor-edged, LaCroix thought. He was speculating on the form Cat's

hypothetical retort might have taken before he realized what he was

doing. The glass shattered in his hand. He swore at Alexandra as

she automatically began to clear the shards away and mop up.

     Thirty years of vengeance honed as carefully as a master chess

play were not going to be deferred because the pawn happened to

solve a mystery which had been created in a wager with LaCroix

himself. Gianmarco Antonnini had won the wager, and with it the

aristocratic Venetian patroness of the arts whom LaCroix had

planned to bring over himself. Taking a replacement glass of blood

from Alexandra, LaCroix wondered where Gianmarco was these days. He

had last been heard of in Capri, but it had been a couple of

centuries since he had heard a rumor of Vittoria del Orsin.

Someone had told Janette that she had taken to devout fits in which

she tried to force her way into rectories, since she dared not

enter a church, looking for absolution from a priest. Janette had

remarked that these ventures were more likely to end in absorption

from the hapless cleric. LaCroix smiled to himself. Cat would enjoy

that line.

     This time some of the blood spilled, but the glass stayed

intact. Damnation! By all the pantheon of darkness, he did not care

what his prey would enjoy. He did not! He snarled at Alexandra,

"What are you hanging about for? I thought I told you that you

could go hunt."

     "You just said to wait up for you," Alexandra sniffed.

      LaCroix supposed the release of knocking her through the

glass doors onto the porch behind them wouldn't be worth the

annoyance of getting repairs done. "Must I tell you to put one foot

in front of the other? If I'd known just what a cow's brain you

really are, I'd never have played that joke on Nick!"

     Alexandra stared blankly at him. "But it hasn't been played

yet. Nick won't come to San Francisco until after I've killed his

daughter."

     He couldn't imagine Cat's wide, dark eyes empty like that.

LaCroix took a long drink.

     Alexandra frowned. "Nick won't come to San Francisco until

after I've killed his daughter." She repeated, "we haven't played

the trick yet."

     The glass slammed down on the table beside LaCroix's chair.

Cat had never seen him before tonight, yet they had not needed an

extra word to play out the notes of Gianmarco's puzzle.

     A reluctant smile stole across his lips. Cat's hair was the

color of the oldest and finest gold in his collections. It had

shone even in the harsh fluorescent lights backstage. He had

remembered playing duets with Nick, when the piano was a new,

novelty instrument. He had never liked keyboard instruments, but

Nick had been fascinated from the day their furnished lodgings in

Florence had happened to include a pianoforte.

     Cat had beautiful hands. He wondered what it would be like to

feel her fingers tracing the planes of his face. He would catch and

hold them, carry them to his lips --

     Damnation! LaCroix's eyes blazed gold. He stood up, snarling

at Alexandra. "Come here!" Before she could move he strode across

the room and wrenched her into his arms.

     The pain was vicious as LaCroix's bite. Unaroused, she could

only bear the agony while he drank,  willing herself not to faint

until her master was filled.

     Alexandra staggered, reeling. LaCroix snarled again as he

caught her by the shoulders. Without bothering to carry her, he

half led, half dragged her across the hall to his bedroom, and

threw her onto the bed.

 

*****************************************************************

     Alexandra lay beside her master, not daring to move, lest he

awaken. She bit her lips against the pain and the need to cry.

LaCroix didn't like being awakened, and he liked crying even less.

He called it snivelling; it invariably earned her a slap.

     The physical pain was no worse than usual. In fact, it was

less. Alexandra shut her eyes against another onslaught of tears.

The master link between them travelled both ways. He had been

thinking of Cat the entire time.

     Suppose he broke his promise? He was always telling her she

could do something, and then not letting her! Suppose he brought

Cat over, and put her in Alexandra's stead?

     Alexandra remembered some of the places she'd had to live, the

other masters she'd served while LaCroix went merrily on his way

for years at a time with Nick and Janette.

     He'd promised, the last time she'd had to crawl back to him,

that he'd never do that to her again. She'd wanted to believe him.

Well, he was twice the fool he kept calling her if he thought she

believed him now about Cat Knight!  She'd never let him take Cat

and replace her, never!



     Cat stood for a moment, after she had locked her front door

behind her. The house on the edge of Noe Valley was quiet at this

hour, but to Cat's aching head everything seemed to be pounding.

Greg was probably still shouting, she thought bitterly. He hadn't

run out of breath or ammunition from the minute the car pulled away

from the curb.

     "All right, that's enough. We're through, Greg. Over.

Finito." Cat had told him as soon as they reached his apartment

building, yanking the card out of the dashboard and shoving it hard

into his hand. It was the one on the side LaCroix had wrenched.

Greg yelped and jerked away. Cat permitted herself a flash of

malicious triumph as she walked away.

     Getting home at this hour, with the infrequent trains on BART

after midnight, had taken time. Malice had dwindled to depression

during the long ride home. She'd cry later. At the moment all she

wanted was Tylenol and her bed.

     The day's mail was still lying on the counter top where she

had thrown it. The top envelope was university stationery,

containing her contract letter for the coming academic year.

     It was the standard form, with a slight raise, needing to

be countersigned and returned to the president's office. She

had known it was coming. What she still didn't know was whether to

sign it.

     Somehow she hadn't pictured academic life as a series of

political mazes.  She'd heard about faculty meetings, but nobody

had told her that the speeches at them resembled the Chinese water

torture. Most of all, Cat, always the responsible, achieving

student, had never bargained for time-servers' dragging classes

down to their levels.

     Cat stared at the envelope for a moment, then she thrust it

into the top drawer of her desk. Before she got out of her makeup

or into her nightgown, she found the bottle of Tylenol, retrieved

of half a bottle of wine from the back of the refrigerator, and

poured herself approximately twice her usual ration. She huddled on

the window seat, washing the two tablets down with the wine.

     Her watch read 2:13 a.m., too late to call home. Besides

they'd know something was wrong, even if she didn't break down. Her

parents hadn't liked Greg during their visit to San Francisco. Cat

was sure her mother had restrained her father from asking her not

to have any more to do with him. He'd have been right, of course,

but that didn't mean admitting it was going to be easy.

     Her headache was getting worse; the Tylenol wasn't doing

much good. Cat rose with a sigh from the window seat and started to

get ready for bed. The special scented candle that had come from a

shop in Chinatown might help. Cat had always found it soothing. She

set it on a plate in the middle of a bowl of water, just in case

she fell asleep with it burning, and got into bed.

     As she drifted off, she thought that the candle smelled like

the hearth used to when Daddy lit one of his special fires, with

the logs treated to burn in colors, while Cat and Jeffrey cuddled

up to be told stories.

 

     There were grotesque dwarfs carved on each side of the

fireplace. The little girl Cat had been afraid of the way they came

to life in the firelight, until the night she woke up screaming

that her bedposts had turned into the dwarfs.

     Her mother had turned the lights on to show Cat that the

bedposts were just bedposts, but Daddy lay down next to her for the

rest of the night, and told her a story about a little girl who was

named Kitty-Cat, which by an odd coincidence was just exactly what

Daddy called her.

     Kitty-Cat was always running into monsters, only she always

won because she knew the secret to being brave. Monsters only

bothered little girls who acted afraid. Kitty-Cat used to tell the

monsters to go away, and if they didn't, why, she'd just get the

scrub bucket from the kitchen and dump water over them. One day

Kitty-Cat repelled an entire army of trolls with the garden hose,

and won so many medals that she couldn't stand up if she wore all

of them.

 

     Tears stung Cat's eyes.  "Yes, but what kind of water do I use

for breaking up with Greg, and not wanting to go on with teaching?"

She hid her face against her pillow.

 

*****************************************************************

 

The moon was almost full. When it had risen halfway up the sky, a

phantom handful of rays shone through the gap in the curtains to

touch Cat's face. She stirred, whimpering, in her sleep, as she

became again a child crouched in the ruins of a half-burnt factory

while the vampire lady's teeth pierced her brother's neck.

 

     Cat bit her lip, just as she had when the vampire lady was

flying away with her and Jeffrey, and fought hard to be brave

Kitty-Cat. Was there water here?  Maybe there was some ice.

     All she could see was wood, like the old cross that Daddy kept

in the closet in his and Mommy's room, the one where Cat had found

the doll that she had been named Catherine for. Erica had told her

where to look. Where was Erica? She had gone for Daddy. What if she

couldn't find Daddy? Erica couldn't always make Daddy hear her.

Mommy always thought Cat was making it up when Cat told her what

Erica said.

     The vampire's eyes were glaring as gold as her hair. Cat

stared back. The lady glided toward her. Cat tried to stand up. She

almost fell. She clutched at the floor, and came up holding a sharp

piece of charred wood out in front of her. The lady stopped. "Put

that down," she snapped.

     "No!" said Cat. She flourished the stick, and the vampire lady

backed away.

     Then Cat knew.  Her sitter liked to watch scary movies on the

late show, when she thought Cat was asleep upstairs. In the movies

people killed vampires with a stake in the heart. Only, how could

a little girl, even a little girl who never acted scared, reach

high enough to stab a grown-up?

     The vampire lady seemed to catch Cat's thoughts. She laughed,

and stretched out her hands. "Put it down and come here!"

     Cat backed away instead. Her foot almost slipped on another

piece of wood. She was about to kick it aside, when she remembered

what else vampires were afraid of.

     Snatching the second piece of wood, Cat held it and the first

one up in the shape of a cross. The lady flinched backward, with a

hiss, flinging one hand up in front of her face.

     The door to what had been the factory's main floor crashed

open. Daddy's voice shouted their names.

     Cat screamed, "Daddy!" and pushed the cross at the lady.

     Something black slammed past Cat and crashed into the vampire

lady as Daddy snatched Cat up and hugged her so hard it hurt.

     "Nee-co-lah!" Janette cried, struggling with the mean lady,

who was trying to get through the door onto the roof of the main

floor. "Help me!"

     Daddy let Cat go and sprang to help. Erica appeared at Cat's

side. Cat sobbed, "Jeffrey!"

     Erica knelt beside the little boy. "He isn't dead, Cat," she

said. "He's just unconscious. He'll be all right. See, he's

breathing."

     Gray light showed through the doorway. Daddy pulled the mean

lady through the door into the nearly risen sun, and slammed it.

One terrible scream tore the air. Then Daddy and Aunt Janette were

beside Cat, and Daddy was picking up Jeffrey. Cat stared at him.

She hadn't known daddies cried.  She told Daddy, "He's not dead.

Erica said so," just as Janette said "Nee-co-lah, he's breathing."

 

     The shadows deepened in the bedroom in San Francisco. Cat,

still half in the nightmare's grip, opened her eyes and stared

unseeing at the ceiling.

 

*****************************************************************

 

     For the next two evenings Cat watched for LaCroix.  That

chance had seated him beside her at the concert she did not for

a minute believe.  He thought she didn't know who he was, of

course.

     Her parents had never been told that Janette had failed to

hypnotize the kidnapping out of Cat's memory. It had worked on

Jeffrey, once he was well enough to be visited in the hospital. Cat

had simply looked up at Janette, wide-eyed, when the power was

beamed at her. "You're a vampire." It had been a statement, not a

question.

     Janette gasped something in French, and tried again.

     "Was Daddy a vampire, too?" Cat asked. Janette had been

fastening Cat's pajamas; the top button snapped off.

     She said, "That's not nice to ask," and began looking for

another pajama top.

     "But I don't want to be nice," protested Cat. "I want to know

if Daddy used to be a vampire."

     Janette had burst into laughter, and until the day Janette

left Toronto, eleven years later, Cat's knowledge had formed a

secret bond with her. The other children were simply appendages of

their father to Janette: Cat was an individual in her own right.

When Cat overheard the name LaCroix spoken between her parents

after one of Daddy's nightmares, it was Janette who explained.

 

     By the third night Cat considered going to Janette's new club

in the Haight, the latest in a succession of Ravens which Janette

had run in various cities for most of a century. Her parents had

not really wanted Cat to take this job halfway across North

America. Her father had protested strongly, until her mother

reminded him that Janette was in San Francisco now, and would

surely help Cat in an emergency. Cat hadn't been intended to

overhear, she knew, and she hadn't wanted anyone's help.

     She certainly didn't want help now. If she went to see

Janette, help was just exactly what she'd get, wanted or not. She

was the one being played for a fool, and she was going to be the

one who rescued herself.

 

*******************************************************************

 

     LaCroix was too experienced a hunter to lose patience. He

stayed out of Cat's sight. She might be suspicious if she

encountered him again soon without a good reason.

     He had to make sure of a good vantage point. That was why he

was arriving early at Morrison Hall on the fourth night, he told

himself. It was important to be in the front. He might want to

influence her.

     LaCroix's research had been thorough.  He could have written

a short biography of Cat Knight, and he could easily have graphed

her schedule. The Musica Renata mailings which appeared regularly

in her box had suggested music as a cover for his stalking.

     He had not known, however, until he looked at the program that

she was a soloist, or ... "I knew it! A mezzo."

     He remembered when tonight's cantata was new, and he

remembered the voice for which the solo had been composed. Did Cat

know that the dangerous register change in the repeat had been

placed to show off that singer's favorite trick? Could she do it as

easily?

 

*****************************************************************

 

     On the stage, Cat's fingers were locked onto a fold of her

gown. She was trying to control her breathing, since her heartbeat

was a lost cause. Why had she ever let Greg talk her into the this?

It had been all very well for him to promise her, then, that he

wouldn't let her fail, he'd cover for her. She hadn't spoken to him

since the break-up. He was elaborately favoring his right arm, and

seemed to blame her for it. His last action tonight before stepping

onto the podium, had been to throw her a murderous glare.

     The cantata quickened to the solo. Cat grabbed her note the

second before Greg cut it in half, to make a perfect entrance. His

second trick came a line later, as he "forgot" a retard.

Cat, watching closely, matched him, but her fingers tightened on

her dress. Greg was determined to make her fail, as if her own

nerves weren't traitor enough, and that jump between registers was

coming up.

     In the front row, LaCroix had realized what was happening the

minute Greg tried to subvert Cat's first measure. His own fists

clenched, and for one red-hazed moment he wanted to leap onto the

stage.  He should have finished breaking the young swine's shoulder

two nights ago. The retard was omitted. LaCroix needed only one

glance at Cat's eyes to know that the piece had not been rehearsed

this way.

     Very well, Greg Whoever-Your-Name-May-Be, your fiddling days

will be over after I finish with you tonight. In the meantime ...

Damn it, it was happening again! He did not care what Greg did to

her. Anything that unsettled her would make her an easier target.

     Greg's final sabotage came just before the register break. He

began rushing the tempo. Cat would never be able to manage at that

rate.

     Since when did LaCroix like things to be easier? Cat was his

prey! He would brook no interference. He glared at the back of the

conductor's head.  Greg staggered, seemed to catch himself, and

resumed following the score precisely as written. Cat aced the

register change and made a triumphant finish.

     On stage Cat released her grip on her gown, and allowed her

relief to light her smile. The chorus moved onto the third section.

Greg seemed to be conducting in a daze. Cat automatically worried,

and was brought up sharply by the realization that Greg's problems

were no longer hers. So, why was she suddenly so depressed that she

had to hold back tears?

 

*****************************************************************

 

     "Aren't you going to the reception?" One of Cat's friends

asked as she turned toward the outside door, instead of the

downstairs room where the party was scheduled.

     "Not really," said Cat.  "I'm not sure I wouldn't break one of

the wine bottles over Greg's head."

     "Do it and we'll all alibi you! Come on, Cat, Greg'll love it

if he thinks he's driven you off." She started to add that none of

Cat's friends had ever known what Cat saw in Greg anyway, but

thought better of it.

     Cat sighed. "Oh, all right," she said, and capitulated.

 

     The reception room was already full. Cat stood for a moment

just inside the door, trying to spot Greg so that she could avoid

him.

     Yes, there he was, in one corner, having what appeared to be

a heated argument with several members of the Board of Directors.

Cat hastily turned away, before she was drawn in by eye contact,

and found herself looking across the room at LaCroix.

     He stood alone near the early instruments exhibit, scanning

the explanation cards with a sardonic twist to his mouth. Cat found

herself thinking of panthers and electricity arcing out of control.

     Suddenly she was blind with rage. What right had LaCroix to

insinuate himself into her life to hurt her, just because she

represented his ancient quarrel with her father? "The all-powerful

master vampire, are you?" She thought angrily. "You're nothing but

a jumped-up tick! And I'm the one who's going to apply the match."



     She joined him beside the exhibit case. He turned, somewhat

disconcerted at the directness of her approach. The objects of his

pursuit generally stood in blissful ignorance, or fled. LaCroix

allowed himself to smile questioningly.

     Cat smiled innocently back. So he was playing her for a fool!

"Hello, Mr. LaCroix! I'd say small world, except that it's true in

early music. Will you be at the rest of the series?"

     "Dr. Knight, isn't it?" he parried. That deep red became her,

but it needed something. Flowers at the neckline?  Suddenly he

remembered a pendant, an heraldic sphinx formed from a baroque

black pearl within coral flames. The red in the fire was exactly

the same. He hadn't worn it since Venice, or thought of it since

happening across it in a list of lost works by Benvenuto Cellini,

but it was in his bank in Switzerland. A fantastic idea of lending

it to Cat for her next performance flashed across his mind.

     "Tell me, do you often have amnesia after helping people solve

puzzles?" She saw that he was taken aback, and her smile widened

into a nose-wrinkling grin.

     Vixen! He thought, and found his own smile, instead of

obediently extinguishing itself, answering hers. He knew that look:

Nicholas, up to something completely outrageous. "Not when it's the

last of the unsolved Antonninis," LaCroix answered. "Are you going

to publish it?"

     "I suppose I should, but it's out of my field." The ghost of

the unsigned contract in her desk rose before her. "But --"

     "Cat, congratulations!" The chairman of the Board was bearing

down on her, with most of the Board in tow.  LaCroix, fading

effortlessly into the background, muttered two or three phrases

under his breath that he hadn't used since his days as Alexander

the Great's most feared mercenary.

     Finally he could stand it no longer. To an observer, he

appeared to have resumed his study of the instruments in their

cases. It might have been coincidence that the crowd around Cat all

suddenly developed reasons to be elsewhere.

     Cat herself was biting her lips against laughter. Of course he

was using the vampire mind control! She would have to find an

excuse to ask Janette if all vampires needed to look into the

target's eyes. She'd never heard of anyone else being able to do it

without eye contact. She stopped, allowing herself to listen. Yes,

he was trying to call her. All right, she would flatter his vanity

this one time.

     LaCroix pretended to be surprised at her return."Oh, there you

are again."

     "Of course. This is a new display since the last time I was in

here, and it's something I'm interested in." The newness was a lie,

but if he wasn't going to fight fair, neither was she. The cases

contained variant forms of the lyre, from an ancient model

reconstructed, through the later, Germanic bowed type that was the

ancestor of the rebec.

     "Do you play the lyre?" LaCroix asked.

     "No; I've always wanted to, but I've never been able to find

a teacher."

     There was no response from her companion. Glancing up to see

what had distracted him, Cat was surprised to find him watching her

with an expression she couldn't identify. For one infinitesimal

fraction of a second, the sleek predator was human. Then he caught

her gaze. The icy charm returned, but not before Cat had seen that

it was a shield instead of a lure.

     Did she know? LaCroix wondered. Was this a challenge? No, it

couldn't be. Neither Nick nor Janette could have told her about

Menelaos, the apprentice lyre-maker. "Do you play anything besides

the piano?" he inquired almost at random.

     "My father taught me to play the guitar when I was a child,"

answered Cat. Good! She'd wanted an opening to mention him. "Dad

started me on the piano, too."

     "Is he a musician?" LaCroix's tone was perfect. Only someone

who was listening for it would have known that it was not a casual

question.

     Cat was listening. "No, actually he's a police detective," she

said. Now let him wonder what she knew! "I play Celtic harp, too --

I learned that later, from a friend."

     LaCroix was abruptly thankful that he had not taken a glass of

wine as a prop. Janette played the Celtic harp. "You obviously

enjoy music, and you have a magnificent voice." Mentally he swore

at himself. He had meant "good" to be the adjective. "May I ask you

a personal question, Dr. Knight?"

     Opening number two, twelve o'clock high, thought his

adversary. "Certainly, but please call me Cat. "Dr. Knight" is my

mother; she's a pathologist." Cat added a politely correct smile.

     She must be fencing with him! To cover himself, LaCroix

continued with his script. "Cat, then. How is that you became a

physicist rather than a singer?"

     "One artist in the family's enough. My sister's the performer;

she's got the temperament for it. I'm too serious-minded." Cat was

puzzled. Where was he leading? Surely he didn't think she could be

lured into a career change in order to fail for his amusement?

Besides, that wouldn't be revenge on her father. Had he somehow

failed in intelligence-gathering with the rest of the family? He

might not know where Jeffrey was doing his residency. Richard was

safely at home until he finished his undergraduate degree, but

Aurora .... Aurie had just started her first season as an

apprentice at Stratford, and Aurie didn't have suppressed memories

of vampires to draw on for defense.

     Cat's temper blazed. If he thought she was going somehow to

play Judas goat in a plot against her little sister, LaCroix the

Master Vampire had better start guarding himself! She would phone

Dad the minute she got home. No, wait. Aurie was the wilful type.

Years of experience warned Cat that any attempt of Dad's to protect

her would lead to her storming in the opposite direction. Very well

then, Cat would take care of the situation.

     LaCroix's eyebrows rose. What had he said to anger her? It

wouldn't be anything to do with her voice, and clearly Nick hadn't

denied her musical training. Her sister was the performer in the

family, she'd said, because Cat didn't have the temperament.

     Menelaos the Apprentice Lyre-maker of Pergamon, having been

evoked, was not easily exorcised. All at once he was Menelaos the

abused little boy again, and his father's voice echoed loudly in

his memory, shouting all the hurtful things about Laertes's talent,

Laertes having been worth everything, and Menelaos being worth

nothing.

     *Nicholas, was it you who taught her to undervalue herself?

... No, that wouldn't be like you, not the way you were always on

about wanting children of your own. Very well, what about your

wife?* It took all his strength of will to force back the vampire

rage. LaCroix hated Natalie Lambert Knight. If she hadn't come

between them, he would have lured Nick back. He was sure of that;

he had never failed before.

     It would be like that conniving piece of goods, Nicholas's

Saint Natalie, to favor her younger daughter. Hadn't Janette said

once that the second daughter was Nick's image? No doubt that had

been reason enough to place her above Cat.

     Aloud, he said, "And what kind of temperament would that be?"

     "You know, just artistic temperament." Cat was not going to

give him anything about her sister.  She must distract him, but

how? "You asked if I played the lyre; do you?"

     "Oh, yes," he said. "In fact, it's always been my favorite."

     "I suppose it's no use asking where you learned?" Cat was

tired of fencing. Besides, he wasn't likely to tell her that he had

taken his first lesson more than nine centuries ago. Janette had

once, when annoyed with Nick, told Cat that he had been as stubborn

as a brick wall for eight hundred years, so LaCroix must be at

least as old as that.

     "Nowhere near here," said LaCroix. So that was the right bait!

"Do you still want to learn?"

     "As a matter of fact, I do," said Cat. All the family acting

talent hadn't gone to Aurora. She sounded only casually interested.

     "I teach occasionally, if you don't mind coming to my house."

Very occasionally! His last pupil had been her father. "I have an

unfortunate allergy to sunlight, among other things, that keeps me

housebound by day."



     The music room of the Victorian house LaCroix had owned since

his first San Francisco sojourn had been designed as a scaled-down

great hall with a minstrel's gallery. Pseudo-moorish fret work

carved into its front panel idea made anyone seated on the gallery

floor invisible. From it Alexandra, hidden as usual, was watching

Cat and LaCroix, as she had watched at each of Cat's lessons.

     She had seen Cat challenge LaCroix, and several times she

could have sworn that the mortal was deliberately provoking him.

 

     Less than two weeks ago, Alexandra had gloated as Cat followed

LaCroix into the library, instead of waiting for him to bring the

promised volume. The library was LaCroix's sanctum. Alexandra was

never allowed in there except to clean while her master watched

impatiently.

     When no explosion materialized, she had peeked carefully

through the keyhole, fully expecting to find LaCroix crouched over

Cat's drained body. Instead, they were sitting at the antique

Italian chess set, with its ivory and obsidian pieces, deep in the

opening moves of what seemed to Alexandra to be an interminable

game.

     Now, instead of Cat's going home after her lyre lessons, she

was quite likely to stay until all hours of the night, playing

chess. Once Cat had actually caught LaCroix in a questionable

manoeuver, and had calmly told him so. LaCroix, grinning, had shown

her where it was legal under a very obscure point of the rules.

     "Tell me, what would you do if you were sure I was cheating?"

he asked.

     Cat smiled serenely. "Cheat back, of course. Only I'd make

sure *I* didn't get caught."

     And they had laughed!

 

     Sprawled full-length, this time Alexandra had her master and

his pupil directly in her line of sight.  Cat was sitting on one of

the chairs with an early medieval lyre in her lap. The tune she

fingered was very simple, but it was being played surely, and with

the right emphases. LaCroix smiled at her. "That's nearly perfect.

You're stopping a little too heavily in the bottom register, but

practice will take care of that."

     Cat tucked her wayward mane behind one ear. "I'll try it

again."

     "Good girl! Your fingers need a bit more curve." He took her

right hand and gently arranged it on the strings. "That's better."

He listened with half-closed eyes.

 

     In the gallery, Alexandra saw her master's eyes tinge with the

gold of desire. Jealousy stabbed like sunlight. He never spoke to

her like that, and she had learned centuries ago to avoid his touch

when she could. Alexandra's eyes, themselves gold-tinged, caught

fire. She should have ripped Cat Knight's throat out twenty years

ago when she'd had the chance!

 

     The score from which Cat was playing had the vocal line with

a text in medieval French. Softly, at the last bar of the

introduction, she began to sing.

      When she had finished the repeat, LaCroix spoke. "You're

wasted on a mundane career. Voices like yours shouldn't be hidden

away."

     Cat shook her head. "I've never wanted to be a professional.

Aurie's the one who loves all the ins and outs and intrigues."

     "That's rather caustic," LaCroix told her. One eyebrow quirked

slightly. "Don't you approve of your sister?"

     Mentally Cat cursed herself. Leading him to the subject of her

family was exactly what she had *not* intended to do. "It doesn't

have anything to do with her," she said sharply.

     "Indeed?" Incredulity etched his voice.

     "Yes, indeed!" Cat snapped. "I've had to drop out of my early

music group, that's all. I don't have Greg's talent for plotting."

     He was silent. Surprised, she glanced at him. LaCroix was

looking at her with the same inscrutable expression she had seen at

the reception after the Musica Renata concert. "Had to?" He asked.

"As in forced?" He spoke casually, but once again Cat flashed on

the image of a panther crouched to spring.

     "No, it was my idea. Factions were starting to form, and Greg

may be a bastard, but he's a first-class early conductor, so I got

out."

     LaCroix's fingers tightened on the arm of his chair. "Young

Greg wants sorting out." So that was why Cat's attention had

wandered tonight, and why he had beaten her so easily in their last

chess game.

     He had forgotten how much triumph there was in watching an apt

pupil develop. And when it came to distracting Cat from her chess

.... She hadn't beaten him yet, but she was getting there. Nick had

taught her well.

     If Greg thought he was going to poach in LaCroix's coverts by

upsetting Cat, he was very much mistaken, and so he was going to

find out as soon as Cat went home.

     For just a moment there had been a yellow tinge to her

teacher's pale blue eyes. "No, don't!" Cat reacted instinctively.

She might wonder what she had ever seen in Greg, but she didn't

want him murdered.

     "Really?" LaCroix inquired. "Why not?"

     Cat reached a little desperately for a rationale. "Because he

knows I'm studying with you," she said. It was true. One of the

altos, the one who had been after Greg for months, had overheard

the invitation at the reception and promptly conveyed the

intelligence to Greg. "He can't have forgotten what you did to his

shoulder. If you attack him he'll only go to his doctor and get

painkillers. This way he'll worry. He's a worrier; he'll put

himself through worse psychologically than anything you can do to

him physically, because he'll be afraid you have the influence to

get him fired."

               The vampire's eyes were fixed on her face, as if he had never

really seen her before. He said softly, "My dear, that's worthy of

Machiavelli." Whose manuscript he had critiqued before it went to

the printer; LaCroix wished he could tell Cat. "And he'd be

correct. I do have the influence to get him fired."

     Not for a moment did Cat doubt it. For one vertiginous instant

she felt a thrill of triumph at controlling such power, for it was

in her control. A word from her, and -- Cat brought herself up

sharply.  No! Either LaCroix was getting into her mind, or the

worst side of her character was showing, but she wasn't going to

let either happen. Instead she smiled at him. "There must be better

uses for that kind of influence than wasting it on Greg."

     LaCroix smiled back. "Name one."

     "Oh, front row seats at SFO's opening night, for instance."

There, that ought to counter him. Any front row tickets for the San

Francisco Opera were difficult to get. Opening night would be

impossible.

     "Done!" he answered, "On one condition, that you wear the red

dress you wore for the Renata concert."

     Cat was startled, but not too astonished to keep in play.

"Done!" she echoed, "on one condition of my own."

     "Which is?"

     "Just don't kill anyone for the tickets." LaCroix allowed one

eyebrow to rise. Cat grinned at him. He found himself grinning

back, until both were laughing.

 

*****************************************************************

 

     "Was that her?" asked Alexandra, elaborately casual in her

pretense of waking early and wandering onto the landing at the head

of the stairs just as the front door was re-bolted.

     "You know it was," he answered. "Do you really think I don't

hear you spying in the woodwork?" He turned and went into the

drawing room without bothering to check that Alexandra followed.

     A frown disfigured the vacuously pretty face. "I have to spy!

You never tell me anything."

     "I prefer to conserve my energies," returned LaCroix. He

looked from Alexandra to the decanter and frowned. "For example, I

object to giving standing instructions twice." He spoke evenly, but

Alexandra hastened to fill a glass and put it into his hand.

     "You said I could kill Cat!" Her tone rose to a whine. "She's

my prey; you promised!"

     LaCroix shook his head. "So much beauty, and so little sense

of the esthetic! A few moments in the street would serve for mere

killing."

     "Oh, I know, you want Nick to know it was you behind it, even

if that Janette does swear it was me, but why do you have to bring

her here, and laugh with her, and --"

     In one motion LaCroix rose from the chair and struck Alexandra

full in the face. She uttered a sob and froze, staring at him.

     "Who'd have thought it! Alexandra, I had no idea your

intelligence was sufficient for jealousy." Calmly, he resumed his

seat. "For your insolence, you may abandon the idea of Cat as your

prey. From here on in, she's mine."

               Alexandra burst into tears and fled the room. LaCroix's voice

sounded behind her. "And you will not leave this house until

further notice without my permission."

     LaCroix sat for some time in his chair, drinking with

unaccustomed heaviness. Certainly Alexandra's defiance had

surprised him, but what sent him repeatedly to the decanter was the

thought of Cat, magnificent, infuriating, indomitable Cat, as

Alexandra's creature. The idea blinded him  with rage, although it

had been his own.

     He tried in vain to block the picture from his thoughts,

draining his goblet yet again. Instead the blood-wine mixture

brought her image more forcefully before him.

     His hunger woke. No, it was more than hunger. LaCroix shut his

eyes, fighting his desire. Cat would make a splendid companion to

share the glories of night and music, of arts ancient and new, to

tread the measure with him through the intricate patterns of

eternity.

     But that would mean abandoning his revenge. Swearing, LaCroix

hurled his glass into the fireplace and went out.

 

*****************************************************************

 

     From her special seat at one end of the bar, Janette surveyed

the entrance to the Raven. LaCroix was coming; she had sensed him

the instant he began to move toward the Haight and its plethora of

clubs. She always knew when he was moving toward her. Usually the

warning was to her advantage, because she knew what he was up to in

time to take evasive action if it threatened her. Strange that

Nicolas (as always she thought the name in its French form, "Nee-

co-lah") had lost that sense long before his final struggle and

escape. Janette had sometimes wondered if it had not been so much

a triumph for Nicolas as something done by LaCroix for his own dark

ends.

     Yes, he was coming toward her across the dance floor, his hair

an ice-silver flame in the club's specialized lights. As always he

sneered at the patrons without actually moving a muscle in his

face. Janette's best reason for staying in the nightclub business

after winning the original Raven on a bet in 1920's Paris had been

LaCroix's aversion to such places.

     "Good evening, Janette," he said urbanely. "Such calm at my

return! I could almost think you weren't glad to see me."

     Janette took a deep pull at her drink. "I never excite myself

for certainties," she told him. The bartender automatically brought

her a refill and at her gesture included her visitor. One of the

bouncers, detecting perhaps the strain in her posture, moved toward

them. LaCroix turned an inquiring glance on him, and the muscleman

quickly decided to investigate the opposite side of the room.

     "Congratulations, my dear," he said. "You have them well

trained."

     "Experience has its uses. Just tell me what you want."

     "Quite the abrupt little businesswoman, aren't we?" He took a

step closer, until he was brushing her side. "Very well then, so

much for the amenities. Is the President of the Opera Association

still among your coterie?"

               "I suppose it'd be a waste of time to ask why? Yes, he is."

     "How convenient!"  LaCroix raised his glance in a half-toast.

"He's going to get me two front row center seats for opening night.

They're probably his, anyway."

     Janette stiffened. "LaCroix, please, don't make trouble, I

implore you!"

     "Of course not! In fact, I promised not to kill him." His

smile seemed to hold genuine amusement.

     She was startled out of her sang-froid. "Promised not to --

what do you mean? No, don't answer that here. I think you'd better

come upstairs."

 

     It was several hours deeper into the night when Janette

returned from seeing the prominent attorney who happened to be the

current president of the San Francisco Opera Association safely to

his car. "It's a good thing he's already divorced!" she observed.

"I only hope he's speaking to me after this."

     LaCroix cocked an eyebrow at her. "Considering that his memory

of tonight involves an assignation out of his wildest fantasies,

I'm sure he will be."

     "LaCroix, you didn't!" Janette snatched up a decanter and

poured a glass of her private stock. "Oh, well, if he becomes too

troublesome I can always erase all his memory."

     "That would be inadvisable. I may have other uses for him in

the future." LaCroix took a glass for himself.

     "But why? What do you want with opening night tickets, and

those tickets in particular?" Janette's brow was ever so slightly

wrinkled.

     "Because I've a fancy to see a certain dress again," he said

sardonically.

     Janette stared at him. "On a certain wearer, no doubt?"

     "Oh, definitely. She thinks she's set me an impossible

condition, the vixen. I want to see her eyes when she sees I've

done it." The corners of the older vampire's mouth quivered with

suppressed laughter.

     "And these are different from all other mortal eyes?" Janette

asked, trying to sound bored.

     "Let's just say I haven't seen their like in quite a number of

centuries." LaCroix shifted in his chair. "I'm too old a fox for

that trap."

     "No male is ever too old," she told him flatly. "Are you

thinking of bringing her over, whoever she is?"

     He rose and began to pace. "I don't know; perhaps. Yes,

perhaps."

     Janette finished the last of her drink. "And will I have the

honor of meeting her?"

     LaCroix ignored the sarcasm. "Oh, undoubtedly, whatever I

decide. Yes, you will most definitely meet her."  The knife-edge

grin he gave her chilled even Janette.



     It began to seem to Cat as though permanent clouds had set in

over San Francisco, a condition that had nothing to do with the

real weather. The ads and posters for Musica Renata's next

performance were out. She couldn't help feeling at least a twinge

of regret at every one she saw. Greg found out her newly unlisted

number and resumed making late night calls. Since the alto who had

been spying for him happened to be a computer wizard, Cat suspected

that Pacific Bell's systems had been hacked. A second number change

would be useless. Instead she blocked Greg's home and office

numbers, and the alto's, but there was nothing she could do about

pay phones or Greg's friends.

     The semester began at Berkeley. If anything, it was worse than

Cat had expected. Budget cuts landed her with two inconveniently

scheduled classes, and both of them seemed to have enrolled all the

immature, untalented freshmen in the university. The research

project she had wanted to be involved with wasn't available -- too

many interested younger faculty with more seniority than Cat -- and

Cat thought any bonehead should be able to see that the project for

which she finally settled hadn't a quark's chance of succeeding.

 

*******************************************************************

 

     The foyer of the War Memorial Opera house was gridlocked with

first nighters stopping to check seat numbers or simply to be

noticed. Cat stopped for the fourth time in their progress toward

the doors into the auditorium. Half a step behind her, LaCroix said

something under his breath, and took Cat's arm.

     The crowd melted out of their way. Cat smiled to herself. He

had turned on the vampire mind control. Of course he thought she

needed to be drawn along beside him, lest she succumb to the

broadcast command.

      She looked up at him, considering. His evening clothes were

exactly like those of the men around him, yet ... "He makes the

rest of them look like peasants!" thought Cat, surprised to find

herself exultant.

 

     Janette leaned over the dress circle railing. Yes, LaCroix was

in the middle of the front row, beside a woman who wore her red

gown like a coronation robe and her dark gold hair like a crown.

Something stirred in Janette's memory.  Frowning slightly, she

focused her vampire hearing.

     "Then you're admitting defeat?" LaCroix asked. Janette could

hear his smile even if she couldn't see it.

     The unknown's voice was definitely familiar. "If sitting here

for opening night, and being lent a Cellini pendant to do it in, is

defeat, then I don't want to win."

     Cellini pendant. LaCroix's sphinx? Neither Janette nor Nick

had ever been permitted to wear that! The sphinx was the monster

Oedipus had destroyed to win his kingdom. When a coat of arms

became necessary to claim nobility, LaCroix had chosen a sphinx

surrounded by flames against a field of black.

     "Janette?" her escort asked.

     She turned to him, smiling. Dr. Bassingthwaite was the

director of the Lowie Museum at Berkeley, and one of the few humans

Janette had ever suspected of deducing her vampire identity without

planning to stake her. Being regarded as an anthropological

curiosity was intriguing. "I'm sorry," she said. "I thought I

recognized someone from a long time ago."

 

*****************************************************************

 

     Intermission found Janette at the top of the staircase. She

looked out over the marble foyer that was one of the War Memorial

Opera House's antique glories. Antique! Her mouth twisted at the

thought. World War I was a little more than a century in the past.

For a moment she thought of Nicholas, as always in the French

pronunciation. Once she would have been happy that he was not among

the San Francisco dead to whom the building was a monument. He had

gone straight from the 1916 debacle with the acupuncturist in

Chinatown to wangle his way into British intelligence in France.

There he had done his best to be killed. Janette shuddered at the

memory of some of the situations she and LaCroix had pulled him out

of.

     The glittering crowd flowed out from the orchestra seats into

the lobby. LaCroix and his companion stopped just inside the main

doors. Janette smiled to herself. It had been raining earlier;

LaCroix had a catlike aversion to damp. LaCroix's companion turned

to say something to him, and for the first time her face was

directly in Janette's line of vision.

     Janette removed her hand from the balustrade just in time to

keep it from splintering in her grasp. She swept up her skirt, said

"I'm sorry, there's someone I must talk to," to her escort, and

hurried toward LaCroix and his prey.

     "Where are we going?" Dr. Bassingthwaite asked, trailng her

through the crowd. It was one of his nicest traits, Janette thought

fleetingly, that he never argued with her.

     "To a rescue!" She told him. The crowd parted before her.

 

     Wonderful! Thought Cat. Here came the cavalry just as she

reached an understanding with the Indians.

     LaCroix laughed. "Good evening, Janette," he said, opening the

game. "I thought we might see you here."

     "Indeed?" rejoined Janette. "You must expect to see so many

people!"

     "Must I? I can't think of any." LaCroix adjusted a cufflink

which was not out of place.

     Janette threw him an incandescent smile. "I can. Roland

d'Agincourt, for instance, or Sharibet. Especially dear Sharibet!

I hear she's as imperious as ever, when her orders are flouted. She

regards them as law, you know."

     Cat was impressed. Among other things, she was not supposed to

know that her cousin Roland was a vampire, or that Sharibet,

generally described as the Empress of Vampires, had forbidden

anyone to take revenge on her father, either himself or through her

mother and their children. Janette must be desperate to mention

Sharibet in public.

     LaCroix's smile equalled Janette's for sincerity. Cat was

reminded of an amiable shark. "Of course she does," he said. "They

*are* like laws; they even have loopholes."

     "Which you've found?" Janette asked sarcastically.

     "Oh, yes." LaCroix was actually grinning.

     "It's no use claiming you didn't know her," Janette began,

carefully not looking at Cat.

     Cat decided it was time to intervene. "Actually, I'm not sure

we all know each other," she told the combatants, in feigned

ignorance of the situation. She held out her hand to Janette. "I'm

Cat Knight."

     "How remiss of me," LaCroix said. "Janette, aren't you going

to present your friend?"

     Janette distractedly made the necessary introductions. Cat

began chatting with Dr. Bassingthwaite about the Lowie's

controversial new Early People in the Americas exhibit. Snatches of

the vampire conversation floated under theirs.

     "You know perfectly well who she ..."

     "Of course. Why else ..."

     "I'm warning you, I won't let you ..."

     "My dear Janette, bringing her across was your idea ..."

     "My idea! LaCroix --"

     Just then the warning bell rang. Vampires and mortals returned

obediantly to their seats.

 

     Salieri's "Armida" proceeded on stage with less than Cat's

full attention.

     "Bringing her across was your idea." The overheard phrase

echoed in her head. Bringing her across. Cat had assumed that

LaCroix planned to kill her. Her father would know exactly what to

make of a victim drained of blood, whatever San Francisco Homicide

might say about cults and maniacs.  No doubt LaCroix had other

plans for afterward, but she had been certain her place in them

would only begin with her death.

     Of what use could she possibly be to him as an unwilling

vampire? LaCroix struggled with her father for centuries. Certainly

he could embitter the rest of her parents' lives with the knowledge

that Cat was now trapped, but neither would live long enough, in

vampire terms, to make the game worthwhile to him. Unless --

     Did he think he could force her father to come back across, as

a ransom for the rest of her family?  She would never allow that to

happen! "So you want an unwilling victim, LaCroix?" thought Cat,

surpising herself. "You've going to find this one willing. Let's

see you use that for blackmail."

 

 ******************************************************************

 

     Cat flicked on the light switch in her living room, and took

the key out of the lock. She was singing a tune from the opera's

finale. The music ended in a choked scream which Salieri had never

composed. Someone was sitting in her armchair.

     "So he finally brought you home," observed Janette. "I was

beginning to think I should have waited at his house."

     Cat stormed across to her. "What in Hell are you doing here?"

     "Trying to keep you out of Hell, actually," Janette said.

"Nick used to think it was cute when your mother got angry and

swore, but he never approved of it on other women. Does he rebuke

you?"

     "Dad doesn't usually make me that angry. Janette, please, stop

trying to pretend you're my aunt."

     "Actually, cherie, I feel exactly like an aunt, and it's

really quite depressing." Janette took one of Cat's hands. "Kitty-

Cat, don't you know who he is?"

     "Of course I know!  I admit I was surprised when he didn't

give me an alias." Cat grinned. Janette, suddenly stricken by her

likeness to Nicholas, was unable to answer. Cat dropped into the

desk chair, next to her visitor. "He probably thought I wouldn't

know who and what he was. Janette, I've been meaning to ask you

something, only I couldn't think of an excuse that wouldn't make

you suspicious. He seems to be able to use mind-control without

looking into the target's eyes. I thought that was impossible!"

     "It is -- for most of us. Sharibet probably taught him. She's

the oldest and most powerful of us." Janette's head came up

sharply. "Cat, has he been using it on you?"

     "He tried. I didn't tell him it won't work. Don't you

remember?"

     "*I* can't hypnotize you. What LaCroix can do, I wouldn't like

to say."

     Cat smiled at her. "I'm forgetting my manners! I don't have

anything like your private stock, of course, but I can offer you

wine."

     "Yes, please." Janette followed her toward the kitchenette in

the corner. "Cat, are you sure it didn't work?"

     "Well, there aren't any gaps in my memory, and I'm apparently

still mortal." Cat handed her a glass and poured one for herself.

"I just flattered him by letting him think I'd come over to talk to

him because he was trying to coerce me. He's so transparent, you

know. He thinks I don't know what he is, so he doesn't suspect that

I know what he wants."

     Janette's sip was unnecessarily large. "Transparent? I beg

you, don't underestimate him. LaCroix's a master game-player, but

once he's finished he enjoys crushing the pieces! I don't even want

to think about what he'd do if he knew you were playing games of

your own."

     Cat's smile softened. "I do. He'd move the stakes higher, to

prove there's nothing he can't control. Do you know why I was at

the opera with him tonight? Because I bet him that he couldn't get

the front row center seats."

     "That was a sure thing. He knew the Opera Association

president is a friend of mine." There was a faint hesitancy on the

word friend.

     "So that's it," said Cat. "I thought he was going to murder

the ticket holders."

     Janette stared at her, disbelieving. "You can't tell me you

didn't care?"

     "Of course I cared, but all I had to do was add to the

challenge. I specified that he couldn't kill anyone to get the

tickets."

     Janette nodded with reluctant agreement. "Well, yes, he did

say that. Cat, please, just because he enjoys fencing with you now

doesn't mean he won't kill you when he's finished."

     "Or bring me across." Cat finished her glass. " You know, I've

been thinking about that ever since intermission. I'm not sure I'm

opposed to the idea."

     Janette fell abruptly back into the armchair. "It would break

Nee-co-lah's heart!"

     "I know. Don't worry; I won't let him bring me across. It's

just that, when he touches me --"

     Janette's voice rose.  "When he *what*? Cat, he is hypnotizing

you! He must be!"

     " You sound like an aunt again! Of course he touches me. He's

teaching me to play the lyre. I used that to get close to him. I

didn't want to have to worry about him following me around all the

time, so I arranged to see him regularly in the same place." Cat

put her glass down on the desk. "Janette?"

     The vampire was shaking with laughter. "If I ever had any

doubts about your paternity, I don't any more! You couldn't have

inherited that kind of insanity from anyone but Nick. Will you

promise me something?"

     "Maybe. What is it?"

     "If you get into trouble with this, come to me."

     Cat looked at her for a moment. "Only if you promise not to

call my parents when you get home, or Roland, either. I'll know if

you do, because I don't believe in coincidences, and I will go

straight to LaCroix  and tell him everything."

     She spoke quietly, but Janette had lived with that tone for

nearly eight centuries. Cat was like her father; she would do

exactly as she said.

     "Very well, I promise. But, Cat, please, promise you'll come

to me if you get in over your head?"

     "I will. Janette, give me credit for common sense, or at least

for caring about my father. Do you really think I'd want to hurt

him, or my mother?"

     "I don't think you'd want to, no," Janette said, "but what

people want doesn't count for much where LaCroix's concerned."

 

     Cat sat staring into space for a long time after Janette had

left. Then the mail light on her desk computer went on, and she

dialed up her account. A burst of language which would definitely

not have met her father's standards flew out of her mouth. She

slammed down the delete key. She had forgotten to block Greg's

access to her email. She began to type the instructions.

     A bit of her conversation with Janette returned to her. She

thought of LaCroix and a grin formed across her lips. "All I have

to do is make it a challenge ...."

     Clearing the screen, she moved out of mail. A few lines were

enough to write the program she needed. It took the better part of

an hour before she was satisfied with the letter which her mailer

would dispatch to Roland and Kim's address in France if she failed

to countermand the intructions at the proper times.

     Alexandra crouched in the shadows at the top of the stairs. If

LACroix had looked up before he left, he would have seen her, but

he never noticed anything any more, not when he was going somewhere

with *her.* Alexandra could no longer contemplate her rival except

generically by the pronoun. The thought of Cat's name was like a

cross against her bare flesh.

     LaCroix had been wearing a suit instead of evening clothes. He

wasn't taking *her* to the opera again. He'd already done that this

week, anyway. Alexandra frowned. Nothing else took as long as the

opera. She would have to fly if she were to carry out her plan, and

Alexandra was terrified of heights. This was yet one more wrong to

lay at *her* door!

     The lock snapped on as LaCroix closed the front door behind

him. Alexandra listened, straining, until she could hear nothing

but the usual night noises from the street. Then she moved across

the landing, through the drawing room, and onto the porch which

gave onto the backyard. Closing her eyes, she pulled herself onto

the railing and forced herself with shaking hands to take off into

the air.

 

*******************************************************************

 

     As Cat unlocked her front door, later that night, her ACT

program slid out from under her arm. LaCroix swept her an elegant

bow and picked it up for her. Cat grinned at him. The American

Conservatory Theatre's current production happened to be a wildly

extravagant Restoration comedy. She had been watching LaCroix's

manner regress to the seventeenth century since the first

intermission. On a whim she held out her hand, with the wrist

curved and the back up. Just as impulsively, LaCroix took the hand

and kissed it.

     For a moment both froze, wondering for separate reasons, "Have

I betrayed myself?" Covering her confusion, she took a step

backward. Cat's foot came down on something slippery just inside

her living room threshold. She almost fell.

     LaCroix caught her. He stood holding her, a moment longer than

necessary. Cat looked down at her feet, frowning at the piece of

slick paper which hadn't been there when she left. She bent quickly

and picked it up.

     "Cat, what is it?" He asked as she drew in her breath. She

shook her head, and sank into the nearest chair. Following her,

LaCroix took the flyer for Cat's last Musica Renata performance out

of her hand. One figure had been burned out of the group photo.

LaCroix frowned. "Young Greg definitely wants sorting out."

     Cat made a pushing-away gesture. "No, don't bother. I'm only

going to spend one more semester at Berkeley. I'll just have to

watch out for him." She smiled. "Besides, if he doesn't get a

reaction he'll be too busy looking over his shoulder to do anything

else for a while."

               LaCroix found himself absurdly touched by that smile. His

vampire senses could smell the tears Cat was holding back. He

fought to keep his eyes from turning golden. The flyer was Greg's

death warrant; he wasn't worth one of those tears.

     LaCroix's fist clinched. Never mind what Greg wasn't worth.

He, LaCroix, was *not* have his hunt interrupted again! That was

all that mattered.

     Cat's irrational sense of responsibility for the young swine

would make her try to bargain him out of it, if she knew what

LaCroix was planning. He reached down and cupped her chin in his

cold hand. "Cat," he said, compellingly.

     She looked up into his eyes. LaCroix focused all his strength

at projective hypnotism on her.

     Cat shook his hand away, suddenly tired of hide-and-seek. She

had had enough of being a pawn labelled "Nick's daughter."

     "It's no use," she told him. "I'm like my mother; vampire mind

control doesn't work on me. I've known who you are, and why you're

stalking me, all along. In fact, I've been stalking you back."

     For the first time in more than two thousand years, LaCroix

was at a loss. "Stalking me back?" he asked with his quietest

urbanity.

     "Yes, stalking," said Cat. "You offered to teach me the lyre,

but I'd have found something else to let me keep an eye on you, if

you hadn't. I don't know why you went after me when you're really

after Aurie, but if you think I'm going to provide you with cover

for attacking my little sister, or just for revenge on my father,

or even if you just think I'm easier prey, you can think again --

several times!"

     Gold shone momentarily in the vampire's eyes. How dare a

presumptuous, powerless, mortal woman plot to thwart him! Then he

caught the ghost of fear choked under a draft of anger which he

could feel her struggling to fan. The gold disappeared. He wanted,

suddenly, to put his arms around her. LaCroix began to laugh.

"Cat's the wrong name for you; what you are is a tigress!  Very

well, my Tigress, if you know what I am, what's to prevent me from

taking you here and now? And why haven't I done it before?"

     Stay calm, Cat exhorted herself. The laughter must be a trick.

His Tigress? Don't be a fool, Cat Knight; you're not his anything.

     Aloud, she answered, "At first I thought it was because you

enjoyed teaching me. Then maybe because you'd have to give up

winning the bet." She  managed to smile straight into his eyes.

"Now I know it's because if anything happens to me, and that

includes disappearing, there's a letter to Roland which contains a

complete account for Sharibet."

     "In the hands of the traditional third party," LaCroix

replied, after the faintest pause. "It wouldn't be Janette, of

course."

     "Of course not. You'd have it away from her in two minutes.

No, it's somewhere safe, and if I don't countermand my instructions

at the times I arranged, Sharibet will know all about your plans to

take revenge on my father through me."

     "My dear Cat, Roland is much more likely to come galumphing

over to San Francisco to tear me limb from limb." LaCroix made no

attempt to hide his amusement -- or his admiration for her

boldness.

     Cat shook her head impatiently. "Yes, I know. And knowing

Roland, he'll forget that he'll have to tear your head off to

prevent you from resurrecting. He's sweet, but he's not very bright

when he's angry. The letter's addressed to Kim, too. She will

notify Sharibet, because she won't want you to kill Roland." Cat

came to her feet and held out her hands to him. "LaCroix, that

letter doesn't have to go anywhere. I don't want to stop taking my

lyre lessons. They're the only time I've been happy lately, that

and the opera and the play tonight. Can't we just be friends?"

     The same unreadable expression crossed his face that she had

seen at the reception after her last Musica Renata concert. Behind

it LaCroix felt the weight of his twenty-three hundred years. Only

once had anyone .... He shied almost physically from the memory of

Arsinoe.

     "Friends? Perhaps, Tigress, perhaps."

     Cat had seen a shadow pass at the back of his eyes. She could

have sworn it was pain. Suddenly Cat was blazingly curious about

the man LaCroix had been. LaCroix! Why, she realized, that can't

even be his name. He's older than Janette. He's probably older than

Christianity.

     Cat had a habit of sitting in her window seat to think; now

automatically she walked over to it and sat down, curling up in one

corner. "LaCroix?" she asked.

     He had followed her. "Yes?"

     "Will you tell me truth about something?"

     "I might."

     "Who are you, really, and how did you become a vampire?"

     He looked away. For perhaps a minute, Cat thought he wasn't

going to respond.

     Centuries of caution warred with impulse. Never before had he

allowed a mortal to know who and what he was, and live. Never

before had anyone, mortal or vampire, wanted to know his past.

Arsinoe had been content with bits and pieces when something

triggered a confidence.

     He might have known Nick's get would be nothing but trouble.

"Who am I, really?" he repeated in a savage parody of her tone.

"This!" His eyes flared golden as he snarled the last word past his

fangs.

     Cat sat very still. "No. That's what you are. I've always

known you're a vampire. I asked *who* you are."

     "LaCroix will do." He hadn't thought about his mortal name

since before she was born. What kind of witchcraft was she using on

him that he wanted to hear it on her lips?

     Witchcraft. Arsinoe used to threaten to cast a spell on him.

It had been their most private joke; he had rescued her after her

former master had beaten her for witchcraft.

     Cat seemed to read his thoughts. "I'm not planning to use a

name spell on you," she said with quiet humor. "What's your real

name?"

     He said, "Menelaos," before he knew that he was going to

answer her. Only Sharibet had ever bent him to her will like that.

How dared Cat sit serenely on her cushion, with no trace of fear in

her eyes or in her heartbeat!

               It was a mistake to think about Cat's heartbeat. He suddenly

scented her blood, flowing warm in the hollow of her throat.

     "And how did you become a vampire?" Cat didn't know herself

why she was insisting. Somehow it was of critical importance to

make him say it.

     It was like stripping the blood-melded tunic from a wound

after one of his mortal battles. Pain, rage and desire sent him

back to the vampire state. He growled, "I'm a vampire because I

chose the wrong woman to rape!" There, now let her sit like a

statue carved in ice.

     "Sharibet." Cat nodded. "I'm sure she deserved it."

     LaCroix was shocked back to the appearance of humanity. "What

do you know about Sharibet?" he demanded.

     "That she's the oldest and strongest vampire. Janette calls

her the Empress. She came to Toronto when I was twelve, and she

made Janette bring me to see her. I don't know why me, and not

Jeffrey or Aurie or Richard. That's when I found out a lot of

things. I'm pretty sure Janette thought she was going to bring me

across, because she was almost hysterical with relief when she was

allowed to take me back again. She babbled a lot of things she

shouldn't have while she was driving me home." Cat smiled at him.

"Why did you pick Sharibet to rape?"

     Now he was sure she didn't understand. Arsinoe had died

because she hadn't understood why he had so vehemently not, in the

abstract, wanted children. Nightmares imprisoned for two millennia

rose in his memory. He'd woken sweat-drenched again and again,

trying to reach her before she found Elora.

     What Cat didn't know might harm her. As though he confronted

a physical enemy in Cat's defense, he began to tell her about

Menelaos of Pergamon.

 

     The fog had gathered and begun to clear before the tale drew

to its close. He paced around the room. Finally he stopped in front

of her. He had left out nothing, not even the twenty years spent

waiting for Cat, Nick's favorite child, to grow old enough to serve

LaCroix's revenge. "Do you understand? I was going to let Alexandra

enslave you, make you like a wild beast until your father chose

either to destroy you himself, or to beg me to take you over

because I control Alexandra."

     He stood as if under court-martial, expressionless at

attention. She would hate him now. Let her hate him. She was not

going to see him care.

     Cat was watching him through a mist of tears. He hadn't looked

at her once while he was speaking. He hadn't seen the three times

she reached toward him. It was as though he was determined to make

her believe in the monster everyone else saw.

     "Menelaos," whispered Cat, and held out her arms to him.

     He seized her convulsively, like a man snatched from drowning,

and their lips met in a kiss which was almost violent.

 

     A noise outside snapped them apart. Something pale flashed

away from the window.

     Cat laughed. "Mai Tai strikes again! It's only the Siamese

from downstairs. He's always coming in my window; he knows a soft

touch when he sees one."

     LaCroix shook his head. There had been something in the

branches of the tree that grew close to the sill, but his senses

had been too full of her to register more than that.

     She started to move back into arms. He stepped away from her.

"Better not, Tigress.  There's a difference between courage and

foolhardiness."

     "I don't think I'd mind being brought across, if it was you,"

she told him.

     "You must remember to tell Sharibet that." LaCroix smiled at

her.

     "Would it stop her from punishing you?" Cat asked. "I could

tell her I wanted to be a vampire."

     LaCroix took her hands in his. "It might make her a little

less inventive."

     Cat sat down again on the window seat. "When I was a little

girl, I used to shock Janette by telling her I wanted to be a

vampire when I grew up. I did, too, although she wouldn't believe

it. I'd forgotten about that, until I met you."

     "And I've made you want to come across?" LaCroix's voice was

skeptical. He sat beside her, still holding her hands.

     "Well, yes, you have. There's so much I'm tired of, and so

much --" Cat shook her head. "Never mind. Janette's right. It would

break Dad's heart."

     "And not your mother's?"

     Cat frowned a little. "You know, I'm not sure. If she knew I'd

thought it out, and if I promised to come to her if I regretted it,

I don't think she'd like it, but I don't think she'd try to stop

me, either. But that's only if Dad weren't involved. She's very

protective of him."

     "You don't have to tell me that," he said."

     "If I asked you to bring me across, would you do it?" Cat

looked at him with a considering expression.

     He was silent for a moment. Then, "I don't know. I might. But

you'd have to be sure."

     "I am sure! I just don't want Dad to be hurt." Cat frowned.

Then her eyes widened. "You're immortal," she said slowly.

     "Yes, but --"

     Cat was sqeezing his hands in her excitement. "I know this

sounds callous, and I do love my father, but he's not young any

more, and -- Will you wait for me? Even if it's ten or fifteen

years?"

     "Behold the fruits of mortality! Poor Nicholas. Yes, Cat, I

will." LaCroix had brought her hands together between his, and was

holding them against his chest.

     "Then we'll have to be careful."

     "We will be. I promise you, Tigress." Cat caught her breath at

the intensity in his voice. He smiled at her again. "Just be

careful how low you wear your necklines at your lessons."

     "Lessons -- look at the time! And I've got an eight o'clock

class to teach!"

 

*******************************************************************

 

               The fog had formed again by morning and thickened. Actually,

it was nearly an hour before the sun reached the bottom edge of the

horizon. Cat supposed, making her way toward the BART station, that

the time could be called "morning" only by courtesy. Her day was

beginning, anyway.  She smiled sleepily at the thought of calling

LaCroix when she arrived at her office. Why should he have all the

fun of staying up all the night, and none of the consequences?

     She was so wrapped up in picturing his reaction to being

roused at this hour by a prank call that she never sensed the

figure that moved out of the alleyway next to the house, following

followed her.

     The follower hung back as Cat reached the corner and stepped

down into the station. Alexandra's fair hair shone as she trailed

Cat down the stairs.

     As usual on the early morning runs, the approaching train was

old stock, racketing along at a much higher speed than its

designers had envisioned.

     Alexandra snarled triumphantly. *Now let LaCroix bring *her*

home!* The memory of LaCroix and Cat in each other's arms, seen

last night through Cat's window flashed before her. *Let LaCroix

make love to *her* now!

     Cat never heard Alexandra's snarl. The white tile walls and

bright posters spiralled as she fought for balance.

     She fell directly onto the tracks, into the headlights of the

train.



     Janette snapped her fingers impatiently as she waited outside

Customs and Immigration at San Francisco International Airport.

What could be keeping them? Had somebody in Immigration had finally

detected Nick's passport as a forgery?  No, that was absurd. Larry

Merlin had tricked the proper computer years ago into issuing

perfectly genuine renewal for nonexistent originals.

     Maybe she would have a few moments alone with Nick. Her

jealousy of Nat had lessened as she watched the mortal woman age,

but Janette would never forget that Nick had been hers before Nat's

ancestors had a permanent surname.

     Nick came through the doorway first. The dark gold hair had

silver wings in it now, and had receded just enough to sharpen the

widow's peak, but his eyes were the same deep-sea blue that had

caught and held her heart eight centuries ago. Janette whispered

"Nee-co-lah," in the pronunciation that only she used and hurried

toward him.

     Nat appeared at Nick's side before Janette could reach him.

The lines in her face registered on Janette as Nick's never did.

Nat had passed sixty. It wasn't fair for her to show so little

gray, or that the tortoiseshell glasses she wore now should be

becoming. Janette didn't exactly want Nee-co-lah to be unhappy in

his marriage, but she did sometimes hope he felt regret.

     He had spotted her. "Janette! Cat isn't ...."

     "Of course not!" Janette hugged him around the carry-on he was

holding. "I promised I would meet you," she added as Nat joined

then. "Besides, the time of day doesn't matter. All I have to do is

drive from inside my garage to the underground garages here. It's

amazing what you can do these days if you have a medical permit for

tinted windows."

 

*****************************************************************

 

     The freeway was flying past before she broke the silence

inside the car. "Nee-co-la, there's something you and Nat have to

know."

     This time it was Nat whose fears responded. "Cat is dead?"

     Janette tossed her head. "Oh, do try to be sensible. No, Cat's

not dead! Why would I pick a moving car to break news like that?"

     "There's worse news?" asked Nat harshly.

     Janette said, "You'd probably say so. LaCroix's at the

hospital, and it's not what you think!"

 

     She looked thoughtfully at the dark-shaded landscape outside

the windshield.

 

     "I didn't know LaCroix had come into the Raven several hours

before sunrise...."

 

******************************************************************

 

     Janette didn't know how long he'd been drinking when she

passed through the bar and saw him.  He seemed almost disoriented.

If he were mortal she'd have said he'd been in a fight, although of

course there weren't any scars. He didn't even notice her; he

called out to Tony and demanded a double brandy.

     Janette had to go over to him. She was afraid not to. Nick had

never seen LaCroix drunk, and Janette had only seen it once. It was

not an experience she cared to repeat.

     "Since when do you drink at the bar?" Janette asked him. "I'm

about to go upstairs for the day".

     He looked at her with something that was trying to be one of

his sneers, and not quite making it. "Ah, yes, that's what you are.

I told her that's what I am."

     "Cat?"

     "She did tell you the whole thing, then. Good. I should have

known. Nothing stops Cat, not even rape."

 

******************************************************************

 

     Natalie gasped and Nick roared, "What?"  followed by a string

of curses which he hadn't used since they'd landed him in one of

the Paris Temple's penance cells.

     Janette knifed into a lane change that took no account of

everyone else's mortality. "That was more or less what I said. In

Latin. He'd scared all the languages I've learned out of me."

 

******************************************************************

 

     LaCroix laughed. "Not Cat, you fool! She'd have seen through

that in a moment. Tell that idiot bartender of yours to bring me

the rest of the bottle."

     "I've got a better vintage upstairs in my liquor cabinet,"

Janette said. "From my private stock. How long has it been since

you fed?"

     "Think I'm drunk, do you?" He grinned at her. Pleasantly! "I

am. I'm higher than that ridiculous moon shuttle that keeps going

off course. Cat's like champagne."

     Janette froze. "LaCroix, you don't mean Cat's blood --"

     "You never have trusted me. Cat does. She always has. Even

when she didn't know it."

     "Please, LaCroix, you're not making sense." Actually, Janette

wasn't sure she wanted to hear anything about this that was

intelligible.

     He turned professorial. "You've failed your first lesson with

Cat. She never makes sense. She's too busy stalking me."

     Janette wondered whether all her bouncers together could get

him upstairs. "LaCroix, in plain language, have you brought Cat

over, or bitten her?"

     "Maybe she's bitten me," he said. "She's done something. Don't

be a fool, Janette. Cat's still mortal."

     Janette thought she saw a way to get him out of the bar. She

spoke in Latin. "You haven't brought her over, she knows what you

are, and you're talking about it in a room full of our kind. Are

you trying to call the Enforcers down on her?"

     It worked. He came upstairs with her. Janette had to stop en

route to chase Alma away from a mortal who should never have left

the farm.

     LaCroix sat down on her sofa with a snifter of her Napoleon

brandy, laced as heavily as Janette dared with blood. "Poor

Janette! Even immortality can't solve the servant problem. Oh, that

reminds me. I came to ask if you could take Alexandra off my

hands."

     Janette's jaw dropped. Never, in the entire two thousand years

she'd known LaCroix, had he ever *asked* her to do anything.

Ordered, yes, but asked?

     "Now I know you're drunk," she said. "Alexandra's been dead

for twenty years."

     "The reports of her death were greatly exaggerated. She found

a hole to hide in when you and Nick pushed her into the sun, then

came crawling back to me. That wasn't very nice of you and Nick, by

the way, but I'm sure you had your reasons."

     "We did," Janette told him. "She was trying to kill Cat."

     LaCroix sobered at that. "I see. No doubt it seemed a trivial

matter at the time?"

     Janette told him the whole story. The sun was rising as she

finished.

     She had just closed the blinds when LaCroix cried out. "No!!

Tigress, look behind you!" Janette thought he had gone mad. His

eyes blazed gold. He lashed out; the sofa flew over backwards and

crashed against the opposite wall.

     When the police interviewed her at the hospital, Janette

learned that this was the exact moment when Alexandra pushed Cat in

front of the train.

     Apparently he was watching through Alexandra's eyes as the

paramedics came, put Cat on a respirator, and transferred her to an

ambulance. When Alexandra's vampire hearing caught the name of the

hospital from the radio transmissions, LaCroix insisted on going to

Cat at once.

 

****************************************************************

 

     Nick shot a sideways glance at Janette, then quickly looked

away. "And you didn't look for Alexandra."

     Janette longed to slap him. No longer envious of Natalie, she

wanted instead to commiserate with her on being stuck with Nick for

three decades.  "No, I didn't! I'm not a clairvoyant, in case you'd

forgotten. And if you think I could have controlled LaCroix, you're

getting senile early even for a mortal!"

 

*******************************************************************

 

     Dr. Chang was silently thankful. The police had taken the

Knight case as an attack against one of their own, which in a sense

it had been. The father was head of the Homicide Bureau in Toronto

-- Dr. Chang couldn't remember the formal title -- but no one had

told her that the mother was a pathologist and former coroner. That

didn't mean they wouldn't go to pieces, but it did lesson the odds.

     The mother broke the silence. "Doctor, please don't try to

keep things back.  Nick's already talked to the officer in charge.

Cat fell or was pushed onto metal tracks, with cement under them.

She contacted the electric rail, and if she hadn't landed with one

rubber sole flat on the ground, she'd be dead of electrocution."

Dr. Knight's voice was suddenly unsteady. "I've autopsied deceaseds

who hadn't been through as much."

     Captain Knight reached over and squeezed his wife's hand.

"It's all right, Nat," he said softly. The phrase ought to have

been meaningless, but his wife seemed to draw strength from it. To

the trauma specialist he added, "Not even your chief of surgery

wanted to tell us anything, and he was in med school with Nat."

     "We just don't know," Dr. Chang answered. "She's got a

compound skull fracture of the occiput, a subdural hematoma's

trying to form, and so far no one's been able to make sense of

whatever the electric charge did to her encephalogram."

     "May I see her records?" Dr. Knight asked. Dr. Chang

hesitated. Dr. Knight pushed back her hair, so automatically that

it must be an habitual gesture. "Doctor, my job is finding out

what's going to kill people, if it hasn't already. I went straight

out of my residency to being a coroner. Whatever's on those scans

isn't likely to be as bad as what I'll imagine if you don't let me

see them."

     Dr. Chang thought suddenly of her little girl. What if Jincy

were the patient, and well-meaning staffers kept pushing her away

as though she were a civilian? Dr. Chang turned the computer so

that the screen faced toward them. "It's MEDTRAC," she said, naming

the most common medical record program. "I hope you know it." She

stood up, looking at Captain Knight rather than his wife. "I'm

going to take you to see your daughter now, and I'm not going to

look behind me. The way to IC is clearly posted."

 

     For nearly five minutes Natalie scrolled through the charts,

pausing to stare at the scanned images. Then she returned the

computer to its original position. "I see," she said quietly. "You

don't know." There was a faint stress on 'you'. Natalie sank into

the chair with her face in her hands.

 

******************************************************************

 

     Nick stood at his daughter's bedside. The white bandage hid

her hair (or had they shaved it? Nick winced at the thought), so

that for a moment he was reminded of Natalie in her white lab cap

before the children were born. He clenched his fists, fighting back

tears. "Kitty-Cat," he whispered. "You always were just like your

mother, sure you could take on the world. Just live, Kitty-Cat,

please. Live."

     Nat came softly in just as he spoke. The wife and the doctor

struggled inside her as she tried to decide what to tell Nick.

     He tried to smile. "What did you find out?"

     Gallantry won the battle in favor of the wife. She hadn't seen

him look like that since the shock of having Cat and Jeffrey

kidnapped brought on her premature labor with Richard and Aurora.

               "Nothing we didn't already know," Natalie lied.



     A nurse escorted them into one of the private waiting rooms.

LaCroix was already there, at the window. He turned at the sound of

the door.

     Janette came in, with an old man. LaCroix frowned. She had

gone to fetch Cat's parents from the airport. Had they brought some

relative on Natalie's side with them? He could see a likeness to

Cat.

     Then Natalie followed them, and the truth hit LaCroix's heart

like a stake. This was Nick, not the eternal young knight of his

memory. His Nick was dead, entombed somehow in this old man with

gray in his hair and the lines thirty years of mortality had etched

into his face.

     "Oh, Nicholas," thought the vampire, appalled, "was it worth

this?"

     The nurse said with professional cheeriness, "Your daughter's

fiance has been so good!" None of them heard the rest. Nat was too

busy disguising her grip on Nick's arm as a comforting gesture.

Janette made eye contact and the woman removed herself.

     "Fiance?" snarled Nick.

     "Did you expect me to call on you and ask for her hand?"

LaCroix's sarcasm had lost nothing over the years.

     "Did you even ask Cat?"

     "As a matter of fact," said LaCroix, with a secretive little

smile, utterly unlike any of the expressions Nick remembered, "she

asked me."

     The nurse reappeared before Nick could twist out of Nat's

hold. "Do any of you know someone called Menelaos?"

     "I'm Menelaos." LaCroix was already moving toward her.

     "Ms. Knight is restless and asking for you. Please come with

me."

     LaCroix followed the nurse out. Natalie gasped, "Menelaos?

What the hell?" Nick made as though to follow.

     Janette pressed him back into his chair. Her mouth was open.

"It's his real name," she said. "At least, it's the one he was

using when he ... met me."

 

*******************************************************************

 

     The days became indistinguishable from the nights. The window

in the waiting room had its blinds down by day. Sometimes LaCroix

sat there around the clock, determinedly affable. Nick began

forgetting  to bristle at him.

     The police investigation went nowhere. Nick and Nat,

interviewed separately, made the right responses to the questions,

but neither knew anything about a tall, blonde woman who might have

had a grudge against Cat.  LaCroix held forth at great length about

Greg. The unexpected result was that Greg and his alibi, the

scheming alto, eloped to Vegas. Cat's friends reported them to be

under the misimpression that wives couldn't testify against

husbands. The alto happened to be a tall blonde and like Greg, her

alibi was that they had been waking up hung-over in her apartment.

LaCroix, hearing of the marriage, muttered something about cosmic

justice.

     Nick kept disappearing between night visiting hours until

Janette, tired of Nat's excuses about stress, confronted him before

he could vanish again. He glared at her. "Abandoning -- Nat, you

know where I've been!"

     "She didn't ask me." Natalie said, bewildered.

     Janette scowled. "And I know, too, of course. I've seen you,

Tony's seen you, Alma's seen you!"

     Nat turned to Nick with tears in her eyes. "Nick, you haven't

been going to the Raven?"

     "Nat!" he whispered. "How could you think --"

     Janette stamped her foot. "Don't be a fool! He's been lurking

outside the hospital. The only thing that surprises me is that he

hasn't been mugged, or at least arrested. Nee-co-lah, you idiot,

this isn't Toronto! You don't have a badge. You don't have powers."

     "Someone has to watch out for Alexandra! LaCroix's obviously

not going to."

     "Natalie, how have you stood thirty years with this imbecile?

Tony and Alma are out there for that. So was I, until I had to

watch you instead. As for LaCroix, why do you think he's here all

the time? Just suppose Alexandra gets into the hospital. There are

ways to move about in daylight; you know that. None of us has a

prayer of stopping her except him!"

     "Stop her? She's his creature. What makes you think he didn't

put her up to the attack?" Nick was shouting now.

     "Because I was there when he knew what Alexandra had done."

Janette snapped. "She thought at first that she'd killed Cat. He

was ready to dive into the sun. I only stopped him by reminding him

that suicide would prevent him from punishing her. Then she saw the

paramedics come, and heard them say that Cat was alive. I saw him

then, too. Nick, he --"

     "He's going to discipline her properly as soon as she makes

another attempt." LaCroix strode into the room. "Really, Nicholas,

I see you haven't lost your taste for melodrama. A little more

volume and I shall have to erase every memory in western North

America. Natalie, take this mortal of yours away before he brings

the Enforcers down on us."

 

     Time contracted to the moments when Cat was conscious. Usually

she recognized them, but she had less and less coordination.

Finally after one session in which Cat hadn't been able to reach

out to take her father's hand, Natalie herself broke down.

     Nick held her close. "Nat, what is it you haven't been telling

me?"

     Startled, she looked up at him. "How did you know?"

     "Because you've always been a terrible liar!." He twined one

hand in her hair. "It's something you saw in the charts the first

day, isn't it?  Every time the doctors mention Cat's records, you

draw away."

     "Five years ago we had a case who had been in an accident like

Cat's. He worked for Toronto Hydro and he fell two stories onto a

live line at the Sky Dome." Nat fought for control.

     "And he died." Nick tried to spare her.

     "No. He lived. Completely paralyzed, blind, sometimes on a

respirator, but he lived. With full, normal intelligence. Oh, Nick,

if Cat --"

     Nick took her back to Cat's apartment, where they were

staying, and left Janette with her.

 

     The wall clock in Cat's Intensive Care cubicle registered the

last of the visiting hours. She lay still and remote in the bed.

Nick, who hadn't been able to bring himself to leave for the night,

stopped short in the doorway at the sight of his old enemy, his

former master.

     LaCroix was sitting on Cat's bed, holding her hands. "'What

say the augurs? Plucking the entrails forth, they could not find a

heart within the beast.'That really happened, Cat, when Julius

Caesar was assassinated. I told Will Shakespeare about it, one

night at the Mermaid Tavern. He thought I'd read it somewhere. I

always thought I was like that beast; I was proud of not having a

heart."

     LaCroix gently released Cat's hands. "Why am I bothering? Can

you even hear me? Cat, you heard me when I tried to control you --

hear me now! Control you. As if anyone ever could, my Tigress."

     The silver and pearl ring caught the light as LaCroix's

fingers pressed against Cat's forehead. Nick recognized one of the

techniques for boosting vampire hypnosis. "You asked me to wait for

you, as long as your father was alive. I promised, but we never

thought it would end like this. Please, Cat, you must hear me!

Release me from my promise so that I can set you free."

     LaCroix, honoring a promise to a mortal? Nick stepped closer

to the bed. LaCroix must know he was there, with his vampire

hearing, and he must not care. In eight hundred years, Nick had

never heard him speak in the tone he was using now.

     LaCroix lapsed suddenly into something that Nick thought was

Greek, but of which he understood only the despair. "My Tigress,

don't leave me," whispered LaCroix.

     At first Nick couldn't identify what he felt. Then he realized

it was pity. He laid a hand on his old nemesis's shoulder.

"LaCroix, it's time we talked."

 

     The private waiting area was in shadow. The computerized

lighting system had shut down all but one security light. All

visitors were supposed to be out of the hospital. Watching family

were presumed to be trying to sleep in the chairs.

     "Are you enjoying your gloat?" LaCroix growled.

     This time Nick knew it for a front. "No, and I'm not gloating.

LaCroix, why did Cat ask you to bring her across?"

     "I don't know. She said she'd wanted to be a vampire when she

was a little girl." He smiled. "It used to shock Janette. Oh,

that's right. You don't know. She's like her mother. Vampires can't

hypnotize her. She knew who I was and she was stalking me."

     "But she couldn't have -- What do you mean, she wanted to be

a vampire? Cat doesn't know anything about that!"

               "Didn't you hear me say that Cat can't be hypnotized?" He laid

out the whole story. "Nick, If she doesn't come back, doesn't

consent...."

     "Then I will consent for her." Nick's voice was suddenly old.

     LaCroix's eyebrows rose. "Consent. You?  Am I no longer Satan

incarnate?"

     "You never were. Oh, you were evil, but the evil was in me,

too. I consented to being brought across. Janette only led me to

you. I was the one who chose. I was the one who enjoyed the hunt as

much as either of you for those first centuries. And I was the one

who thought I had the right to take Alexandra's life because she

was only a barmaid in a time when that was another word for whore."

Nick looked away for a moment, then back again.

     LaCroix spoke with the ghost of his old irony. "Aren't you

forgetting something?"

     "That it was you who brought Alexandra across? No. If I hadn't

taken her as my prey, you wouldn't have found her like that to

bring over."

     "Nicholas, Nicholas! Thirty years as a mortal and you still

haven't outgrown that habit of taking all the blame for yourself."

LaCroix shook his head.

     "Stop sounding like a schoolmaster," said Nick. "This time you

don't have to talk the guilt onto your shoulders. I'm back across,

remember?"

     "As if I could forget. Oh, well, if you weren't, there'd be no

Cat." LaCroix stood up. "Nick, did you mean that about consenting

for her?"

     "Yes. If she were simply going to die, I think I could bear

it, with or without God's help."

     "God's help?" asked LaCroix.

     "I went back to the church when the children were born. I

wanted them to have that. I suppose they'd call me a religious man,

now. I'm a good parishioner, anyway. So's Nat."

     LaCroix wanted to shake him. "No doubt there's rejoicing among

the angels. Nicholas, why did you say that, about if she were

simply going to die?"

     Nick told him what Natalie had read in the charts. LaCroix's

eyes went gold, then red. He rasped, "Then Alexandra isn't going to

see another sundown!" as he reached for the window.

     A scream tore apart the drugged quiet of the hospital night.

Alarms blared, voices shouted codes wildly on the intercoms. The

sound of running feet overrode everything else. LaCroix said,

"They're going into Cat's room," and sprang for the door. Nick

followed him down the corridor and around the corner, past the

double doors into Intensive Care.

      In the chaos they reached Cat's cubicle before being stopped

by the crowd of staff. No one was moving; Nick had just time to

recognize vampire mind control before he was caught in it.

     Alexandra was by the window, with Cat's unconscious body

across her shoulder. She scrambled onto the sill and fled into the

night.

     LaCroix gave one great roar like a wounded beast and launched

himself after her.



     Alexandra had enveloped herself and Cat in the late night fog

over San Francisco.  The fog muffled and fragmented sound, defeated

vampire vision as the water particles blurred the spectra. LaCroix

was trapped in a broken kaleidoscope of senses. Directions ceased

to exist. No trace of Alexandra or of Cat registered as he cast

about for them.

     Then, suddenly, like a red blur in the distance, he felt

Alexandra, like a cry of triumph in the night. He steadied himself

in his flight, until his mind reached and caught Alexandra's.

Contact snapped in a flare of savage mirth. LaCroix reoriented

himself, soaring toward his own house.

     There was light behind the curtains of two upstairs windows:

his room. LaCroix settled noiselessly on the upper porch. The knob

gave at his touch. Hovering so that no footfall could warn his

enemy, LaCroix crossed into the hall where the shadow of the stairs

thickened the darkness.

     Alexandra stood at the foot of the great, carved mahogany bed.

She had lit the fire in the hearth. The flames were mirrored in her

green-gold eyes.

     Cat lay on top of the dark blue quilt. Alexandra had dressed

her in the black silk of LaCroix's favorite dressing gown. The

bandage was gone from her head.  Her hair flowed like old gold from

a refiner's furnace. Her eyes were closed, and not even LaCroix's

sight could tell whether she was breathing.

     Arms outflung triumphantly, Alexandra swaggered toward her

prey. The movement failed to register in the ornate, late

Renaissance, silver-backed mirror which LaCroix had hung as a joke

over the mantel. LaCroix's fists clenched. Cat too was invisible in

the glass.

     *So that had been the cause of Alexandra's exultation!*

LaCroix thought. She must have brought Cat over in the air.

     Cat's eyes opened slowly. Alexandra crowed obscene laughter.

"Do you know where you are, fine lady? LaCroix's bed. Just where he

always wanted you!"

     LaCroix's fists clenched, but he dared not move for Cat's

sake.

     "Why?" Cat asked hoarsely. "Couldn't you fill it?"

     Outside in the darkness, LaCroix smiled. How like Cat to start

her vampire life defying her master!

     Alexandra screamed in rage and aimed a vicious slap at Cat's

face.

     LaCroix was at her back with his hands around her throat

before Alexandra had the chance to detect his presence. "One move

out of you, and I *will* tear your head off. Do you understand?"

     "Yes," she gasped.

     "Splendid. If you ever again lay a hand on Cat, I'll

personally throw you into a fire." LaCroix propelled her to the

desk chair. She cringed under his glare. "Now, Alexandra, we're

going to come to an understanding. You've chosen to bring Cat

across in defiance of my command. I'm sure you feel gloriously

independent, but you've forgotten one detail. As usual. I'm still

*your* master."

     Alexandra hurled invective at him. Cat huddled muzzily against

the headboard. Neither voice reached her as understandable speech.

She was violently thirsty as she tried to rise. The effort cost

more than her strength. Cat slid to the floor.

     The adversaries instinctively looked toward her. Alexandra

snatched the moment. She broke free of LaCroix's hold, overturning

the desk, and smashed the chair against the wall before charging at

LaCroix with a jagged remnant of one of the legs.

     He stood calmly waiting. He was stronger and faster than

Alexandra. All he had to do was to catch the makeshift stake as she

thrust it at him.

     Cat saw Alexandra throw herself at LaCroix. "No!" Cat cried,

and grabbed her legs. The fire was in front of them. LaCroix had

said he'd throw Alexandra into the fire.

     LaCroix shouted, "Cat, don't!" as Cat's newfound vampire

strength sent Alexandra straight into the flames.

     He had barely time to release his tie to Alexandra. There was

no one to cut hers to Cat. Alexandra's pain and terror exploded up

back up her link to Cat in the instant of eternity that it took to

die. Cat screamed and collapsed.

     LaCroix, who believed in nothing, found that he was praying to

every deity of every society in which he'd ever moved. Cat hadn't

understood about the master/convert link which now bound her to

Alexandra. He'd heard of new converts, "rescued" seconds too late,

being driven mad by the master's staking, trapped in agony which

had no proper outlet and no end, until they sought death in the

sun.

     He would not leave his Tigress to face the consequences alone.

LaCroix lifted Cat back onto the bed. As he did something snapped

underfoot.

     The paper knife from the desk glinted in the firelight.

LaCroix had chosen its modern purpose to indulge his sense of

irony; it was an obsidian sacrificial dagger from Altun Kinal. Only

the tip of the handle had broken. The blade was still pristinely

sharp. Sharibet's voice sounded in his memory.  "Yes, there is just

one way by which mastery can be taken over, but few have ever paid

that price."

     Cat moaned softly. LaCroix picked up the knife. With infinite

gentleness, he took Cat in his arms. "I love you," he whispered,

saying the words for the first time. Then he tore open his shirt

and plunged the knife into his heart. Amid a haze of agony, he saw

the dark blood well up. With the last of his strength, he drew Cat

close and brought her mouth to the wound.

 

*****************************************************************

 

     Janette said, "Nee-co-lah, let me break it! This is no time

for legalities."

     The front door opened silently before Nick could reply. A

stench gushed out at them. Natalie blurted, "That's burnt flesh!"

     They hurried up the stairs. Janette halted at the first door

as though she had run into a glass wall. She gasped something in an

unidentifiable language.

     Cat and LaCroix lay unconscious in each other's arms. Blood

stained Cat's lips and her cheek where her head rested against his

shoulder. The firelight glinted on the dagger beside them, until

the black obsidian was nearly as red as the blood.

     Natalie cried, "Cat!" and ran to her. She added, "Nick,

please, I can't lift her alone," as he followed her, sat down on

the bed, and pulled Cat onto his lap. Natalie checked automatically

for a pulse.

     "You won't find one," Janette told her. "She's already

across." She turned LaCroix onto his back. "Nee-co-lah, look!"

     A savage red scar stood out over LaCroix's heart.

     Nat looked puzzled. "But vampires don't scar, do they? I mean,

Nick, you didn't."

     "Heart's blood," said Nick. "He's given her his heart's

blood."

     Janette's brow wrinkled. "But that's just a legend, isn't it?"

     "No." Nick spoke with the authority of his years of struggle.

"It isn't."

     "Will you two please talk so that a mere always-mortal can

follow you?" Natalie asked..

     "Alexandra must have brought Cat over. There's only one way

LaCroix could have taken her back. The new master has to cut open

his own heart for the blood." Janette made a little sound of

protest, but Nick continued. "It's done so rarely that most

vampires think it's a myth. Nat, do you remember the time Sidney

got scared and climbed my chest, before I was back across?"

     "Of course I do, that doberman was after him -- Oh! Nick, I

never even noticed! You yelled like any mortal."

     "Because he had a paw full of very sharp claws dug in right

over my heart. That's the one place that being a vampire doesn't

change. The heart and the tissues over it can feel pain just like

a mortal."

     "Worse," said Janette with conviction. "You've been back too

long, Nee-co-lah."

     Cat groaned and tried to move. Nick swept her up. "Janette,

you'll have to see to LaCroix. Come on, Nat, she's going to need

you to clean her up."

 

He installed Cat and Natalie in what must have been Alexandra's

bedroom, since neither of the others had the dust covers off the

furniture. Nick's lips crooked momentarily. It had been his room

when he and LaCroix and Janette had lived together in San

Francisco.

     Natalie washed the blood off Cat's face and brushed her hair.

She started to take one of Alexandra's nightgowns from the

wardrobe.

     "No," said Nick.

     Natalie hesitated. "You're right. Not in anything of hers.

Nick, I can't stand for Cat to be in that -- in Alexandra's power."

     "She isn't," Nick told her. "LaCroix took her away from

Alexandra."

               "But that's worse!" Natalie was fighting back tears. Nick put

his arms around her.

     "He's changed, Nat. I'd never have believed it, not until last

night." He began to tell her about the scene at Cat's bedside.

     Janette stood in the doorway. "Nee-co-lah, have you forgotten

everything? Can't you see her color's coming back?  Come on, out of

here, quickly!"

     "Why?" asked Nat, standing her ground.

     "Because it means Cat's going to come to any minute, and when

she does she's going to be hungry and disoriented. She'll go for

any blood she can find, including ours."  Nick pulled his wife

after him.

     "Then, Janette, will you stay with her?" Nat was reluctantly

letting Nick lead her away.

     Janette shook her head. "Nee-co-lah said any blood. Even our

kind won't be safe with her until she's fed, except for her

master." She closed the door behind them.

     "But he's unconscious and injured, too!" By this time they

were at the head of the stairs.

     "He'll wake before she does," said Nick. "Nat, she's not ours

any more." He had to make a visible effort to control his voice.

"There's a psychic bond between them, as if they were one person.

It might last for the next hundred years."

     Nat took the last step, into the downstairs hall. "But you

didn't have that with Richard," she protested.

     "I didn't give Richard my blood. I didn't want the absolute

power a master has over a convert. If I had known ..."

     Natalie hugged him. "Never mind. That's over."

     Janette opened the door.

     The darkness was beginning to clear toward dawn.. "Nee-co-lah,

Nat, come on! I've got to get Alma out of the hospital. She must

have finished hypnotizing everyone into believing that Alexandra

had a gurney and took Cat out in the freight elevator at gunpoint."

     "But couldn't she just hypnotize her way into the bloodbank?"

Nat's innate practicality was taking over.

     Janette laughed as she started the ignition. "Alma? She's

allergic to blood bank preservatives, and to blood from animals.

She has to have fresh, human blood. Why do you think she works at

the Raven? And why do you think I have to keep such a watch on

her?"

     "Oh," said Nat, weakly. "But then, why do you let her?"

     Janette started the ignition. "That's a long story. Maybe

someday I'll tell you."



     Cat frowned at the carvings on the bedpost. Was she dreaming?

Her subconscious seemed to have mixed up the fireplace at home with

her bed. Except that her bed didn't have posts. Her room wasn't

panelled, or her window -- which seemed to have doubled -- obscured

by dark blue brocade. She looked down at herself. "But I don't have

a black lace nightgown!" she said.

     "That was Janette's doing."  LaCroix was seated beside the

bed. He grinned at her. "And the usual phrase is "where am I?"

     "I know where I am. It wasn't a dream; I did throw Alexandra

into the fire." Cat shuddered convulsively.

     LaCroix shifted himself to the bed and put his arms around

her. "Let it go, Tigress. And if I must cue you, your line is: I'm

thirsty." He took a golden goblet from the bedside table and held

it to her lips.

     She took it out of his hands, finishing it alone before she

gave it back to him. LaCroix tried to resume his chair. Cat caught

the front of his shirt. "No, you don't! I -- Oh!"  The fabric had

torn under her grasp, revealing the scar over his heart. Cat looked

up at him with wide, stricken eyes. "Then I didn't dream that

either," she whispered.

     "It happened," said LaCroix harshly, turning away.

     Cat pulled him back toward her. Her newly acquired, vampire

strength caught him off balance, and brought him down beside her.

For a moment master and convert stared at each other, then together

they burst out laughing. LaCroix reached over and drew Cat into his

arms.

     She kissed the scar, then began to trace the planes of his

face. LaCroix caught her hands and brought them to his lips.

     "You know," said Cat softly, "That's not all that happened.

You also said, 'I love you.'"

     "So I did," LaCroix replied, gently brushing aside the fall of

dark golden hair, and kissing her throat.

 

*************************************************************

 

      LaCroix smiled down at Cat, sleeping beside him. A Mona Lisa

smilelet hovered on her lips. When Cat was awake, that expression

presaged devilment; he was going to enjoy finding out what she was

up to.

     Her hair had fallen across her eyes. The ring on his little

finger glinted in the light as he brushed it away from her face.

     Suddenly LaCroix became Menelaos again, reaching out in the

same way to stroke back Arsinoe's hair. Its refusal to behave

unless tightly braided and pinned had exasperated her. He had

always loved the way it swirled around her shoulders when they were

alone together, at night. He used to tease her by tweaking the pins

out. She retaliated by threatening to put a spell on him, and he

would say that she already had, long ago.

               Cat stirred slightly. LaCroix was drawn back to the present.

For the first time in twenty-three hundred years, Arsinoe had come

to him not as a nightmare, but as a beloved memory. The pain was

gone.

     On impulse, LaCroix took the ring from his hand. It had been

Arsinoe's. Now, inexplicably, he knew that it ought to be Cat's.

     Cat's eyelids fluttered. LaCroix told her, "Close your eyes,

and give me your hand." He slipped the ring onto her finger.

     Still half-asleep, Cat murmured, "That's what you did before.

     LaCroix froze. He said very quietly, "what did I do before?"

     "You hadn't come back all night after the battle, and nobody'd

seen you," Cat spoke softly. "I was sure you were dead. Paulus was

gloating about taking me back. I was about to go and buy poison

from Ellora, when you came into the tent. I was sure you must be a

ghost, but you said, "Close your eyes, and give me your hand," and

you put the ring on my finger."

     Before LaCroix could respond, Cat opened her eyes, stretched,

and smiled up at him. "Was I talking in my sleep?" she asked.

     "Maybe," he answered cautiously. "Do you know what you said?"

     "I'm not sure. I think I was dreaming." Cat put her arms

around him. "Why, was I talking nonsense?"

     LaCroix drew her into his arms. "No," he said, kissing her

forehead, "not nonsense." He had never known that Arsinoe's former

master had threatened to take her back, the morning after the

Battle of Issus, when the rumor of Menelaos's death spread through

the camp. Paulus would have been dead, on Menelaos's sword, had he

known. He had not known about the poison. But the rest of it was

all true.

 

*******************************************************************

 

 

     In the days that followed, Cat's parents kept up the deception

of not knowing where she was, or if she were alive. The detective

in charge of the case, granted one more audience by LaCroix, came

away with the notion that he had interviewed a man convalescing

from a severe heart attack.

 

******************************************************************

 

     Finally, late at night, Cat's parents left for Toronto.

Janette had suggested her flat above the Raven as a venue for their

good-byes. Her mortal staffers were well trained and well paid not

to notice anomalies; her patrons were routinely not allowed to

remember them.

     Cat stood alone in the parking lot, after the car was out of

sight.

     "You'd better come inside, cherie, before someone recognizes

you from all those police missing posters," Janette said, coming to

find her. Cat ducked as she passed her, but not before Janette had

seen the red tears in her eyes. "Cat?"

     "I'm all right. It's not that I haven't seen them off before.

It's just a strange feeling to know that I can't ever go home

again, or see Jeffrey or Richard or Aurie." She fought down the

catch in her throat. "Never mind. At least I have --" Cat stiffened

and her eyes blazed golden.  "Oh, my God! I never cancelled the

letter to Roland and Kim!"

     "What?" Janette's bewilderment was clearly genuine.

     "Never mind; there isn't time to explain!" Cat shot off into

the air.

*************************************************************

 

     Sharibet and LaCroix confronted each other in the middle of

the music room. He stood at military attention, but his height was

negated by her empress's carriage. The vampire heartbeat echoed off

the panelled walls.

     "Why did you disobey my order?" Sharibet spoke with the

persistence of beyond-time.

     "Because I wanted revenge!" LaCroix's words came as though

torn out of him by the rack.

     "If you must lie," Sharibet admonished him, "at least lie

thoroughly. That's only why you started to disobey. I ask you

again, why did you disobey my order?"  The light from the Venetian

lantern overhead struck blue sparks in the coils of her hair black

hair.

     "Because I wanted to!" LaCroix's eyes were red; Sharibet's had

not lost a tinge of their blackness.

     "A little closer, my son." Her tone became almost maternal.

     LaCroix fought to keep his master out of the part of his mind

that held his memories of Cat.

     Sharibet smiled at him. Arctic ice contained more warmth. "And

why did you want to?"

     It was like being torn on a wheel of fire.  LaCroix gasped,

"Because I--"

 

     The doors to the music room exploded as Cat kicked them.

Behind her one of Sharibet's bodyguards was trying to get up. He

was impeded by the remains of the chair which she had smashed over

his head and shoulders. The other guard had been sent flying head

on into the bronze chimera which stood in a niche halfway up the

stairs. He wasn't moving.

 

     Cat marched up to Sharibet. "Whatever you're doing to him, do

it to me instead! I was the one who was determined to see how far

we could go with this. I should have stopped him the first time he

came after me."

     LaCroix frantically tried to distract the Oldest of Vampire's

attention.  Besides, his amour-propre was piqued. "You couldn't

stop me now with your vampire strength!"

     Cat tossed her head impatiently. "I didn't need physical

strength! All I had to do was arrange things so that you'd be

losing a challenge if you brought me over against my will."

     "And a lot of good trying to issue a challenge would have done

you without a throat!" returned LaCroix.

     "Nonsense! You were having too good a time to do that before

you'd finished teaching me to play the lyre."

     "So you're Menelaos's Tigress," Sharibet interjected.

     Cat rounded on her. "You keep out of this! It's all your fault

anyway; you broke him!"

     LaCroix wondered if it were possible after all for a vampire

to have a heart attack.  He'd seen committers of lighter lese-

majeste compelled to feed themselves to crocodiles. Slowly. He said

desperately, "She doesn't know what she's doing -- Sharibet. I beg

you, it's only convert's raving!"

     Cat glared at him with a hint of red in her gold eyes. "No, it

isn't, and you keep out of this! Convert's raving, indeed! You told

me yourself that heart's blood doesn't create a master, it passes

on everything and creates an equal."

     Sharibet allowed one eyebrow to lift. LaCroix stepped

protectively in front of Cat.  Sharibet asked almost wonderingly,

"Do you tell me Menelaos gave heart's blood for you? By his own

hand?"

     Cat insisted on standing beside him. "Yes," she said flatly.

"He's got the scar, too."

     "So *that's it," Sharibet said. "Menelaos, why didn't you

simply tell me you loved her?" She seated herself on one of the

chairs as though on a throne. "Tell me, my son, why do you think I

made that prohibition on revenge on Nicholas, or through his

family?"

     "Roland asked you to, or so I've always understood," said

LaCroix, rather sulkily.

     "Roland only asked me to forbid anyone to take revenge on

Nicholas or his new wife. When I did a little scrying into the

future, I saw that one of their children was somehow linked to you.

I issued that little injunction because I wanted to see what that

link meant. I knew you'd have to pay attention to Nick's children

after that, because I'd made it a challenge." Sharibet favored Cat

with a royally gracious smile. "My dear, do you remember my visit

to Toronto when you were twelve?  I know you do. How Janette could

imagine that I wouldn't know you can't be hypnotized, I can't

fathom. It was one of the things that intrigued me about your

mother. I was delighted at what I saw."

     "Something to do with my downfall, no doubt?" LaCroix asked.

Cat moved close against his side.

     "Let's call it your transformation," Sharibet responded."I

dislike losing. Two thousand years ago I lost, when I brought you

across. Cat's quite right. I did break you. And I lost, because you

escaped me. The man Menelaos died when the vampire was born. Ever

since, there's been a trail of us who weren't quite right, because

of what had gone wrong when I made you. Cat's changed that." She

took Cat's hand and placed it in LaCroix's. "You were a most

unusual mortal, Cat Knight, and you're going to be a most unusual

vampire. Even I don't know quite what that means, but I'm going to

enjoy finding out -- and I'm going to love watching the dance

you're going to lead him."

     Sharibet rose and walked toward the door. Halfway, she turned

and added, "Oh, by the way, Menelaos, you were right to give her

the ring."

 

****************************************************************

 

     It was several months later that Cat put down the English

language tourist event sheet for the next month in Venice.

"LaCroix, look!" Her laughter echoed in the high-ceilinged palazzo.

     LaCroix broke off the improvisation he was playing. He smiled

at her. "I hear the Tigress's growl in there. Are you about to

plunge us into yet another adventure that would turn my  hair white

if it weren't already?"

     "Not you this time. Remember Greg? You never got to sort him

out." She made a paper airplane of the tourist guide and skimmed it

at him.

     "That alto of his sorted him out quite well on her own,."

replied LaCroix, catching and unfolding the sheet.

     "Not as well as we could," Cat told him. "Musica Renata's

going to be in the festival next month. I'm just wondering how Greg

would take to a few glimpses of me during the performances."

     LaCroix crowed with laughter.  "It certainly ought to add

spice to his conducting." He glanced down at the program listing

and broke into a conspiratorial grin. "Cat, did you see *where* the

Renata concert is scheduled?"

     "The Palazzo del Orsin, wasn't it? Oh, LaCroix! Is that del

Orsin as in those stories about Vittoria and Antonnini?"

     "The very same. Tigress, I advised Vittoria's seventh-great

grandfather on a few extra touches for his new palazzo."

     Cat walked over and seated herself on his lap. "And do you

think we can use these touches to restage the concert?"

     "Restaging the concert is the least of it. With you for

inspiration, my Tigress, we'll have young Greg chasing his tail."

     "His tail?" asked Cat, responding to her master's embrace with

a quick kiss.

     The one he's going to think he has after we get through with

him. Greg's a swine; it's only fitting that he should have a tail!"

LaCroix returned the kiss with interest.