Kira sat in the chair by the fireplace, hearing the crackling of the flames as acutely as if it were trees being chopped down. Still, she'd wanted the fire. Its warmth was a gentle cocoon, and it was softer on her eyes than the glare of the high-hat lighting or table lamps. She might be able to see in complete darkness now, but she didn't want all lights extinguished in order to be reminded of that. It was hard enough dealing with the intermittent chills, fangs stabbing her in the lip without warning, the clamor outside from the woods, and oh yes, her violent blackouts where she'd come to with blood running down her face and a burning desire for more of it.

She only had Mencheres's word that she hadn't hurt anyone during these blackouts.

Well, that, and the cooler of rapidly dwindling blood bags. Mencheres said not to worry, that Gorgon would be back with more by dawn. The thought both disgusted and relieved Kira. No one needed to tell her that she was a threat to anyone - or anything - with a heartbeat right now, but though her body craved that red liquid with a boundless ferocity, Kira's mind still couldn't reconcile the fact that she was drinking blood. Human blood.

She'd consider it a form of cannibalism, except she wasn't human herself anymore.

She leaned back - and the chair crashed beneath her, startling her. Even more surprising was that she wasn't sprawled on the wooden floor right now, but staring down at the broken chair with the afghan still around her shoulders. Had she leapt up before the chair fell? God, was she really that fast now?

A tingling along her skin announced that Mencheres had come into the room. He was almost soundless in his movements; only his scent and the faint rustling of his clothes would have betrayed his presence, if Kira couldn't feel him. She didn't even need to turn around to know how much distance separated them. The stronger that vibration grew along her skin, the closer Mencheres was.

Would all people feel as though they had their own form of an electrified force field around them? Or was that exclusive to vampires? Kira didn't want to ask. She wasn't sure she could handle more information right now.

"I don't know what happened, the chair just broke," she said. So much for getting a little time to herself. She hadn't been alone for ten minutes before the chair self-destructed on her.

"Leave it. I'll attend to it."

Even his voice sounded different than it had before she woke up undead. It was deeper, the nuances from his accent richer - and it seemed to curl around her like a thick, inviting fog.

"I can get it."

Kira went to pick up the largest piece of the chair when the wood splintered apart in her hand. She blinked and tried again, but the same thing happened. It was almost as if the chair disintegrated as soon as she touched it.

"What?" she began.

Mencheres moved next to her, close but not touching. Whenever she had an extended bout of awareness, like this one, he heeded her order not to touch her. She knew that wasn't the case during her blood-rampaging blackouts, but she couldn't blame him for that.

Of course, with his scent and tingling aura flowing over her, Mencheres might as well be touching her. Add in his voice, and Kira felt consumed just being near him.

"You are unused to your new strength." He reached down, grasping a chunk of the wooden armrest. It didn't dissolve into splinters like it had with her. He held it out to Kira.

"Try taking this, but very gently. "

She grasped the wood - and it fell apart in her hand. Frustrated, Kira spun around, only to feel something stinging at her ankle. She looked down. Her right foot had gone through the wooden floor.

"What the hell?" she exclaimed, yanking her foot out. More of the floor came up with it, leaving a ragged hole.

"As I said, you are unused to your strength," Mencheres noted, no reprimand staining his tone even though she'd just ruined his chair and his floor. "This is another reason why you cannot be around humans until you have acclimated yourself to your new abilities." She couldn't even rock back in a chair or stomp her foot without causing massive damage? Add that to the blood-crazed blackouts every hour or so, and she'd been turned into a walking death machine!

Kira's eyes burned as if they'd been sprayed with Mace, her too-sharp vision turning pink and blurry. Would she ever be able to hug her sister again? Or would she crush Tina as easily as she'd ruined this chair if she touched her?

"Damn you for this," she choked, turning away from the sight of Mencheres. Then immediately, she wished she hadn't said that. It wasn't fair to blame him. He'd done his best to help her, both before Radje arrived and after, when the crooked cop made that lethal judgment against her.

From the corner of her eye, it appeared as though her words had no effect on Mencheres, but a wave of sadness ebbed through her consciousness. Kira stilled. She wasn't sad. She was angry and confused and starting to get hungry again already, but not sad.

Was that sadness from him? Could she actually feel his emotions now, like she could feel his power and the touch of his voice?

Kira remembered the last words she heard as a human: no matter what you say - I am bringing you back. Was Mencheres sad about being forced to kill her, or was he regretting his decision to bring her back as a vampire? Which were his real feelings: his previous, dismissive attitude about her to Radje yesterday? Or how caring he'd been when he first came to the club and healed her? He'd made no effort to see her after he let her go, but then Radje, after ordering her death, implied that he could tell Mencheres cared for her.

Before, wondering what the mysterious vampire thought of her had been the source of Kira's dark, secret imaginings, but now, it was imperative that she know. Mencheres had altered her very existence and become a pivotal figure in her new life, but she had no idea if he regarded her as nothing more than a temporary irritant.

She looked up at him, noting that his usual impassive expression was firmly in place.

Didn't matter. She wanted some answers before she lost her mind to another blackout or her consciousness to the coming dawn.

"Why did you mesmerize my boss into giving me a car and a raise?" she asked, almost tensing in her concentration to see if she could sense any emotions from him.

A faint tinge of surprise wafted across her subconscious before it vanished. Kira almost whooped. That couldn't be from her; she wouldn't be surprised by her own question!

"That's you, isn't it?" she asked, not giving Mencheres time to answer her other question. "Unbelievable, I can feel you now."

Just as abruptly, a wall seemed to slam in place around him, cutting off everything from Kira, even the tingling wave of his aura.

"You would be better served by concentrating on managing your strength and your blood consumption," Mencheres said, cool detachment in his tone.

She strode over, not caring that she felt the floors creak and bend beneath her feet.

"No you don't," she flared. "You don't get to wall yourself off from the only indicator I have of what you're thinking. You killed me yesterday and brought me back into an existence where everything is different, especially me. But what's almost as frightening is that I don't know if this means anything to you aside from a big, boring inconvenience. So give me something. It can be words, an unguarded expression, a flash of your emotions, whatever, but do it now, because I need a hint as to where I stand with you." If Kira could still have breathed, she would have been panting with the emotions swirling in her, but she was as still as the vampire across from her as she waited for his response. Mencheres didn't lose his inscrutable mask, nor did that invisible wall around him collapse, but at last he inclined his head.

"You were working late into the night, and as it was more than proven the day we met, it wasn't safe for you to walk to and from your employment."

For a second, Kira didn't know what he was talking about. Then she remembered her original question to him, and disil usionment coursed through her. All that time she'd spent looking for Mencheres had been based on her assumption that his actions with her boss meant he wanted to see her again. How wrong she'd been. Dead wrong, in fact. It had been nothing more than a careless gesture made out of pity. Be careful what you wish for, she mused darkly. She'd succeeded in her quest to see Mencheres again, but it had cost Kira her life.

"Thanks," she said dully. "Now, tell me why you didn't let me stay dead?" Mencheres glanced away, his face becoming even more unreadable if that were possible. "Radje's judgment was an abuse of his power. The only reason he sentenced you so harshly was because of his hostility toward me, so the least I could do was see that you did not remain dead."

Another pity gesture, Kira thought, shaking her head in disbelief. What a brilliantly wretched realization to know that her current existence was due to nothing more than one vampire's spite and another's twinge of conscience. If she'd only stayed away from Mencheres once he let her go, she'd have a new car, a raise, a sister whose life wasn't cut tragically short, some friends, an irresponsible but somewhat loving brother, and an occasional social life. But no, she'd thrown that all away chasing after a vampire who probably hadn't spared her a thought since he dropped her off on that roof. You fool, Kira lashed herself.

"You need not fear that everything from your former life is lost to you," he went on, almost causing Kira to laugh. "In a few months, you should have enough strength after dawn in order to return to your employment. And in as little as a week or two, you should have control of your hunger and abilities around humans enough to resume seeing your family again - "

"You just don't get it, do you?" she interrupted him, recklessness rising up in her. "All of this - this suddenly being something else is bad enough, but to know the only reason I'm not in a grave isn't because my life meant anything to you but because you thought it would balance some imaginary set of justice scales . . . well, that sucks. And yes, I realize the irony of that statement."

Something wet slipped down Kira's cheek. She swiped at it, surprised to see pink liquid on her fingers. Were those tears? Could she still cry, even though she was a vampire now?

Before she could ponder that, a pain that was becoming all too familiar ripped through Kira. She bent over, holding her stomach as if she could somehow stuff her need for blood back down inside her.

The breeze lifting her hair was the only indicator she had that Mencheres left and returned in a flash of movement. He held two of those damn red bags in his hand, and the inner leap Kira felt when she saw them left her twisted with dueling urges. She wanted to throw the bags out of the window in repugnance. She wanted to tear them from Mencheres's hands and devour them with rabid gulps.

He held one of the bags out to her, but Kira looked away. She didn't want to drink more blood. It was wrong, gross . . .

Twin stings of pain in her lower lip told Kira her fangs had burst out of her upper teeth, resulting in a tease of that rich, coppery taste flavoring her mouth. More pain erupted through her body, that hated feeling of being burned from the inside out increasing to a ferocious pitch.

Mencheres had her in his arms in the next instant, holding the slickness of the bag to her mouth. "You must."

She only knew she'd torn into it when incredible relief filled up the previous torment inside her. Kira felt herself beginning to float away, her mind numbing from the rush of exhilaration and hunger, but before she lost herself to the blackness, something nagged at her subconscious. Something she'd been too distracted to pick up on when Mencheres first told her why he'd mesmerized her boss into giving her the car and the raise. You were working late into the night . . .

There was only one way Mencheres could know what sort of hours Kira had been working that week. He'd been following her.

Mencheres walked beside Kira in the woods. The air was pleasantly cool in the predawn hours, but Kira wore a thick sweater and pants as if it were much colder. She seemed preoccupied with the ground as she walked, her eyes flickering every so often to the sides only when nocturnal animals startled at their presence.

He said nothing, letting her become acclimated to the deluge on her senses from her surroundings. She'd woken a few hours before dusk on her second day as a vampire, insisting on showering by herself after she sated her hunger on the fresh bags Gorgon came back with. As Mencheres warned her, that did not bring positive results. Kira ripped the shower door off when she attempted to open it, then tore the faucet out of the wall when she tried to turn the water off after completing her doorless shower. Then her frustration at her inability to control her strength resulted in another attack of hunger, which was also no surprise. Anger and the urge to feed were tightly tied together for new vampires, and with all of Kira's emotions heightened to previously unexplored levels, she would be a swarm of volatility for the next few days.

"It doesn't seem right not to see the darkness," Kira said, finally breaking her silence. "I know it's night, but it looks like a sharper, overcast afternoon with a sun that doesn't hurt my eyes instead. There are no shadows anymore. Only spots of shade. How long did it take for you to get used to there being no darkness?"

Mencheres tried to recall his first days as a vampire. It was so long ago, it felt like the transformation had happened to someone else. He remembered the hunger when he first awoke; no vampire forgot that. But he couldn't remember what true night had looked like when he was human, so he could not recall how long it had taken him to stop missing it.

"Much of those early days, I've forgotten," he admitted.

"Because you're older than dirt, right?" Kira cast a slanted look at him. "So tell me, does it sound like a demolition site out here to you, too? Or did you learn to tune out background noise over the years?"

He briefly focused on the sounds that filled the forest. No, he had not bothered to pay them any heed, aside from discerning whether they were natural or a threat that needed to be eliminated. Had he simply learned to tune them out, as Kira described? Or was he so jaded that he no longer cared if the crickets sang, the leaves danced, the branches rubbed together while reaching out for one another, or the animals hunting for sustenance or companionship found their quarry?

"You learn to choose what you focus your attention on," he replied.

That was true. He might not have paid any notice to the sounds in the forest, but he could tell Kira every nuance of how her scent had changed as she walked alongside him.

Or how many times her eyes had flared with emerald when she'd caught a glimpse of something with a beating heart in her vicinity.

Kira stopped walking, turning her face up toward the trees. "Fireflies. I haven't seen them since I was a kid. Tina and I used to go into the woods by our old house to try and catch them . . ."

Mencheres stopped as well, following her gaze to the lighted insects interspersed throughout the air. Her voice held another wistful note of remembrance he could not relate to. Even if he could remember his childhood, he'd had no siblings close to his age, and his homeland had been bare of such creatures as these.

But these memories held value to Kira, tying her to something lost from her youth. He glanced at her profile. Her head was tilted back, full lips parted slightly, pale line of her neck in stark, tempting relief against the backdrop of the forest. She looked so beautiful.

Almost ethereal. Despite knowing better, he could not force himself to glance away.

He might not be able to share her memory of chasing fireflies as a child, but he could give her a new memory of the woods. One that no one else could replicate.

Mencheres sent wisps of his power along the ground, curling them around the blooms from several nearby patches of wildflowers. One by one, he plucked those blooms, until he had hundreds of pale purple, blue, yellow, and white flowers floating above the brush.

Kira didn't notice. She was still staring at the fireflies.

Slowly, he drew his power back until the randomly interspersed blooms began to congregate into one large cloud.

Kira's eyes widened as she saw the mist of flowers sweep toward her on the ground.

A shiver rippled over her flesh. "I can feel the energy coming from you. What are you doing with them?"

She didn't look at him as she asked. Mencheres didn't reply, but he sent his power out in another wave, grouping the flowers into a trailing comet that dipped and swooped around the tops of the trees in an intricate ball et. Kira made a sound between a gasp and a laugh, her face suffused with wonder instead of the pain and trauma from the past two days.

still she didn't look at him, but kept watching the dancing flowers. Mencheres extended their former comet shape into one long swath. He sent that softly fragrant banner through a series of rising twirls before gathering the blooms into a circle several meters above Kira's head. Then he gradually widened the circle and brought it down around her, encompassing her inside a sheath of flowers.

She stared at the rings of wildflowers encircling her, reaching out her hands but not touching them. Then she finally looked at Mencheres, her green eyes lit up with a shade not unlike the fireflies she'd been admiring before.

"Let them go."

Her voice was lower, its melodic rustle twining around him with its own invisible pull.

Mencheres let his power fall away, freeing the flowers to float down gently to the ground around her. Then something inside him clenched as Kira walked slowly toward him.