“Hey! How’s it going?” she asked as she stepped into the hallway.

“Oh, Em! Hi,” Renee said.

“You guys are crazy going out in all this snow and cold,” she said, eyeing Rafe slowly and deliberately. She stuck out her hand toward him. “I’m Emily.”

Rafe took her hand and shook it. “Rafe,” he said.

Emily shot Renee an all too obvious look of measured appreciation for her taste in men.

“Meow, aren’t you something,” Emily said candidly.

Rafe laughed and Renee flushed at her forward friend’s antics. “I try my best,” he said.

“Not shy. That’s good. What’s your taste in music? Did she tell you she has an unhealthy fixation on Hootie & the Blowfish? She so needs to move into this decade.”

“I had no clue. I like Hootie & the Blowfish.”

“See? I’m not the only one,” Renee said, threading her arm through Rafe’s and urging him back toward the stairs. “We’ll see you later, Em.”

“Later, guys,” Emily said before ducking back into her apartment.

Rafe and Renee finished the climb to her apartment and Renee let them in. She closed the door behind Rafe and leaned back against it, releasing a long, decompressing sigh.

“Hey, are you all right?” he asked with concern as he stepped closer to her and picked up her hand. He stroked her fingers with his thumb, sending a shiver up her arm. Discomfited by the reaction, she withdrew from him and shrugged out of her coat. She hung it up in the hall closet and held out her hand for his. He obliged her. After she had hung up his coat she stepped out of her shoes and kicked them into the closet. It wasn’t where they belonged, but she would move them later.

When she kicked away her shoes she got her first good look at her legs. She was filthy from rolling around in that alley. She must look like hell, she thought. But there was nothing she could do about it right then. She wasn’t about to shower with him in her apartment.

“I can wait if you want to clean up,” he said, noticing where her attention had gone.

“No. I’m fine.”

He stepped up to her and touched her face with gentle fingers. “Why don’t you go shower? It will help you wind down and I can tell you wish to clean up. I promise to stay here in the living room like a good boy.”

She laughed at the idea of equating him to a boy. He was as far from boyhood as a man could get. And just then a thought occurred to her.

“How old are you?”

“I am afraid my answer might disturb you.”

“I’d rather have the truth than not.”

“All right. I am three hundred years old. Relatively young by e-vamp standards.”

“Young?” She was aghast. “You’ve lived through Prohibition…suffrage…hell, you’ve lived through the War of 1812!”

“Yes. I have. And yet I still talk with an accent,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “I also speak fifteen languages and have been almost everywhere in the world.”

“Why aren’t you married? Why don’t you have children?”

“E-vamps find marriage to be difficult. We are aware of how much people change with the passage of time, that they frequently grow apart. So we do not get married very often.”

“And e-vamps can have children just like anyone else?”

“Yes. Although it is more difficult for us to have children than it is for humans.”

“Why is that?”

“The ovulation cycles of our females are much slower. They ovulate once every three months instead of once every month. Also, the male’s sperm doesn’t survive outside of their bodies for as long as it does for human males. It’s like trying to hit the bull’s-eye on the first try with only one dart.”

“I see. But what about humans? Do e-vamps…you know…with humans?”

“Some do. Some don’t. It’s a matter of taste and conscience. They often cannot tell their partner who and what they are. They are also not allowed to get a human female pregnant. We dislike the idea of half-bred children. Often e-vamp traits are dominant and then special care will have to be taken with the children. They will have both our strengths and our weaknesses and must be raised accordingly.”

“Your weaknesses?”

He hesitated. “We will starve if we do not feed, just like any other living organism on this planet. If we don’t feed as we should we risk torpor, a state where we are aware of the world, but we cannot move or act or take part in it. Like being in a coma. The only way out of torpor is if someone else feeds you energy and it takes a powerful vampire to be able to do that without the risk of draining themselves as well.”

“But I saw you ejecting all kinds of energy in your fight.”

“I am a very powerful vampire,” he said with a small smile. “But it’s all relative. The more powerful the vampire, the deeper the torpor, the more powerful a vampire is required to help that vampire out of torpor.

“As to other weaknesses or limitations, vampires must constantly be exposed to sunlight. And we have to be very careful of the resources we feed from. People like you, who are aware of the chemicals they put into their body, who eat organically, are the best choice. The reason is twofold. One, it makes you pure. Two, it allows you to recover from a feeding more quickly. Look at yourself for an example. Had I taken from a less clean source they might have spent the day in bed afterward, feeling under the weather, possibly getting sick as their immune system lowered.”

“I did feel a little run-down today.”

“I am sorry for that,” he said, his eyes full of genuine regret. “And yet I am not sorry. I would not have traded the experience away for anything in the world.”

The intimacy of the declaration left Renee feeling warm inside. She cleared her throat and ran a hand through her tangled hair.

“I think I will shower after all. I feel pretty mucky.”

“I will make a few phone calls while you do that.”

She hesitated. “Will you tell them about me?”

He didn’t even pause to think about it. “No. Not yet. But I do need to find out if others are being attacked too.”

“Okay. I won’t be long.”

“Take your time.”

She turned and went down the hall and into her bedroom. There were two bedrooms to this apartment, but the spare had become a catchall storage space. There was a bed, but she’d have to move boxes to get to it.