it left her without control of her limbs, powerless and lost against the force of it. Black spots danced before her eyes, and she struggled not to lose consciousness. Theroen seemed gripped by a similar power, body straining against hers for an interminable moment. The pleasure faded slowly, echoed by small jolts that Two thought of as aftershocks.

She pulled her teeth from Theroen’s neck and fell backwards, gasping for breath. The muscles of her inner thighs were trembling. Her arms felt weak. Theroen lay down beside her, equally exhausted. Two flicked a lock of hair from her eyes and glanced over at him. He was gazing calmly at her, but still panting from exertion. Two smiled.

“Was it good for you?” she asked, no malice in her sarcasm. Theroen laughed, leaned in, licked the last of the blood from her lips with the tip of his tongue. Two moved closer to him, let that brief touch turn into a longer kiss. She sighed as his hand caressed the swell of her breast.

“If humans knew it could be like that, Theroen, they’d be lining up in the street to make the change,” she said after the broke apart.

“You may well be right.”

Two felt a sudden heaviness in her eyelids and glanced at the window. The sky had begun to show the slightest sign of light.

“Draw the curtains, Theroen? I won’t be able to keep awake much longer. Will you stay with me?”

“Of course.”

Her room, like all of the rooms in the mansion, was equipped with a dual layer of heavy blackout curtains. There was no need for coffins, here. Theroen stood, unashamed of his body, and pulled the cords. The room went immediately to a level of darkness no human eye could have penetrated. Even Two was only able to discern vague shapes, dark forms on a black backdrop, outlined only by the slightest hint of light filtering in from the crack under the door. She felt Theroen return to the bed with her. Another kiss, the aftertaste of blood on his tongue. She lay with her head on his chest.

“Will I need to feed again tomorrow?”

“I’ve little doubt. Melissa still feeds daily, and it is relatively rare that I skip an evening.”

“I want to do it early, then. Get it out of the way.”

“All right.”

“Can I get pregnant?”

“No.”

“You’re sure? No baby vampire Theroens and Twos crawling around?”

Theroen yawned, played with a lock of her hair absently. “Yes, quite sure. It’s been tried, by others of our kind and by myself. Mortal women, half-vampire women, vampire women. None ever conceive. Vampire men, even those still blessed with this ability, don’t create seed. We don’t make children with our bodies, Two. We make them with our blood.”

“So you’re saying that we’re participating in incest, then? Willing participants, at that?”

“I try not to think of it like that.” Theroen’s voice was dry, but Two could hear the smile there. She laughed.

Quiet, for a moment. Two felt sleep nearing; a rolling blackness on the horizon that would soon blot out all consciousness. She fought it. There were so many questions.

“Who did you try it with?”

“A woman. A vampire. I... she’s dead, now.”

“I thought vampires couldn’t die?”

“They can’t die. They can be killed.”

Two wanted to ask more. Wanted to know who this woman was, how she had died, why there was so much pain in Theroen’s voice. Sleep denied her the chance.

In the darkness, Theroen sighed and closed his eyes. The woman next to him, breathing soft and warm against his skin, couldn’t know how hard it was to answer her questions. How difficult it was to think of Lisette.

It had been nearly three hundred years since he had been with another vampire like this. Mortals, surely. He enjoyed making love to the women he took for nourishment nearly as much as Melissa enjoyed being intimate with her victims. But another vampire? The feel of her skin, the sinewy strong muscles beneath it, the smell of the blood in her sweat, in her kiss, in her sex. Two was everything Lisette had been, and more perhaps in that it was his role to be the teacher. Lisette had been hundreds of years old when Theroen had met her. He had been the student, then.

His love for Two, and the differences that separated her from Lisette in his mind, did little to ease the pain, little to dampen the sorrow, little to drown out the screams.

* * *

Theroen was not there when Two awoke. As would be