Vishous left the cave through one of the tunnels that had been bored out of the mountain, and emerged in a thicket of brambles. The winter was coming upon them all fast, the cold making the air dense as bone. Up ahead he heard the stream rushing and wanted a drink, but he stayed hidden as he scrambled up the pine covered incline. He always kept away from the water for a distance after he came out, not just because it was what he'd been taught to do upon penalty of punishment, but because in his pretrans state he was no match for what might come at him, be it vampire, human, or animal.

At the beginning of every night, the pretrans tried to fill their empty bellies at the stream, and his ears picked up the sounds of the other pretrans who were fishing. The boys had longregated at the wide section of the stream, where the water formed a still pool off to one side. He avoided them, choosing a spot farther upriver.

From out of a leather pouch he took a length of finespun thread that had a crude hook and a flashing weight of silver tied on the end. He cast his meager tackle into the rushing water and felt the string go tight. As he sat down on a rock, he wound the string around a shaft of wood and held the thing between his palms.

The waiting was neither here nor there, neither burden nor pleasure, and when he heard an argument downriver, he had no interest. Skirmishes were also the way of the camp, and he knew what the fight amongst the other pretrans was about. Just because you pulled a fish from the water did not mean you could keep it.

He was staring into the rushing current when the oddest sensation touched the back of his neck-as if he'd been tapped upon the nape.

He leaped up, dropping his line on the ground, but there was no one behind him. He sniffed the air, probed the trees with his eyes. Nothing.

As he bent down to retrieve his line, the stick flipped out of his reach and off the bank, a fish having taken the bait. V lunged for it, but could only watch the crude handle skip into the stream. With a lunge, he ran after it, jumping from rock to rock, tracking it farther and farther downstream.

Whereupon he met up with another.

The pretrans he'd beaten with his book was coming up the stream with a trout in his hand, one that, given his rapacious satisfaction, had no doubt been stolen from another. As he saw V, the bobbing stick with V's catch on it went by him and he stopped. With a shout of triumph, he shoved the kicking fish in his pocket and went after what was V's-even though it took him in the direction of his pursers.

Perhaps because of V's reputation, the other boys got out of the way as he went after the pretrans, the group abandoning the chase and becoming cantering spectators.

The pretrans was faster than V, moving recklessly from stone to stone, whereas V was more careful. The leather soles on his coarse boots were wet, and the moss growing on the backs of the rocks was slick as pig fat. Even though his prey was pulling ahead, he held back to ensure his footing.

Just as the stream widened into the pool the others had been fishing in, the pretrans leaped onto the flat face of a stone and got within reach of V's hooked fish. Except as he stretched out to grab the stick, his balance shifted… and his foot popped out from under him.

With the slow, graceful tumble of a feather, he fell headfirst into the rushing stream. The crack of his temple on a rock inches below the surface was loud as an ax striking hardwood, and as his body went limp, the stick and the line spirited along.

As V came up to the boy, he remembered the vision he'd had. Clearly it had been wrong. The pretrans did not die on top of the mountain with the sun upon his face and the wind in his hair. He died here and now in the arms of the river.

It was a bit of a relief.

Vishous watched as the body was pulled into the dark, still pool by the current. Just before sinking below the surface, it rolled over so it was faceup.

As bubbles breached unmoving lips and rose to the surface to catch the moonlight, V marveled at death. All was so calm after it came. Whatever screaming or yelling or action that caused the soul its release unto the Fade, what followed was like the dense quiet of falling snow.

Without thinking, he reached down into the frigid water with his right hand.

All at once a glow suffused the pool, emanating from his palm… and the pretrans's face was illuminated as surely as if the sun shone upon it. V gasped. It was the vision realized, exactly as he had foreseen it: the haze that had muddled the clarity was in fact the water, and the boy's hair waved to and fro not from wind, but from the currents deep in the pool.

"What do you do unto the water?" a voice said.

V looked up. The other boys stood lined up on the curving bank of the river, staring at him.

V snatched his hand from the water and put it around his back so no one would see it. Upon its removal, the glow in the pool faded, the dead pretrans left to the black depths as if he'd been buried.

V rose to his feet and stared at what he knew now were not only his competitors for scarce food and comforts, but now his enemies. The cohesion between the gathered boys as they stood shoulder-to-shoulder told him that however contentious they were within the camp's dry womb, they had been bonded over one like mind.

He was an outcast.

V blinked and thought about what had come next. Funny, the turn in the road you anticipated was never the one with the black ice on it. He'd assumed that the other pretrans would drive him out of the camp, that one by one they would go through their change, then gang up on him. But fate liked surprises, didn't it.

He rolled on his side and became determined to get some sleep. Except as the door to the bathroom opened, he had to crack an eyelid. Jane had changed into a white button-down shirt and a pair of loose black yoga sweats. Her face was flushed from the heat of her shower, her hair spiky and damp. She looked amazing.

She glanced over at him briefly, a quick cursory review that told him she assumed he was asleep; then she went over and sat in the chair in the corner. As she drew her legs up, she wrapped her arms around her knees and lowered her chin. She seemed so fragile that way, just a twist of flesh and bone within the embrace of the chair.

He shut his eye and felt wretched. His conscience, which had been all but unplugged for centuries, was awake and aching: He couldn't pretend he wasn't going to be fully healed in another six hours. Which meant her purpose was over and he was going to have to let her go when the sun went down tonight.

Except what about the vision he'd had of her? The one of her standing in the doorway of light? Ah, hell, maybe he'd just been hallucinating…

V frowned as he caught a scent in the room. What the hell?

Inhaling deeply, he hardened in a rush, his cock thickening, growing heavy on his belly. He looked across the room at Jane. Her eyes were closed, her mouth a little open, her brows down… and she was aroused. She might not have felt entirely comfortable with it, but she was definitely aroused. Was she thinking of him? Or the human male?

V reached out with his mind with no real hope of getting into her head. When his visions had dried up, so too had the running tickertape of other people's thoughts, the one that could be forced on him or picked up at his will-

The vision in her mind was of him.

Oh, fuck, yeah. It was so totally him: He was arching on the bed, his stomach muscles tightening, his hips pushing up as she worked his sex with her palm. This was right before he came, when he'd removed his gloved hand from what was doing below his cock and made a grab for the duvet.