"Stupid!

"Stupid!"

Rain fell soon after sunset…just a light shower, but enough to bring Rogasz back to consciousness.

He hung, arms outstretched on the rack of pipes, both hands thrust into mouth holes in the flues. His knife had fallen some time ago, after failing to do more than damage the false gold paint.

The dog had run off, upset by the vampire's shouting.

Rogasz released his grip and dropped to the ground, landing heavily on the scattered debris. It was slick with the rain; he slipped and went sprawling. If he injured anything, if he broke bones in the tumble, he was no longer able to feel such insignificant pain.

Juliet's face was wet in the twilight, her clothes lightly soaked. He didn't like seeing her that way, but he didn't want to cover her up. The rain had made the charcoal letters of her name bleed down the frame where he'd written them. Rogasz stared at them for a time, wondering if he should wipe the words away and write them again. No. The frame was wet, all the charcoal, too; he might not be able to write anything this time, and a streaky epitaph was better than nothing.

"I could have saved you," he said. Gently, the vampire laid his hand on her cheek. "I could have made you like me; then you would have survived…like me. You wouldn't thank me for that, not in the long run. Still, maybe I should have given you the choice. I don't know. I don't know."

He bent over and kissed her cracked crusty lips. "You died in a church," he whispered to her silent face. "You'll be all right. And here…" His knife was lying atop the rubble a short distance away. He retrieved it and folded the girl's limp hands around it, laying it across her chest. "This will keep you safe." He was tempted to add, You need the knife more than I do; but he recognized the words were empty. Just said to prove something to someone. Rogasz had no need for such words—not in this quiet twilight.

Instead, he said, "I don't know." He kissed her again. "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know."

He smiled and patted her hands, making sure they held the knife firmly.

When he lifted his head from Juliet's corpse, the Adversary was leaning against the ruined piano. "So," the Lost One said, "how are you feeling tonight?"

"I don't know."

"Redeemed?"

Rogasz let himself take a deep breath. "Unlikely—I haven't done anything to deserve it."

"What did you want to do? Slay a dragon? Heal a leper?" The Adversary waved his hand dismissively. "Melodramatic crap. A childish need for flashy resolutions. Same as if you dropped to your knees and wailed that you were finally embracing God. That's not salvation; that's just trying to be the star in some grandiose show. Trust me, I know what salvation isn't." He laughed. "Still, you survived the whole day."

Rogasz shrugged. "I've survived a lot of things."

"True." The Adversary pushed himself away from the piano and sidled forward over the debris. "Who's the girl?" he asked, nodding toward the ground.

Rogasz opened his mouth, then closed it again. "Just a street kid," he said at last. "I've been calling her Juliet."

The Adversary raised his eyebrows. "And you're Romeo?"

"No. I'm not Romeo and she's not Juliet. She's just dead."

The Adversary stared at Rogasz silently. "You sound calmer," he said. "More at peace than when we last spoke."

"Just too burned out for rage. A day of shock therapy. Don't expect it to last."

"Nothing lasts, little brother. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Everything changes in time."

"Have I changed?" He looked down at the dead girl. "She's changed. She has definitely changed. But I'm still here. My injuries will heal like always, and then what? The same old thing?"

"That's up to you," the Adversary replied. "But if a vampire can find a moment of grace…who knows who might be next?" He gave the ghost of a bow. "Stay sane, little brother; I look to you as my inspiration. Stay sane, stay sane, stay sane."

With a backward wave of his hand, the Adversary walked into the darkness. Full night had fallen: a night rinsed with soft rain.

Rogasz decided to wait beside the corpse a while longer—maybe the dog would come back.

The Last Day of the War, with Parrots

It was a sprawl-shot, and this time I was sprawling hips-down on top of a bunker, just behind a hole where something had disintegrated a corner of the roof.

When the cameras turned in my direction, I was supposed to lift on my forearms, with my shoulders high enough that every lens got an ample view down my cleavage. I wore a deep scoop-neck blouse, of course, ripped and ragged and thinner than gauze. I wondered if I should make up business cards—Lyra Dene, singer: backup and boobs. But tape wasn't rolling at the moment, and I'd scrunched up rump-high, because if I stayed in the rehearsed cheesecake pose, the navel battery-pack for my microphone dug sharply into my stomach.

The cameras were scattered all over the battlefield, some on the ground, some hovering on chunky anti-grav platforms. Each had its ready light glowing green, but the operator who ran them all was sitting in a lawn chair beside the control console, reading a book. His hand rested on the fog machine beside the console; occasionally, he had to sweep away threads of mist that dribbled from the machine's nozzle and trickled across his reading screen.

In front of the console loomed the remains of a giant subterranean battle-tank. The most visible part was its drill-like snout, jutting up at a 45-degree angle and reaching five or six stories above the ground. The tank must have been ambushed just as it surfaced. Enemy lasers had drilled a dozen clean-edged holes in its hull, and something had blasted its caterpillar treads off their sprockets, splaying them over the ground like black lasagna noodles.

Three people stood at the base of the drill-snout: Helena Howe, director of the video we were supposed to be shooting; our songwriter, Roland Simard; and Alex Kilgoorlie, probably the only one you care about.

Soon after I got hired as Alex's backup vocalist, I read an article claiming that 63 percent of all human households had downloaded his debut album, Ghost of the Tattered Heart. One review said: "His songs are compelling dreams…or nightmares." I don't mind admitting I'd dreamed about him myself. The dreams centered on a gaunt, disquieting man walking moodily over a bleak landscape…and like on the Ghost album cover, he wore a loose white shirt that billowed in the wind.

In my dreams, the front of Alex's shirt hung open to the waist; but it was still buttoned to the throat that day around the battle-tank. While Helena and Roland stood irritably over him, Alex crouched, making kissing sounds with his lips and holding out a cracker in his hand.

"People are waiting, Alex dear," Helena said. I could hear her voice through the tiny receiver tucked into my ear and hidden by my hair. All of us wore such earphones; when she gave an order, she wanted everyone's undivided attention.

"Just another sec," Alex whispered. A concealed mike amplified his whisper clearly. He made more kissing sounds.

In front of him was an animal about the size of a mouse, part of the local wildlife. I could see the beast was brightly colored, a splash of green and crimson stripes against the drab dirt background; but it was too far away for me to make out much else. It inched toward the cracker Alex held out, its head wobbling back and forth slightly. I guessed it was sniffing, trying to make up its mind about the food and the human that held it. The animal seemed just about to nibble when a voice yelled, "Don't!"

Every head jerked up, including the little beastie's. Scrambling over the partly buried tank came Jerith, our archeologist and resident expert on the planet of Caproche. He'd lived on these abandoned battlefields for years, alone except for his robots, excavating dozens of sites as he tried to determine who had fought here and why.