I did not want to be here when she sat up, I so did not want to be here for that. What had she been waiting for all this time?

This time the voice came from the bed, the same voice as the wind, faint, long unused, so hoarse and soft that I couldn't tell if it were male or female. "Something of interest."

With that last, I finally felt something from that body. I'd been prepared for malice, evil, anger, but was totally unprepared for curiosity. As if she wondered what I was, and she hadn't wondered about anything in a millennia, or two, or three.

I smelled wolf, musky, sweet, pungent, so real I could feel it gliding over my skin. I suddenly had a cross around my neck, and the white glow filled the room. I think I could have seen the figure on the bed clearly by the light of the cross, but either I closed my eyes without remembering, or some things you shouldn't see, even in dreams.

I woke in the Jeep with Nathaniel and Caleb's worried faces hovering over me. There was a huge wolf sitting in the driver's seat, its long snout snuffling against my face. I reached up to touch that soft, thick fur, then saw the shine of liquid all over the driver's seat, where Jason had shape-shifted on the leather.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you couldn't have shape-shifted in the back in the cargo area. You had to shape-shift on the leather seats. It'll never come clean."

Jason growled at me, low and rumbling, and I didn't have to speak wolf to know what he was saying. I was being an ungrateful wretch. But it was so much easier to concentrate on my ruined upholstery than to think about the fact that I'd been in the presence of the Mother of all Vampires, the Mother of all Darkness, the Primordial Abyss made flesh. I knew through Jean-Claude's memories that they called her Mother Gentle, Marmè, a dozen different euphemisms to make her seem kind, and, well, motherly. But I'd felt her power, her darkness, and finally, at the end an intellect as cold and empty as any evil. She was curious about me the way some scientists are curious about a new species of insect. Find it, capture it, put it in a jar, whether it wants to go with you, or not. It's just an insect, after all.

They could call her Mother Gentle if they wanted to, but Mommy Dearest was a hell of a lot more accurate.

30

Caleb had climbed into the back of the Jeep to get the plastic I'd started carrying, for when I transported something messier than chickens, and spread it on the seat so Nathaniel could drive. I'd tried to insist on driving but Jason had growled at me. He had a point, I wasn't feeling my steadiest. Nathaniel, his eyes bled back to their normal lilac, had told me, "You passed out. You stopped breathing. Jason shook you, and you did this sort of gasp." Nathaniel shook his head, face very serious. "We had to keep shaking you, Anita. You kept not breathing."

If they'd been human I might have argued with them, that they only thought I'd stopped breathing, but they weren't human. If a bunch of shape-shifters were unable to hear or see me breathe, I had to believe them.

Had Mommy Dearest tried to kill me? Or had it been accidental-or incidental? She wouldn't have meant to kill me, but she might have done it by accident. And I'd touched enough of her thinking to know it wouldn't bother her. She wouldn't be sorry, she would feel no guilt. She didn't think like a person, or rather she didn't think like a nice, normal, civilized human. She thought like a sociopath-no empathy, no sympathy, no guilt, no compassion. In a strange way, that must be a very peaceful existence. Did you need more emotions than she possessed to be lonely? I'd think so, but I really didn't know. Lonely was not a word I would have applied to her. If you didn't understand the need for friendship or love, could you be lonely? I shrugged and shook my head.

"What is it?" Nathaniel asked.

"If you don't feel love or friendship, can you be lonely?"

He raised eyebrows at me. "I don't know. Why do you ask?"

"We've all just brushed up against the Mother of all Vampires, and she's more like the Mother of All Sociopaths. Human beings are rarely pure sociopaths. It's more like they're missing a piece here and there. True, pure sociopathy is really pretty rare, but Mommy Dearest qualifies, I think."

"It doesn't matter if she's lonely," Caleb said.

I glanced back at him. His brown eyes were very large, and underneath his fading tan he was pale. I sniffed the air before I could think, and the car was a playground of scents; the sweet musk of wolf, the clean vanilla of Nathaniel, and Caleb. Caleb smelled... young. I wasn't sure how to explain it but it was as if I could smell how tender his meat would be, how fresh his blood. He smelled clean, the scent of some lightly perfumed soap coated his skin, but underneath was another scent. Bitter and sweet all at the same time, the way blood is salty and sweet at the same time.

I turned as far as the seat belt would allow and said, "You smell good, Caleb, all tender and scared."

He was the true predator, not me, but the look he flashed me was all prey-huge eyes, face soft, lips opened just a breath. I watched his pulse beat against the skin of his neck.

I had an urge to crawl into the backseat and run my tongue over that frantic pulse, set teeth into that tender flesh, and set that pulse point free.

I had this image of Caleb's pulse like a piece of hard candy that would come free all in one piece and be sucked and rolled around in my mouth. I knew it wasn't like that. I knew that if I bit down the pulse would be destroyed, that it would die in a spill of red blood, but the candy imagery stayed with me, and even the thought of blood spraying in my mouth didn't seem terrible.

I closed my eyes so I couldn't see Caleb's neck beating and concentrated on my own breathing. But with every breath I drew in more of that bitter sweetness, the taste of fear. I could almost taste his flesh in my mouth.

"What's wrong with me?" I asked that out loud. "I want to tear Caleb's pulse out of his throat. It's too early for Jean-Claude to be awake. Besides I don't usually want blood. Or not only blood."

"It's close to full moon," Nathaniel said. "It's one of the reasons Jason lost enough control to change all over your seats."

I opened my eyes, turned my face to look at him, and away from Caleb's fear. "Belle tried to get me to feed off Caleb, but she couldn't. So why suddenly does he smell tasty?"

Nathaniel had finally found another exit back onto 44. He eased in behind a large yellow car that needed a major paint job, or maybe was in the middle of getting one, because half of it was covered in gray primer. I caught movement in the rearview mirror. It was the blue Jeep. It was at the end of the narrow street with cars on either side. It had.just cleared the corner, and seen us, and now it was hanging back, hoping, I think, that we hadn't seen it.

"Shit," I said.

"What?" Nathaniel asked.

"That damned Jeep is at the end of the street. Nobody look back." Everyone stopped themselves in mid-motion except for Jason. He hadn't even tried to look back, maybe wolf necks didn't work that way, or maybe he was staring at other things. I realized that he was looking at Caleb.

I looked at that huge shaggy head. "Are you thinking about eating Caleb?"

He turned and gave me the full force of that pale green gaze. People say that dogs are descended from wolves, but there are moments when I doubt that. There was nothing friendly, or sympathetic, or even remotely tame in those eyes. He was thinking about food. He met my gaze because he knew I'd caught him thinking about eating someone that was under my protection, then he turned back to gaze at Caleb, and think of meat. Dogs never look at people and think food; hell, they don't even look at other dogs and think that. Wolves do. The fact that there is no recorded account of a North American wolf attacking a human being for food has always amazed me. You look into their eyes, and you know that there is no one home that you can talk to.