But it shouldn't have been invisible flame. I'd seen a vampire burn in sunlight, and they flash burned, hot white flames, like magnesium. There was nothing invisible about it. They burned, and if they didn't get out of the light, they melted, even bone. It takes a hot fire to melt bone, but vamps in sunlight burn good.

Nathaniel was kneeling, trying to comfort Damian, to hold him, to just get him to stop swatting at things we couldn't see. I stared down at Damian and tried to think past the fear that was choking me. I was choking on Damian's terror. I couldn't think past it. I could barely breathe past it. I threw up shields, put metal in my mind against his fear, and tried to think. I looked down at Damian's white skin, and there was not a blister, not even a red spot. He wasn't burned. He wasn't burning. I didn't know why not. He should have burst into flames the moment the sunlight touched him, but he hadn't, and if he hadn't burned with the sunlight drowning him, then he wasn't going to burn here, in the dark.

I could hear the phone ringing in the other room, but it was dim over the sound of Damian's screams. For once I let it ring. If it was the police, they'd call back. If it was a friend, they'd call back. If it was another emergency, it could wait. One disaster at a time.

I knelt in front of him and tried to talk over the awful screaming. "Damian, Damian, you're safe. You're okay. You're not burning." I put my hands on either side of his face and screamed back at him, "Safe, you're safe!"

His eyes stayed wide, the pupils like pinpoints. He wasn't hearing anything. It was like shock, but worse. If it had been an old movie, I'd have slapped him, but I wasn't sure that would help. What do you do with a hysterical vampire? What do you do with a hysterical anybody?

The front door burst open behind us. My eyes were dazzled by the sunlight that spilled over us. Gregory, one of my leopards, stepped out of that blaze of light. I don't know what I would have said, because Damian let out a sound that was beyond a scream. It was a sound that should never have come from a human throat. He was up and moving like a white and red blur, darting farther into the house, out of the warm blaze of light.

Nathaniel followed him in that faster-than-the-eye-can-see speed that shapeshifters have, and they'd both turned the corner before I got to it. I expected to see the basement door open, but it wasn't. Movement up the stairs caught my eye, and I saw Nathaniel clear the last step and vanish down the hall. In his panic, Damian had run up, not down, up into the part of the house where the vampires rarely went. Up into the part of the house where the drapes were open and the morning light streamed in. Shit.

15

I was nearly to the top of the stairs when I heard Gregory behind me. He called up after me, "What's going on?"

I didn't know how to answer the question, so I ignored it. The upper hallway was a blaze of light, the big window at the end open to the risen sun. The hallway was empty. I thought, where are they? and I knew. I could feel them, both of them in the smallest room to the left, our guest room. I had made one step toward the doorway when Damian came running out as if all the demons of hell were chasing him. He ran screaming into the room across the hall, which was the bathroom. Unfortunately, it had a window, too. All the rooms up here had windows. If we could get him into a closet, maybe.

He came running out of the bathroom and fell, and scrambled on all fours like an animal toward the next open door. He vanished inside, only his piteous screaming coming back out to tell us he'd found another open window, another wash of sunlight.

"Was that Damian?" Gregory asked.

I nodded.

Nathaniel came to the first door Damian had run out of, blood ran down his shoulder, and he was cradling his arm. He looked at me, and his eyes held all the sorrow in the world. "He's gone crazy again."

The last time Damian had gone mad, he'd killed several people, butchered them, not just fed. But that had been because I was his master, and I'd left town. I hadn't known I was his master then. I hadn't known that leaving him alone without the touch of my magic, or whatever you want to call it, would make him a revenant, a mindless killing thing.

If it had been my fault before, somehow it was my fault again. I was his master now more than ever; I had to be able to fix this.

"Gregory, close the drapes. Start with the ones at the end of the hall." His blue eyes were wide, and his face held a dozen questions, but Gregory could follow orders when he wanted to, or you made him. He didn't argue, just started down toward the end of the hallway.

I went for the room that Damian had gone into, but I never made it, because he came tearing back out of it and nearly ran me down. I grabbed him, but my touch didn't calm him, and his didn't calm me, not today. He slammed me into the wall, and if I'd let go of his arm, he'd have run again, but I didn't let go. I hung on and got slammed into the wall on the other side of the hallway. Shit.

I yelled, "Damian, stop it!" But either he couldn't hear me, or I'd lost the power to make him obey me. Either way, it wasn't good. When he tried to slam me into the wall again, I braced my legs and used his own momentum, turning him into the wall, so that his own strength drove him into it so hard, the plaster gave under the impact.

He came off the wall snarling, fangs bared, his face thinning down, his humanity folding away, until what pinned me to the floor wasn't Damian. The only thing that saved me from having my throat torn out was that little extra bit of speed I'd gained from all the metaphysical shit. It gave me the time to throw one hand across his throat and one hand into his chest. I held him off of me by an arm's length, my fingers curled around his throat. Normally, I'd have thrown an arm into his throat and not trusted that I could get a hand there in time, but the last two times I tried that maneuver with a vampire, they'd torn up my arm. So I set my fingers in his throat and my palm against his chest, and tried to hold him off me.

His teeth snapped and snarled at me, like a dog on the end of its chain. Saliva splattered my face, trailed from his mouth as if he were a rabid animal. He struggled mindlessly to reach me, to sink those teeth into my flesh. If he'd been thinking like a person he'd have used his hands, his arms to overwhelm me, but he wasn't thinking like a person. So he fought my hands, pressing his body against the force of my hands, as if that were all that mattered. He pressed the strength of his madness against the push of my hands, and he began to press my arm inward. I don't know if he'd been sane whether my new metaphysics would have helped more, but he wasn't sane, and crazy anything is stronger than sane. It was like trying to bench-press pure muscle, a snarling, breathing force of nature. My arms began to bend, and I knew that if he got close enough, he'd tear me apart. His eyes had bled to green, and there was nothing in them but a mindless ferocity.

I had no weapons on me. I might have been able to tear his throat out. I didn't know if I was that strong now, or not. But he wasn't a master vamp, and I didn't know for certain that he'd heal if I pulled his throat apart. If he'd just been a bad guy, I'd have torn into him and done my best to take him out before he took me out, but Damian wasn't a bad guy, and whatever was wrong was somehow my fault. I couldn't kill him, because I wasn't master enough to handle him.

He pressed himself into me, and I put everything I had into keeping him away from my face and throat. My arms started to shake with the effort, and my elbows were bending. His face filled my vision, and his saliva dripped on my face. I did the only thing I could think of, I yelled for help.