Alison held her hands together so tightly her fingers ached. She forced herself to relax and let her hands ease apart. “So then what exactly is a death vampire, the ones you battle?”

Kerrick’s shoulders bunched. “An ascender who by any means partakes of dying blood is a death vampire. The drinking of dying blood creates all the features you saw at the medical complex: the blackening of the wings, the paling of the skin, the faint bluing of the skin, the beautifying of the face, as well as increased and quite superior physical strength.”

Death vampires. Ascension.

Alison resumed breathing. One in. One out. “But once I’ve passed this trial period—”

“These three days,” he said.

“Then I’m home-safe?”

“Yeah. That’s the way it’s set up.”

She glanced out the side window, frowning. Why exactly had she answered her call to ascension? “I didn’t know I was choosing war.”

“You weren’t choosing war,” he stated emphatically. “Look at me.”

She shifted her gaze to him.

“You were choosing a better life for yourself, a better fit. I know how powerful you are and I also know it must have been hell for you trying to always hold back, always restrain yourself. When you ascend, you can be everything you were meant to be. Try to remember that.”

Alison stared into passionate green eyes glittering in the dim light of the Nova. “I wanted to ascend.” She put a hand to the dip between her breasts. “I have felt such a yearning here, in my heart, every day for weeks now. I know this is the right path for me, but I didn’t expect…” Her voice broke. “And Darian was my … client. I cared for him. I worried about him. All in vain, I guess.”

“Well, shit,” he muttered.

“That about sums it up.”

Alison swiped at her cheeks, straightened her shoulders, and took in a big solid breath. She unlatched her seat belt then turned toward him.

As she met his gaze, the familiar and very crazy attraction she felt for him flowed through her once more. She became painfully aware that he was only inches away from her. He was huge and more than filled his side of her way-too-small car. He shifted his gaze away from her, cleared his throat, and this time he stared out his side window.

He looked uncomfortable, though she wasn’t quite certain why.

“Okay,” she said. “So tell me everything.”

He nodded and, after drawing a deep breath, turned back to her. He spoke for a long time about the structure of immortal earth, of ascending dimensions, to which individuals received a call. In her case the dreams she’d been having as well as the sense of longing she had experienced were her calls. He gestured a lot with his hands and more than once dragged his fingers through his hair in the direction of the leather clasp, until he undid the piece, refit all his thick wavy hair, then secured the prong through the leather. She didn’t know long hair on a man could be so damn sexy.

When he fell silent, she asked, “So what’s with the vampire thing? I thought vampires were the undead.”

He smiled, a slight crooked curve of his lips. “There’s a huge difference between fictional vampirism and what exists in real-life, real-time ascending worlds.”

Apparently.

“So you weren’t always a vampire, before you ascended?”

He shook his head. He even smiled again. “No. Vampires aren’t born to Mortal Earth. Vampiric traits are given during the ascension ceremony, traits such as increased physical power, sharpened vision and hearing, sometimes new unexpected powers, as well as fangs, in order to both take blood and to release chemicals into the blood and surrounding tissues. I know this must sound barbaric to you, but the experience of taking and receiving blood is revered on Second Earth.”

She snorted. “Yeah, there was a lot of reverence going down at the Blood and Bite.”

At that, he chuckled, a deep low rumble. The vampire had an amazing voice, a soft elegant bass, warm, rich. “You’ve got me there,” he said. “I suppose it’s like sex. It can give tremendous relief in stressful situations, like before a battle. Shared between husband and wife, yeah, reverence is the right word.”

She stared at him. “Husband and wife?”

He seemed to fall inside himself as he said quietly, “My second wife and I shared blood. It was … a very fine experience.” His expression dimmed, like the memories had pulled the shades down on all the windows. He also spoke in the past, and given his drive toward her, she thought it a fairly good guess that his wife was no longer living.

He drew out of himself in slow stages. She knew better than to hurry the process.

He flicked his thumb over the steering wheel and finally said, “As you already know, given events at your office complex, the blood ritual can be profoundly abused. Mortals and immortals alike can be drunk to death and often are. The most significant sign of this act you’ve seen already, the paling out and faint bluing of the skin.”

She nodded. “He was beautiful.”

“Yes.” He shook his head. “A cruel irony.”

“Why are these kinds of monsters allowed on Earth? I mean Mortal Earth?”

“It’s not allowed. It’s illegal and we work to contain them.”

“So you, as a warrior, battle death vampires, as in, that’s your job.”

He nodded, staring straight ahead. “Yes. Myself and six other warriors. Warriors of the Blood. The problem is, the Commander—Darian Greaves, your Darian Greaves—has gone global in the last fifty years, and with the increase in Mortal Earth’s population, the number of death vampires he and his allies can create has increased exponentially.” He shook his head back and forth. “You don’t really need to know this shit.” He scowled and once more tapped the steering wheel.

Alison sat quietly, her thoughts tumbling inward. Ascension. Ascending dimensions. An entire world adjacent to Earth. Mortal Earth. Mortal Earth. Mortal. Earth.

All the vampire lore she had ever heard sped through her mind. She had read Bram Stoker’s version. She watched True Blood. But this was real and apparently something she would become if she kept going down this road.

Alison Wells. Vampire. She shivered suddenly.

“You okay?” he asked, not looking at her. His thumb again tapped the steering wheel, slower now, a dull thud in the confined space.

“Sure,” she said. “I’m sitting next to a vampire and if I follow this path to a logical conclusion, I’ll grow a pair of fangs myself.”

He glanced at her, his features solemn. “You’re doing fine.”

“You know, you have the most beautiful voice.”

His smile emerged once more.

He looked incredible in the weapons harness and black kilt. Her fingers itched to slide her hands under all that leather. She glanced at his legs and noticed the twitching of his thighs.

“You’re jumpy, too.”

“Kind of,” he said, his voice rough. “In a different way.” Once more, he looked out his side window and drew in a series of long, deep breaths.

“And if you don’t mind my saying, you have the most wonderful … scent … like cardamom.”

He nodded, yet he still wouldn’t look at her.

She laid a hand on his arm. “Thank you for getting me out of the alley.”

He jerked, stiffened, then relaxed. When she withdrew her hand, thinking she might have offended him, he caught it and pressed it back in place.

“You’re very welcome.” He took another deep breath. “But I need you to know a couple of things.”

“Okay.”

“First, I want to explain about earlier at the club. I was caught up in what is a rare experience called the breh-hedden. I was crazed when I went after you, but I wouldn’t have hurt you.”

“I know that.”

“You do?” He glanced at her, relief in his eyes.

She nodded.

“Good. And I’m going to do my best not to let it happen again.”

“Okay.” She became acutely aware of his hand covering hers and his thick muscled arm beneath her palm.

“So it’s the ‘bray’ something?”

“The breh-hedden.” He spelled it for her. “An old expression from a language no longer much in use, just the occasional term or phrase.”

“What is it exactly?”

“First, it’s rare, very rare, but presents itself as an almost impossible drive where the man feels a need to possess a woman sexually, to protect her as well as to exchange blood and to engage the mind in a very deep way, to be in the other’s mind.”

“You’re not talking about telepathy.”

“No. Something much deeper. Mind-engagement, sometimes called mind-diving.”

“Does it have to be all three?” She didn’t want to say them aloud. It all seemed so personal, so intimate: blood, sex, and the mind.

“To complete the breh-hedden, yes, all three, all at once, both parties, at the same time.”

Alison released a long breath. The thought of being so fully joined to another person, to a man, possibly the man sitting next to her, made it difficult to draw the next breath. She swallowed … hard. “So, the attraction I feel for you is part of the breh-hedden.”

“Yes, but I hope you can just forget about it.”

“Kerrick,” she whispered, her face tingling, her breaths shallow, desire flowing. “I don’t think I can.”

He turned toward her and met her gaze. “Oh, God, you smell like lavender.”

“I do?”

He nodded. “Alison, listen. I’m hanging on by a thread here. This experience is powerful, like almost everything that occurs on Second.” He gently slid her hand off his arm. “So you would be really wise not to touch me again, to do what you can to resist this attraction.”

Alison felt completely and utterly trapped between a desire to move forward and an urgent need to restrain herself as she always had, to make certain she didn’t hurt the man beside her. For a split second she wanted to run home, pull the covers over her head, and stay there, like forever. On the other hand, ever since she’d thrown the hand-blast into the air, something deep inside her had shifted and changed. She would never again return to the safety of her simple, lonely, cloistered life. For the first time in a long time, perhaps ever, she felt like she was coming alive.