CHRIS

He’d never ridden in a plane before, so he was a little uptight when they boarded. It was a Concord supersonic, one of the last of its kind. An elongated egg-shape with a spacious interior that was nothing like the cramped misery he had seen in planes in movies. He felt like he was walking onboard a strange alien spacecraft, set to head off into the unknown. There was definite nervousness involved.

"Sit down, strap in and enjoy the ride. It’ll be over quick enough as it is," Lianndra instructed, throwing himself backward into his first-class seat. He was completely unruffled.

A few of the other passengers looked at them curiously, especially when they learned that the reason the plane was being diverted for a short time was because of these plainly dressed kids.

Almost as soon as they were belted in, the door was slid shut and the plane was heading down the runway fast. In a minute they were off the ground and on their way toward an adventure.

Chris gripped his armrests tightly, his fingers leaving depressions in the foam that would be there later. His stomach was fluttery and his head felt too light. He wondered if he really, really wanted to have an adventure.

Flying thousands of feet above the ground may have seemed like something that would keep a mind firmly locked into panic, but after the first few minutes of surprise and fear, it actually felt pretty normal, as though he was riding in a strangely shaped bus. He leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes, letting himself drift away in to fantasies of all of the things he would like to be doing right now instead of possibly heading straight into death.

He was so lost in his thoughts that he missed the final approach and only knew they had landed by the slight bump as the wheels hit. Chris’ head jerked up and he looked out the window, watching as the ground sped by at super fast speed and then got slower and slower until finally the plane came to a coasting stop that he barely felt.

"Cool!" Chris couldn’t help exclaiming like a kid on his first flight, which he was.

Lianndra and Dezi smiled at him in the same almost-condescending way. They probably thought he was acting really immature, but he didn’t care.

He followed the others as they disembarked. Sitting in first-class was the coolest thing that he had ever done. It meant that for the first time in his life, he was last to get on and first to get off, the earmarks of a rather important personage. It was absolutely great.

"What time is it?" he asked.

Lianndra looked at the expensively high-tech watch he wore on his thin wrist and pursed his lips as he read. "Six-oh-two p.m. on the dot, but this is Washington, so we have plenty of time. At least twelve hours until it starts to get light out and we have to find someplace to rest. Plenty of time to do what we have to do."

"Are we going to have to call a cab to get out of here?" Dezi looked around the packed airport.

Lianndra shot her an impish smile. "You can if you want to. I personally am planning on getting a ride in the limo that’s waiting out front."

He moved off before she could say anything, a small figure slicing through the madness and mayhem of passengers disembarking, boarding and waiting for their planes to come. He was a wave of calm in the middle of a sea gone mad. None of the people that automatically stepped out of his way consciously knew that they did it; it was just something that happened. He was the kind of person that could find his way through a labyrinth without needing to look at the map. People sensed that about him, that he knew what he was doing, so they got out of his way, somehow knowing that if they didn’t move, he would go right through them. It was the strangest thing about him, the power he carried so negligently, as if he didn’t know he had it, even as he used it.

Chris cursed and chased after him, trailing Dezi behind, their hands locked together to keep from being separated. Their suitcases had appeared like magic out of the machine just as they were passing by and he and Dezi managed to scoop them up and chase after Lianndra without losing him in the crowd.

"Can’t he slow down?" Chris asked plaintively, almost running to keep up with the small darting figure.

The crowds of people parted to let Lianndra through, but closed after him, leaving Chris and Dezi to wallow along behind.

"I doubt it. Besides, this might be a good thing. He can run off some of that nervous energy." If she’d been mortal, Dezi would have been gasping for breath. It was hard getting through the crush of rather delicate mortal bodies without hurting any of them, but they had to somehow manage it.

LIANNDRA

The chauffeur saw him and smiled. "Lianndra, I presume?" The man was mortal, but it was obvious that he had been around vampires a lot. He had just the right kind of deferential attitude about him combined with the relaxed air of someone that knows the proper things to say and do so as not to get into trouble.

"Correct, and you are?" Lianndra’s tone was cold, no point in getting too friendly with the food.

The man smiled another calming smile. "My name is James Kern, everyone just calls me Kern. Please sir, and I hope I don’t displease you overmuch?" There was a questioning tone to his voice as he said this, while at the same time he opened the door for them to climb in back.

He definitely was a true professional. He had just the right kind of servile confidence going for him.

Lianndra climbed in, knowing and hating that all of the people that saw him would think he was some rich man’s son, a worthless little brat with the beautiful features of an innocent child. He did feel a surge of smugness when he thought about what their reactions would be if they had known what he really was and that he could have snuffed out their lives like little candles without even a thought.

Dezi climbed in after him, every inch the teenage girl. She even gave a giggly little laugh as she flirted with Chris. That stopped once the door closed, the giggle sucked away into an impassive face leaving no trace behind. Appearing to be bubble-headed can only last for so long, especially when one isn’t usually like that.

Even bubble-headed people have something floating around under the surface.

"So, this is Washington?" Dezi said, glancing out the window at the milling crowds of people. "How provincial."

Chris laughed. "You’re so rude. I don’t know how anyone can be as rude as you are and still manage to look so sweet."

"You love me, don’t you?" Her petulant tone was suddenly one of sugary-sweet pleading, her lower lip outthrust and her eyes going to liquid.

Chris grinned. "I don’t know, do I?" he said it teasingly, his eyes locked to her mortal-seeming face.

"You better," she said, jabbing a finger at him.

"Okay, okay, I love you… especially your money."

Her head swiveled around and she gave him a look Medusa would have envied. "Excuse me? Peasant talking. Now listen up mister, money is as money does, and I’ve got all the money and you’ve got all the doing going on."

"Doing?" Chris asked innocently. "Why, whatever do you mean?"

She smiled a suggestive smirk. "You know I’m just keeping you for the tail, right?"

Chris wore a wounded expression. "But that was why I was keeping you!"

Her smile disappeared and her eyes darkened dangerously. He had taken things a little too far.

Lianndra laughed from where he reclined next to the left window. "Oops, now you’re in for it. She’s going to kick your ass for sure."

Dezi slit her eyes like a cat and flashed a look out of the corner of her eyes at him. "You and I are going to have a long talk… later. For now, me and Chris are having a private discussion and you’re going to butt out, got me, mister?"

"Not so sweet now, is she?" Lianndra said, ducking her swipe at his head. "Sorry, sorry, us working girls just gotta have some fun. But I’ll keep my nose out of it, I promise," he said it with the widest, most guileless eyes imaginable.

Her lip twitched, but she somehow managed to hold back the smile that he could see trying to break away. She turned back to Chris. "Now, you listen here. That was the most sexist remark I’ve heard in something like twenty years. Right up there with the crazy boy that said he wanted to neck with me out in the woods, but that he wanted to do the biting and that I was to keep my teeth to myself. He said it was the manly thing for him to do, what with me being a helpless female and all."

Lianndra barely held his laugh in check as he heard that. The vampire being told that the mortal wanted to do the biting, all because she was a she. He bet that boy got a rather big surprise when she showed him what this mere female could do, especially where biting was concerned.

"I wasn’t being sexist. I was being truthful," Chris said in his most air-headed way.

"Why, you little creep, I really ought to take Lianndra’s suggestion and beat your ass. You need it," her tone of mock-outrage was enough to make Lianndra’s lips start twitching uncontrollably.

She turned to him. "What, do you have something to say?"

Looking into her eyes, he couldn’t help it, he burst into the most undignified kind of laughter, little spurting giggles that made his stomach tremble inside. His whole immortal and practically indestructible vampire frame began to jerk and jangle like some kind of bowl of Jell-O as he giggled, giggled and kept right on giggling, unable to help himself.

He giggled for so long that when he finally stopped, his jaws ached from the pressure. If he’d been mortal, he would have been heaving, or maybe even passed out from the need to breathe.

Just looking at him set Dezi and Chris off. They started laughing.

Even though it hadn’t been all that funny, they laughed as if it were the most hilarious thing they had ever heard or seen. It was mostly because they needed a way to rid themselves of the fear and stress they were feeling.

They were about to do the most difficult and terrible thing they could have ever thought up: they were going to face the Black Queen and all her minions. Their nervousness had been growing and growing since they faced the power of the Queen when they were at the Vampire Club. It was on the brink of exploding out of them. They needed some kind of emotional release valve, and it looked like they had found it. Lianndra realized it even as he laughed, and he hoped that their laughter would be enough. Otherwise the inhabitants of the little town of Poulsbo wouldn’t be very happy when they woke in the morning to a desolate ruin, their town only a pile of discarded rubble.

With the traffic it took two hours to reach Poulsbo from the airport and dawn was only about an hour away. He could tell by the way Chris kept yawning and twitching in his seat, trying to hold his eyes open by pure force of will, that the boy was feeling the approaching sun. Lianndra felt a little tired himself, but he knew that he could get around in case of an emergency.

"Driver, hurry," he spoke into the little intercom, his small finger depressing the button.

Kern answered his request by almost doubling the velocity of the already speeding car. The only reason they felt fairly secure in speeding was because there weren’t all that many police in the small town and their police scanner was on and ready.

Lianndra sank backward into the pliable seat. He wished this whole deal was over and he was back at his apartment in the city, back where he belonged. He wanted to be somewhere where he felt completely safe and this aura of doom didn’t hang over him so terribly.

"Do you want a drink?"

He turned to Dezi who was offering a delicate crystal champagne flute and waving a full bottle. He quirked his lips and she poured the bright red fluid, which had the surreal hue of arterial blood mixed with white wine.

He took his champagne glass and sniffed the delicate fragrance that rose from it to overwhelm his senses deliciously. These were the vices of the modern vampire--the kind of vampire that lives in comfort without worry of the things that affect the rest of the world. Things like hunger, poverty and depression. For a vampire, there were always walking sources of protein, ones that are too hard to resist.

It was at times like these, in the back of a comfortable limousine that offered everything he could possibly want, that he started thinking about his life before and knew that if Donal had offered immortality to him this very day, he would probably have accepted. It was so much simpler to be what he was, a ravening monster walking the earth at night, than to be what he might have been. Giving up the sun was so much easier than giving up everything else the world had to offer--things like blood and money.

Then there were Dezi and Chris who trusted him to keep them safe and secure in the lifestyle that only he could provide. A lot of people depended on him to see them through the darkness that was their lives. If he had bothered to count heads, he would have been stunned at how many there were. Some of them were inside his warm embrace at all times, while others gladly accepted the run-off of his love. Still, even those that were just shadows moving through his life depended on him to care for them. He had responsibilities.

And right now he was responsible for finding them a place to rest during the daylight hours. Moral dilemmas aside, there was no room to just stop, because the world kept turning inexorably, and if he tried to stand still, the world would pass him by and he would just go spinning off into the darkness, another fallen star.

CHRIS

He found it hard to believe that he had actually been asleep. He had figured he was too scared to ever sleep, yet here he was being woken up. The only explanation was that he had somehow fallen asleep slumped up against the window, rocked gently by the movement of the car, the purring of the engine and the approach of dawn.

Dezi patted his hand. "We’re in Poulsbo at a place called the Evergreen Motel. Lianndra says that we’re going to spend the night here before we find his friends, whoever they are."

"Hey, be nice. Just ‘cause I never let you come here with me doesn’t mean you have to be bitchy," Lianndra said, quirking his lips at them. He looked almost too clear and alert, his hair falling perfect and his face young and smooth. It might have been better if he were dirty and filthy and unhappy, but that was never going to happen. He was Lianndra the Magnificent, so far above the cares and complaints of normal people that it was just ridiculous.

Chris yawned and stretched, catching a peek at Dezi while he did it. She definitely looked different from how she had before. With the glow of mortal health and happiness, she looked like a real teenager, one that had all of the possibilities of great beauty glowing in her skin and shining from her eyes.

If he had seen her walking down the street months ago, he knew that he would have been hot for her. She had all of the looks and grace that no guy could possibly resist, and he wasn’t immune to that. Even though he knew her and loved her more for her mind than for her body, he had to admit that she was a real hottie.

"What?" she asked, catching him looking.

He smiled at her. "Nothing."

"You’re weird."

He sat back in the seat, comfortable just to be in her presence. Meeting Lianndra had been the best thing to ever happen to him because it had let him meet his one truelove. He wasn’t about to even think about giving that up, not for anything. Great loves only come once in a lifetime and throwing them away was just stupid.

The limo cruised to a stop and the driver hopped out to open the door for them.

"Park in the lot and come in to receive your room key from the front desk. We’ll be in our room by then and won’t want to be disturbed," Lianndra gave his commands as he climbed out of the limo and started walking for the front door, still talking.

"While we’re Sleeping, I want you to keep a close watch on who drives up to the motel. You don’t have to be overly suspicious, just keep an eye out. Here," he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of hundred dollar bills, "buy the food and things you’ll need for during the day."

Kern took the money with a slight bow and closed the car door. There was no expression on his face and his every movement was precise.

Chris blinked at the man for a second before letting Dezi lead him away toward the front doors of the main office.

The room they were given had two beds, one on each side of the room. Above each of the beds hung a still life painting of flowers and placed in between the beds was a night table with a lamp on it. Straight across from the night table, against the wall, there was a small TV on a dresser-type stand. Chris immediately flipped it on and found Aeon Flux showing her stuff against Trevor, the bad guy and her ex-lover.

The room had a bathroom with a shower, two closets and the usual reading material found in a motel room: a phonebook and a Bible. There was everything that anyone could possibly ever need here--except a bit of life. The place was comfortable, but almost completely impersonal. Even the drapes on the one large window were a generic kind, formless off-white hanging down to the floor, little brown specks trying to add character but completely failing.

Lianndra barely looked around the room, just headed straight toward the phone and started dialing, his fingers flashing over the buttons. Dezi flopped on the bed farthest away from the door, and Chris was left with nothing to do.

He frowned at them both: Lianndra talking a mile a minute and Dezi stripping off her clothes as she lay there, not even bothering to get back up. Watching her change into a plain white shift was a little diverting, but it didn’t really take away from the fact that he was bored and cranky. Dawn was coming and he was tired, but he wasn’t quite ready to call it a night, not yet. Part of him had the feeling that if he went to Sleep he wasn’t going to Wake up.

He sighed and went into the bathroom to study himself in the large mirror there. He certainly didn’t look like he had always thought the living dead were supposed to. In fact, he looked remarkably healthy and rosy-cheeked.

He didn’t exactly know what he had expected to find waiting for him, but he thought that it had something to do with narrow cheeks, sickly pale skin, darkly circled eyes and a hungry look. What he got was himself looking better than he’d ever looked before. It was rather disappointing. Maybe all that stuff he’d heard about vampires was just that, stuff he’d heard, hype.

There was one uplifting thing about being a vampire though, other than the fact that he was going to live forever, got to live with Dezi and would have all the time he needed to become a millionaire. There was the fact that if he had Dezi and Lianndra as examples, he was going to look good for a long time.

Even all vampire and pale, he looked good, incredibly good. He’d seen the way people watched him, even adults. He had somehow gone from regular good-looks to a handsomeness that brooked on beauty, like how Lianndra was, the residual childishness washed away until only the vampire beauty remained.

He looked great and he knew it. And if he’d looked just a little bit better when he’d been alive, well, then he would have looked that much better dead.

He knew that when Lianndra had been alive he’d been a cute, even beautiful child, but he also knew that becoming a vampire had improved on that. The BloodTouch changed everyone it came to--it took away some of their moral inhibitions, and in return gave them the looks and strength to get the things that they wanted and needed from life.

For right now he wanted and needed to go to Sleep. The weariness hit him suddenly, like a hammer between the eyes. He swayed a little on his feet. He could practically feel his brain trying to shut down.

Chris yawned and left the bathroom to flop on the bed Dezi had picked. He curled around her already limp form and yawning fell Asleep.

Just as he was drifting away, he felt the springs shift as Lianndra slid in next to them. His eyes blinked slowly and he scooted over, giving the smaller vampire more room.

And so they Slept. Three vampires on a bed built for two. The sheets smelled heavily of the bleach that had been used to wash them, the puffy comforter somehow made its way to the top of the pile and covered them. They all snuggled together, three forms that in some way made a person only think of one.

LIANNDRA

He wore black pants and a long sleeved black shirt, but the shirt was soft cotton and conformed to his muscular-looking chest, not the stiff armor-like jacket of before. His shoulders were revealed as being broad, giving him a sort of wedge shape. What Lianndra could see made him think that this was a man that took care of himself. There wasn’t a spare ounce of fat anywhere on him. That somehow made Lianndra feel good. It was like if he had a dog, he wanted the best dog, one that other people would be jealous of. James Kern was a good-looking mortal and that reflected back on his masters.

"Good morning Kern." Lianndra nodded to the man.

Kern smiled faintly and opened the limo door, ushering them into the warm confines of the car. Lianndra slid inside and leaned back against the soft leather. The limo had a refrigerator, TV, telephone, mini-ice machine and a lot of other electronic gismos that he figured were his right to fool around with since the car belonged to him to some degree.

Dezi followed Chris in and slammed the door after her. Then the two of them fell to fighting over who got to sit by which window.

Watching them, Lianndra shook his head. Children.

"Are you guys ready to go?" he asked primly, only to get an elbow right in the face.

He cursed and leaped at them, landing across both of their laps, his face against the seat. He was trying to wriggle around when Dezi grabbed him by the belt loops and jerked, lifting him clear off the seat. He scrabbled in mid-air and tried to get away from her. "Aw come on, this isn’t fair," he whined in his most childish of tones. He was sounding like a real little kid--her brother or something--and he knew it. This was the one plan that he absolutely knew would result in him getting his own way.

He knew that it was going to work one more time when she started to lower him back down again, her expression contrite. He managed to hide his smile behind a grimace of strain as he twisted and struggled.

As soon as the tips of his toes touched the floor, he gave a battle cry and jerked out of her grip. He whirled and leaped at her, catching her straight in the midriff.

She "oomphed" and fell back into the seat, her voice rising in a cry of outrage as he nipped at her belly with his fangs. "Cut it out, stop it, come on, ack!"

He giggled and hopped back into his seat, an arrogant smirk twisting his lips. "Don’t believe what you hear about the great Lianndra; he can be as childish as anyone," he said, flicking his hair back out of his eyes.

Dezi laughed and threw some ice chips at him. She had scooped them out of the side of the refrigerator while he had been busy trying to get her to let him go. The ice whipped by his head and tinkled against the car window.

"Jerk," he said.

She was about to reply, when Kern interrupted. "Where exactly are we going?" he asked, the partition between the front and the backseats sliding down with a gentle "whir" of motors.

Lianndra tapped his chin thoughtfully. "I was thinking about seeing my Washington factor, but instead, let’s go straight to Michelle’s house."

Cruising to a stop in the driveway of the yellow house was a little like a trip down memory lane. There were some changes, like the little girl in the red and white checked dress and red cowboy hat running around in the front yard chasing after a bunch of squawking chickens, but it was still like coming home.

He remembered Shanna, but he definitely didn’t remember the chickens. They were young still, probably less than a year old. New members of the Shimoto family.

"Hey Shanna!" he called.

The girl looked up with a wide smile, displaying the adorable gap between her front teeth. "Lian!"

She came running toward the car, her plump little legs pumping. Her dress swirled around her dimpled knees and her hat fell off her head to hang down her back by its string. Lianndra opened the door and stepped out to receive her embrace.

Sometime while he had been gone, she had grown another foot and looked to be almost the same age as he did.

"How old are you?" he asked curiously.

She smiled out from under her long eyelashes. "Six," she said, holding up six fingers.

Lianndra smiled back. "Well, well, look who’s growing up as quick as she can. I would have taken you for eight at the very least. What a big girl you are. You’re almost as tall as I am."

Shanna laughed in delight at the thought of herself as a "big girl." She shook her head shyly, covering her giggles with both hands. "You’re funny. How come you don’t look any older than you were the last time you were here? Where did you go, Uncle L’anndra?"

He patted her head. "You don’t need to worry about that. Is your family around?"

She nodded, as he knew she would. Who would ever even think of leaving such a pretty little girl outside all by herself in the early-dark? That was like calling a kidnapper up on the telephone and giving him your home address. It just wasn’t something anyone actually tried to do, not consciously anyway.

Lianndra had to admit that he had known some strange people in his time, and though some might have seen them as a bit… eccentric, the Shimoto family wasn’t exactly at the top of his list of strange folk. They might have lived a kind of unconventional lifestyle, but that didn’t mean that they were all that weird.

The Shimoto family would probably have been considered normal by some, what with the way they all lived together in one house, didn’t fight overly much amongst themselves and were able to form up together in the face of opposition. That was the usual way of families: no matter how much they might scuffle amongst themselves, they stand united against those of the outside world.

He felt proud that they welcomed him into the heart of their lives, letting him experience something that he had thought he had lost forever--the closeness of a family.

He had been an aspect of their family for a long time. For so long that they greeted him more as a son that has gone away, than as a visitor dropping by. He loved the fact that they could let him into their home with no qualms and discomfort that he was there.

They were also more comfortable with him than his real family was. They didn’t treat him like some kind of child with a mental disability. They treated him like an adult. Even though he was much smaller than an adult was, that didn’t seem to deter them from the belief that he was one.

"Here, take my hand Shanna and let’s go look for the family. They have to be around here somewhere, right?" He offered his hand to the little girl, who took it with a shy, yet happy, smile.

"These are my friends Dezi and Chris. Why don’t you say hello to them?" He waved his hand at the two of them; they were standing off to one side with polite smiles on their faces as they tried not to intrude into what was going on.

Shanna smiled at them. "Hello, you look very pretty," she said, staring at Dezi with wide eyes.

Dezi smiled gently. "That’s very nice of you to say. You’re very pretty too. Did your mommy do your hair in those pigtails?"

Shanna nodded. "Yep, this morning," she said. "Are we going to go inside now, Lian?"

He led off toward the house, crossing the lawn with its large shade-giving maple tree out front and the apple trees off to one side. The apple trees were blooming with little pink-tinted white flowers that were the mark of the apples that would grow there in early September. It was a storybook scene, the kind of thing that people imagined when they thought about the perfect place to live--on a farm or something.

He hadn’t been here in a year, but there was very little changed about it. There was the little house with its six partition windows, the rose bush planted along the side of the house, the peach colored trailer where the grandparents lived, and across the yard the aunt and uncle that lived next door. He knew that when the moon came up in a little while everything would be illuminated by a glaze of silver, making the little white blossoms on the apple trees seem to glow white.

When the moon was high in the sky, he loved to step outside and dance under the rays of the moon with no clothes on. It was like he was worshipping the heavens, not to mention that it was a way for him to give something back to the world, a kind of offering of peace and beauty.

In the light of the moon his skin would glow silvery-white, his hair would be a halo around his head, his eyes would glow blue fire and his limbs would move with an almost boneless, sliding grace that would have made the greatest ballet dancers in history swoon with envy. Famous painters the world over had tried to capture the image he projected so effortlessly with little luck. If they had ever seen him, they would have been in a tizzy to paint him in the environment that he most belonged, as a creature of the night, like a spirit stepping out for a night of fun, or an elf prince passing through a crack from Faerie.

With his delicately pale skin and looks, people seeing him thought of him as a little elf in miniature Armani suits and tailor-made outfits of black and other dark colors. His blue eyes with the light of his immortal soul shining through were seemingly from a whole ‘nother world. And when he danced under the light of the moon, he was that much more a creature of some other earth, a small fairy out of his own world, a being that has stepped out of time for a minute to worship the moon and all its children.

There were some things that the world was never meant to know, and one of those was the beauty of an immortal being such as him. No matter how magical and wonderful he looked, there was something about the image he presented that was wrong for the mundane world, something mortal eyes were never meant to experience. It was like a person seeing God, the image of Him so bright that it blinds the mortal eye and even angels fear to look.

There are some places where none are meant to go, some images none were meant to see, and he was one such. He was a being from another time, a creature the like of which the world was never meant to view. The Queen and her brother were the spark that had started a flame that burned brighter and longer than any light ever before.

It was sad, but he knew that he would never be fully accepted by the world. He was just too far outside of normal.