By Anne Fraser and Barbara Zuchegna
With assistance from Sharon Pickrel and Jean Lamb
Copyright 1999

Chapter One

Dropped into a modern airport in Detroit, Michigan, a 15th Century king can manage just fine with a certain imperious attitude ... and a substantial line of credit.

There was a welcome sameness about the airport in Toronto, the only one Richard Plantagenet had ever seen before, and the one in Detroit. An information desk held a sweet-faced, middle-aged woman who enthusiastically pointed him toward an area where travel services had their separate counters and, behind these, seating areas where the really good prospect could be given the red carpet treatment. Richard, who wanted not only flight booking but hotel reservations, was a really good prospect.

The smiling, sleek, very thin and unbelieveably blonde young woman who settled him efficiently into a chair beside her desk was all brisk and cheerful helpfulness. Well, maybe not all ... she was very aware of his eyes, drifting appreciatively up the long legs exposed by her extremely short skirt. But she sat down at her computer terminal and got down to business with welcome alacrity.

She took his credit card, punched some numbers into her terminal, and could not quite hide her eagerness at the response that came up on her monitor. Apparently, Richard's credit rating was more than sufficient to set her little commission-loving heart racing. There was a flight leaving for Toronto in less than an hour, and a few key punches reserved passage for Richard. Then, smiling brilliantly with gorgeously-capped teeth, she asked, "Did you have a preference among hotels in Toronto?"

He wouldn't have known a hotel in Toronto from a brothel in Timbuktu, but he simply smiled and shook his head. Her first suggestion was unsettling: The King Edward. He demurred, and she went back to her terminal. "The Royal York?" she asked, and he laughed, a bit hopelessly, and asked her to check further. The Four Seasons he found adequate. A few more keypunches booked a suite there for a rather astonishing amount of money.

Transportation? He managed to look lazily helpless, and she began punching keys again. A hotel limousine would pick him up at the airport. Was there anything at all else she could do for him? The use of a computer terminal? She rose to usher him personally across the concourse and into a waiting lounge which was much less crowded, and much more lavishly appointed, than those he had seen outside. She even insisted on carrying his small bag, which contained only the clothes he had been wearing when he left Maine with Val Corey. Chattering brightly and endlessly about how very much she was just sure he was going to enjoy his stay in Toronto, and how she hoped he would be absolutely sure to call on her services when he was in Detroit again, she showed him the VIP lounge with as much pride as if she had constructed the place herself. The attending steward here, she assured him, could provide the use of a computer and would see to it that he caught his flight. She herself stood ready to provide anything else he might want or need. She was almost twitching with her smiling eagerness to do so.

Richard gave a moment's thought to dragging her behind the nearest potted palm. That hip-length skirt was an open invitation. But he was still sick as a dog; the final indignity would be to find himself incapable. Smiling, he shook his head, thanked her, and sent her on her way.

The steward, a reserved and dignified young man in a rather silly- looking epauletted uniform, pointed out an alcove where several computers sat, cursors blinking relentlessly on blank monitor screens. With his help, Richard navigated the layers of advertisment and happy-face welcoming screens before the damned thing settled down to a simple message form and the steward bowed himself away.

He had no idea what he was going to say. Even a man who had assured him of a welcome could hardly be expected to enjoy a visit so unexpected and unannounced. But the simple truth was that, away from the Refuge, Richard was very much lost in a world he knew far too little of, and there was no one else at all to whom he could turn for help. And this particular acquaintance could provide, if he would, a great deal of information on a subject of which Richard wanted very much to learn as much as possible.

Adrian Talbot was a vampire.

Resolutely, hunting and pecking, Richard began to type: "To Adrian Talbot from Richard Plantagenet. Adrian, I hope this message finds you well ..."

Finished, dissatisfied but unable to think of anything better to say, he punched the "Send" button and watched his message disappear.

The steward, glancing at his wristwatch, told him that his flight wouldn't be boarding for another twenty minutes. Could he get something for Richard? A drink, or a snack of some sort?

The idea of either was nauseating. Richard shook his head and went over to the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the runway outside.

And she was there ... exactly as she had been, in every idle moment he could not fill, since the moment she left him. Dancing in the flames of a campfire, spanning the star-filled night sky above his sleepless body, even stretching luxuriously against the inside of his hopelessly closed eyelids ... and here, reflected in the glass before him as clearly as if she stood by his side.

Liliana. Her very name was a knife that twisted in his heart.

He had been a fool. Worse, he had been unforgiveably, brutally cruel. She could read his mind, his deepest thoughts, and she must have known what he felt. But he could not read her, and he had misunderstood what she gave to him, had dared to believe that she felt what he did. And his anger, the uncontrollable, searing rage that swelled inside him when she said she was going back to ... her husband, had come spilling out of his mouth with the deepest, vilest cruelty he knew how to loose on her.

He had hurt her, more than he knew at that moment. The blood on his face could have come from nowhere but her hands, when she slapped him, and she must have cut into them herself when he attacked her with such calculated viciousness. And there was no way he could ever make her understand that it was only his own pain that allowed him do it.

She had changed his life irrevocably, and she probably had no idea that she'd done it. She had said he could return to the Refuge ... to be with ... Anne. Anne. He could never make Liliana understand that he was not the same man now, that he could not go back to that old life, that he could not go back to trying, always, to live up to Anne's idealized vision of him. He had spent his life at it, and failed miserably.

He loved Anne. He would always love her. But it was not the love he had felt with Liliana, and he had not known, in all of his life, that that kind of love existed. He knew now ... and there was no going back.

Could Liliana understand ... could Anne understand ... that in truth, Anne did not love him? Anne loved her vision of him, the man she wanted him to be, and he had tried relentlessly to be that man. From their earliest childhood, that vision had stood before him, impossibly strong, impossibly wise, impossibly successful at everything to which he put his hand. Trying to be that man had made a better man of him than he could ever have been otherwise. But it always was, and always would be, trying to be someone he was not. And he didn't have the strength to do it anymore.

Liliana was not his. She had made it clear. Even if the child she was carrying was his, she was not ... and she was going back to the man she had married. He would have to find a way to live with that ... but it could not be where she was, where he would see her with Raphael, or in truth, where he would see her at all.

He would have to return to the Refuge, sooner or later, to speak with Anne. It would be among the hardest things he had ever done in his life, but he could not avoid it. He would see to her welfare, and that of the child, and try to make her understand why he could not stay with her, could never be with her again. He knew her so well; she was probably expecting it. He could not recall a time in their lives when she had not known, before he did, what he felt. And her forgiveness ... for she would give it freely ... would be almost unbearable. As close to unbearable as the promise she had demanded of him, and from which he knew she would never release him.

So he must find a way to live. And he had no idea how he would do that now.

"Sir?"

He turned, drawn from his thoughts by the steward.

"If you'll come this way, sir," the young man said deferentially, "your flight is boarding now."

13 Oct 1998
To Adrian Talbot from Richard Plantagenet

Adrian,

I hope this message finds you well.

We have spoken several times of a meeting. I find that I will be in Toronto this evening, for an indefinite period of time, and would like nothing better than to bring such a meeting about.

I will be staying at The Four Seasons hotel. If you have the free time and would enjoy meeting again, please leave a message there indicating a time and place convenient for you.

If you are otherwise occupied currently, of course I will understand, and we will postpone our meeting until such time as you are free. Richard

13 Oct 1998
To Richard Plantagenet from Adrian Talbot

(This message was left with the concierge at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto.)

Dear Richard:

An unexpected, but welcome, delight! Welcome once more to Toronto. I shall be delighted to get together with you, but not tonight, as I have already made other plans. Would you mind postponing it until tomorrow evening? Perhaps you would be kind enough to drop by my house? The address is below, as well as my telephone number.

I'll be happy to show you around town.

Regards,

Adrian

Professor Adrian Talbot
Dept of English Renaissance Literature
University of Toronto

Toronto, Ontario, a city that has made of itself the commercial and cultural center of its nation (Peter Ustinov, whose opinions are always worth noting, called it "New York...run by the Swiss"), is accustomed to visiting dignitaries, of course. But it is probably not prepared for this one.

Terraces were a definite improvement over windows.

Richard Plantagenet stood on the terrace of the suite he now occupied in Toronto's Four Seasons Hotel and looked out over this strange city, the city he'd come to so that he could meet ... again ... a vampire. The thought, under different circumstances, would have been hilarious.

Everything in his life, this life restored to him by magical means he would never understand, had been turned to waste and loss by the obsessive lust of the vampire priest Gabriel Tallant, and Richard's loathing for the priest, and for his power, was still a consuming obsession. In spite of everything he had been able to do, Gabriel lived still, and Stephen's assurances meant a respite, no more. So long as Gabriel lived, to Richard he would always be a threat, and it was necessary to learn more about the means by which that threat could be destroyed.

Gabriel Tallant had changed Richard Plantagenet's life forever. For the first time, Richard had known utter helplessness, a feeling he was honest enough to admit to himself was probably a worthwhile experience...but one which he would rather have encountered in some other manner. But Gabriel had also separated him from Anne, and into the vacuum left by that separation, Liliana had come and brought with her knowledge of himself and his life that could never be unlearned. He would have to find a way to deal with that, but he could not face it yet. Now, he would learn what he could of this modern world ... and of the means of killing vampires.

Adrian Talbot, the scholar and actor he had come here to meet, had been perfectly honest in their correspondence that he, too, was a vampire, and yet in their little knowing of each other, Richard had felt for Adrian nothing of the sick loathing Gabriel inspired. Instead, from their earliest correspondence, there had been a sort of empathy, a quiet knowing that this man, whatever else he might share with Gabriel Tallant, was not a merciless predator. Adrian Talbot, vampire or no, was a man whose letters had in them some echo of the same aching ... aloneness that Richard himself felt.

Since Richard had first awakened into this healthy body, healed of all the terrible wounds he had suffered as he was pulled from his horse on Redmore Plain, when Will Stanley's eager Cheshiremen had slashed his armor away and fought like dogs for the chance to inflict one more wound on his dying body, he had encountered in almost everyone he met here resentment and dislike which seemed to be based more on some expectation he did not meet than on any actual behavior of his own. He knew he was not an easy man to like, yet he had tried, at first, as best he could to be as courteous and unassuming as he knew how to be. Only later, when he had reacted with anger and what self-defense he could manage against Gabriel Tallant's continuing attacks, had he become openly disdainful of those around him, who would not see or understand the priest's obsession with mastering him, and who blamed Richard himself for what the priest was doing to him.

There were those who learned they had been wrong, and who were honest enough to admit to it. Among these, he had found at least the beginnings of friendship. But ... circumstances made it impossible for him to stay with them, and leaving them, he was once more as isolated as he had been during the worst of Gabe Tallant's siege against him.

He thought Adrian Talbot would know all about that isolation. So he had come here because he had to go somewhere, and in all this new world there was no other being he knew or had ever spoken with who might know about it, and share it. And if there was another thing he hoped to gain from Adrian Talbot in addition to the return of the simple friendship that was all Richard himself had to offer, it could wait.

Terraces, he thought again, were a definite improvement over windows. You could walk out onto a terrace, feel the air move all around you. Richard had lived most of his life spending much of every day in the open air, afoot or ahorseback, and he could not bear the confinement of enclosing walls. Windows at least made breathing possible. But terraces could make you feel you were actually free ... even when you were not. He had spent most of his waking hours, since arriving here yesterday evening, standing on this terrace.

If he ever found a place he could call a home in this world, it would have terraces.

"Mr. Plantagenet?" The diffident voice from behind was the valet the hotel had supplied, at his request, and Richard turned to him, waiting. "The car is waiting," the man said. "When you're ready, of course."

The valet had been sent up to see to his unpacking and any other arrangements he required, and if he had been surprised at how little luggage Richard had brought with him, he was too well-trained to reveal it.

Richard handed the man his half-full wine glass. "I'm ready now," he said, and went back into the suite.

The eager little travel agent at the airport in Detroit, in making his reservations, had assured him that this hotel would be able to meet all his needs, and was at least as good, and perhaps better, than anything else the city had to offer. Richard found the rooms adequate to his needs, and approved of the convenience of the chauffered limousine that had met him at the airport to bring him here, and of the quiet, efficient manner in which his every order had been carried out. He found the place sterile as well, but even in his own time, public houses had always been so, and at least this one had a staff that understood service.

The hotel's manager met him as the elevator doors opened before him in the lobby and ushered him out through the wide glass doors to the waiting limousine. Graciously, he pressed into Richard's hands a small black box-like instrument inset with a number of buttons, explaining that when he wished to return to the hotel, he had only to press a particular one of these and the limousine would return immediately to the address where it had left him. If he chose to be picked up at some other address, he had only to call the hotel desk and the proper arrangements would be made immediately.

Richard thanked the man, pocketed the instrument, and entered the back seat of the oversized automobile. He had never seen a limousine before today, thought them ridiculously large, if comfortable, and was glad enough to allow this one to take him where he wished to go. But in time, he promised himself, he would acquire the means to drive his own more sensibly-sized vehicle. He was becoming rather proud of his increasing skill with driving. And he would probably have been startled to know that those who had had the opportunity to observe that skill found it rather terrifying.

The small building, a private home, to which the limousine took him was unremarkable, very like the others among which it was located. Richard had no basis on which to make comparisons, but it seemed an adequate residence for a single man in this world. He was learning, with difficulty, that fortification was no longer a necessity in a private home.

He waited until the limousine had pulled away before going up the few steps and pressing the button which activated the doorbell. There was a small wait, and then the door swung inward, spilling soft light out into the darkness. A man, roughly his own height, stood haloed there.

"Adrian?" Richard said. "I hope I'm not too early."

"Not at all." Adrian Talbot stepped back, with a welcoming gesture, and Richard stepped past him and into the house. Adrian had an actor's well-modulated voice. "Please ... come in, Richard. Welcome to Toronto."

They had met only once before, face to face. In truth, Richard had been so overwhelmed with unfamiliar sensations on that night that he had not noticed very much about Adrian Talbot's appearance except that it was impeccably neat ... of which he approved ... and undeniably charismatic. He had time now to expand on those first impressions.

The first and most obvious thing he noticed about Adrian Talbot was that he was beautiful. "Beautiful" was not a word Richard, who was rather obsessively heterosexual, would ever have thought to apply to a man, but there was really no other word that described Adrian Talbot as well. He was perhaps an inch, no more, shorter than Richard, slim but well-proportioned, and carried himself with the kind of innate grace that usually indicated intense good breeding … or excellent acting ability. He was younger than Richard, though probably not as young as he looked. His hair was black, even a deeper black than Richard's own, with no hint of the brown undertones. And his eyes ... his eyes dominated the fine-boned face and were of the most astonishing blue-green color. Richard was reminded of the soul-less eyes of his brother's harpy wife, Elizabeth Woodville, but not even a vampire's eyes could ever be as cold as hers had been.

Certainly, Adrian's eyes weren't cold. They measured Richard with open curiosity and with easy acceptance of Richard's own equally curious appraisal. And with a certain amount of amusement.

"Do I pass muster, Your Grace?" Adrian said, smiling.

"Forgive me," Richard said quickly. "I did not mean to stare. It's only that ... at Hoolihan's tavern I think I was a bit worse for the wine I had been drinking. I did not remember your appearance as well as I had thought."

He had not realized, either, that they bore a superficial resemblance to each other. Gabriel Tallant had been with Adrian at Hoolihan's; had that resemblance triggered the priest's obsession with Richard later? But it was not something he could ask Adrian ... at least, not yet.

The house in the Annex had never seemed so... crowded. Even when there'd been students over, they hadn't filled up the empty space the way this one man did. Of course, this one man happened to be a king.

A dead king, to be sure, but then the other man in the room wasn't in any position to quibble about this. After all, he was technically dead, too.

There were other similiarities as well. Both were well-made, dark-haired men; one had hard brown eyes that commanded respect and obedience; the other had beautiful teal eyes that demanded surrender. Both were stubborn, egotistical, arrogant and proud. They had bonded faster than five-minute epoxy.

"I'm very pleased to see you again, Adrian," said Richard III, King of England and Ireland...a long time ago. For a man who gave off a rather overwhelming aura of command, his smile, when it came, was surprisingly soft and a bit diffident.

"And I, you," replied Adrian Talbot, player and scholar, not at all disturbed to have a king in his house.

"I appear on your doorstep, I'm afraid, your humble petitioner," Richard said, and Adrian managed to accept this with a straight face. Humble was not a word he would ever have thought to apply to this man. "I have much to learn, my friend, and while I will try not to burden you, I hope you will suffer my ignorance tolerantly. I have been in this new world so short a time, and all of that in somewhat more ... bucolic surroundings. This city of yours," Richard said, nodding in the general direction of the Greater Toronto area, "is very large and bustles with life."

"Yes." Adrian forebore to mention that it wasn't his city, though he'd tried to make it so, and that it also bustled with death.

"I have been mewed up between walls far too long." There was a distant, dissatisfied look in Richard's eyes, as if he was remembering something unpleasant. Adrian noticed that it seemed impossible for the man to be entirely still. He paced this way, turned, came back; his hands were in almost constant delicate motion, brushing a lapel, fingering briefly a magazine left on a table ... not so much nervous as restless. "Would it be possible," he asked Adrian suddenly, "to see something of your city, my friend? Tonight?"

Adrian shrugged. He knew that Richard had spent most of his time since rejoining the real world at the Refuge -- the same place Gabriel had gone. That something rather nasty had occurred there, Adrian had dimly felt through his bond with Gabriel. He did not want to know the details. Richard had wanted to come to Toronto to get away from the Refuge. So, why not show him the city?

"Sure," the vampire said. He went to his hall closet for a jacket -- for the look of the thing -- and his car keys, and headed outside.

Richard followed him out, waiting impatiently as Adrian locked the front door. The vampire led the way to his car. The former king surveyed the little red Miata dubiously.

"It seems a very small vehicle," he remarked.

Adrian patted his expensive red toy, something else he hadn't paid for. "But speedy." He unlocked the doors. "Be sure to buckle up, I don't want to get stopped."

Richard folded himself into the passenger seat, perhaps for once grateful he had not his brothers' height and girth, and figured out the seat belt mechanism.

"Do these straps truly save lives?" he inquired. "So they say." Adrian clicked his own into place. "It's not something I really have to worry about. I just don't want to have to pay the fine."

"Would you not be endangered in an automobile accident?"

As Adrian pulled out of his parking space, he thought about it. "Oh, possibly, if it was a serious enough accident. But then the seat belt wouldn't make any difference, anyway. It would take the car exploding or something along those lines."

There was a small silence, and then, "Vampires," Richard said, "are hard to kill."

Adrian risked a sideways glance at his passenger. Richard sounded like he spoke from experience. And not happy experience.

‘I don't want to know,' the actor told himself firmly. "It's on account of already being dead, you see," he said out loud, making it light.

"Does it never prey on your mind, that you are ... not as other men? That you are perceived as a monster?"

"No," replied Adrian honestly. "If you start thinking that way, letting it get to you ... you go insane. Every vampire has to adjust in his or her own way. Some of them do let it prey, those are the ones who let their angst hang out all over the place."

Richard's small smile was bitterly self-mocking. "I have some experience," he said, "of being perceived as a monster ... and 'letting it get' to me."

He did, at that, Adrian thought. Most vampires hadn't been accused of quite the bloody mindedness heaped on Richard's head by his successors.

He dodged around a truck stalled at an intersection. Richard kept himself from wincing as the Miata zipped back into the proper lane just in time to avoid a large bus coming the other way.

"Toronto traffic," Adrian said. "You should see it in rush hour."

"It is fearsome enough now." All those cars, trucks and buses, leaving red streaks of light in their wake, the smell of exhaust overpowering, all apparently in a hurry to be somewhere else. But Richard's eyes had begun to glitter. Adrian thought he couldn't wait to try his hand at negotiating Toronto traffic ... and promised himself that Richard's first foray behind the wheel here wouldn't be in Adrian's treasured Miata. Noblesse oblige, after all, wasn't a two-way street.

Richard leaned back in his seat to watch the lights of the city blur past. Adrian concentrated on driving, wondering what had prompted the conversation about vampires. What had happened at the Refuge? It had involved pain, Adrian knew, but couldn't bring himself to ask.

With an air of abrupt decision, Richard turned toward him and said, "On the night we met at Hoolihan's tavern, Gabriel Tallant was with you. Adrian, if the priest is a friend of your heart, I owe it to you to tell you that we were ... not friends at the Refuge."

Not friends. Well, that could certainly cover a lot of territory. And Adrian could well imagine being "not friends" with Gabe. He said, "Gabe's a big boy, Richard. My friendships don't depend on his approval."

Some of the tension that had been in Richard from that first moment on Adrian's doorstep drained away visibly. It dawned on Adrian that Richard had actually been worried that his disagreement with Gabe, whatever it was, might have made him unwelcome here. But all Richard said now was, "I'm very glad to hear it." And then, a moment later, his eyes glittering again with the flashing red reflections of the cars they passed, "I've often thought of that night at Hoolihan's. There was another with you there ... a woman." His voice softened. "A most unusual woman. One with the dusky beauty of the East, but steel in her soul. A deadly, beautiful woman."

Adrian kept his mouth from hanging open only by dint of great effort. "T'Beth?" he managed to ask. She was beautiful if you were the sort of person who thought swords and pistols were beautiful ...

"Is that her name?" Richard asked, smiling. "Perhaps while I am here, you might present me to the lady."

Adrian frowned. Richard, with unerring accuracy, had touched upon a nagging worry. T'Beth was being conspicuous by her absence. Throughout the whole fiasco with Gabriel, she'd been there. Through the fiasco with Antosha, on the other hand ...

Nothing. Not a phone call, not even a sharp note. And now that Adrian was struggling to get his feet back under him, there was still no word. Even if she'd left him alone to clean up his own mess, she should have at least called to gloat.

There was no answer when he called her, just her gruff voice mail saying, "I'm out. Deal with it." She wasn't returning messages; even Jake had tried.

"I'm afraid the lady in question is avoiding me," Adrian said.

Richard remembered her cool gaze upon him during the bout with Val Corey; there'd been more than a hint of interest in those eyes.

"She will not wish to avoid me," he said flatly.

It wasn't often that Adrian met an arrogance to match his own. If T'Beth was at home, and just avoiding him, the look on her face was going to be priceless.

"We'll drop in on her some night soon, then," Adrian promised Richard. "But this is your first real night in Toronto, not counting when you came to watch my Hamlet ... is there anything in particular you'd like to see or do?"

"This is all new territory to me," Richard answered. "Show me what you think is worthy of my view. Although, if you know of some nearby place where I might purchase some means of self-defense, I would be grateful if we could go there."

"Self-defense?" Adrian asked, then thought again of T'Beth. Of course, Richard probably wanted a sword, but that was a tad consipicuous these days. "I think I know a place or two that might serve," he said after thinking it over. Weapons weren't something he tended to purchase, but he'd gone to one or two places that sold such things with T'Beth.

He drove to Yonge Street, that bizarre conglomeration of every type of store imaginable. He didn't think Richard was quite ready for a mall, and what he was looking for was something more likely to be in one of the many army surplus/camping/hunting equipment stores. Hercules, the most famous of these stores, was gone out of business, but there were others. Adrian managed to find parking not too far away from the biggest of these and guided Richard through the doors.

When they emerged somewhat later, Richard had acquired two weapons: a ten-inch dagger and a throwing knife. Adrian had expected his new friend to buy more, but Richard had no desires to run afoul of Canadian laws. Just yet.

When they went back out on the street, Richard was looking up and down at the many store fronts, bright neon signs, shoppers out looking for a bargain, drunks panhandling and the other usual traffic on the sidewalk and the street. Yonge Street was never boring.

"Where to?" Adrian asked, though he couldn't help wondering upon just whom Richard intended using some of the articles he'd bought.

Richard looked at him. "I admire your jacket," he said, noting the style and fit of that article, noting that it was well-made and had probably been expensive. "I have very little in the way of modern clothing, I need to make some purchases. Would you be good enough to take me somewhere that I might acquire suitable clothing?"

Adrian broke out into a grin. Go shopping? "It would be my pleasure," he said. Though he couldn't really afford to risk his dangerously teetering credit rating by indulging his own expensive tastes in clothes, he'd be happy to sit back and watch Richard spend money. This was a man made for some of the better designers.

They retrieved the car and Adrian sped around a few corners, bringing them back to Bloor Street and the high-tone shops at Bloor and Bay. The Stollery and Armani, for starters, Adrian thought. Definitely not Roots or the Gap, Richard wasn't the blue jeans type. He found another parking spot -- luck was with him tonight! It was also fortunate that tonight the stores were open a bit later than usual. Richard was surveying the displays in shop windows, eyes calculating the merchandise on display. A row of blazers, shirts and ties in the window of the shop known as The Stollery caught his attention.

"In here?" he asked.

Adrian nodded. It was a shop where names like "Burbury" and "London Fog" were common, many of the clothes were British imports; it catered to a more conservative business class. Staff practically jumped to attention in the store when they walked in.

"Do you gentlemen need any assistance?" inquired the most alert (or the fastest moving) of the clerks.

Adrian surveyed the offerings on hand in the Stollery, deciding what would look good on Richard and suit the other man's personality. As he picked out suits, shirts, ties, sweaters, even pajamas, Adrian kept in mind that Richard likely leant to the conservative side. No CFM outfits for an ex-king. Adrian smiled at the thought. Jake would kick himself for missing this. Dressing a king. Adrian picked up a burgundy sweater that felt soft as fur and cost nearly as much, eyeing it covetously. He was, he decided, having fun.

Where next? The actor considered. Stores would be closing soon, but it was still relatively early. They could just go for a drive; he could point out some of the tourist attractions to Richard, see what sparked an interest. Richard might get a kick out of Casa Loma, and there was the armour exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum. Where did you take a king? To a baseball game? Football, with Jake along to explain? Or the sport of kings, horse racing? Woodbine had thoroughbred races on Wednesday nights, but this was Friday.

Richard would have to entertain himself during the day, of course. No doubt the hotel would provide him with a list of places to visit.

Adrian looked at his companion, who was trying on a blazer that suited him to perfection. Damn, Richard was a good-looking man. No hunchback with a withered arm, that was for certain. Despite Richard's looks, Adrian felt no stirring of sexual attraction. Something in Richard's manner warned that he was straight; though that little detail had never stopped Adrian from desiring other handsome, straight men. No, it wasn't Richard. It was himself.

Before Adrian could fully explore this thought, the lengthy negotiations with the clothing store staff finally came to an end. Richard was arranging to have his purchases sent to his hotel. The store manager was practically falling over himself assuring delivery. Adrian tuned the conversation back out.

Richard wanted to see what interested Adrian. Take him to Church and Wellesley? Let him see the seamy side of gay and bi life in Toronto? Adrian envisioned Richard in one of the raunchier leather bars ... no. A quiet piano bar, perhaps. Good music, good beer, patrons with the sense to leave someone alone if he wasn't interested. Definitely not one of the bondage clubs, like Savage Garden, where someone might go too far. Tame spankings and fur-lined handcuffs were a far cry from some of the weapons Richard was now carrying. There would be real blood shed in the club.

Quickly damping down that thought, Adrian turned to find Richard ready to leave. The vampire fished out his car keys, grinning at his friend.

"Leave any merchandise in the store?" Adrian asked.

Richard recognized this as a light jest. "One or two small articles, perhaps," he replied. "I have now satisfied my immediate requirements," he went on. "Perhaps you would be kind enough to show me the sights?"

"My pleasure," Adrian said with a slight bow.

He first drove to Forest Hill and showed Richard the outside of Casa Loma, that Edwardian fake-medieval folly perched on a hill. From there, they went back downtown. Adrian showed his passenger the museum and art gallery, the theatre district, one or two churches, the outskirts of the University of Toronto campus, the CN Tower and the Skydome, Harbourfront, and the wild and funky Queen Street West strip with its caried clubs and trendy stores. They ended up taking a break in the Black Bull pub for a pint and a snack for Richard and a glass of wine for Adrian.

"You are able to drink wine?" Richard asked.

"Yes, despite the literature." Adrian wondered what prompted Richard's interest in the vampire lifestyle. This wasn't the first indication of it. "Wine, liquor, decaf coffee, herbal tea... I even know of some vampires who can eat a little solid food. Mostly fruit, cooked food seems to be undigestible."

"Do you miss it?"

Adrian shrugged. "It has been over four hundred years since I last tasted food," he said. "I don't really remember it well enough to miss it." He eyed Richard's roast beef sandwich dispassionately. "From what I remember of Elizabethan cookery, that's probably just as well."

"Nontheless, will you dine with me tomorrow? More sumptuously than this. Do you know of a fine establishment?"

"There are quite a few around," Adrian replied. "The Rosewater Supper Club, North 44 ... depends how much you want to spend." Where was Richard getting his money, anyway? This was the same man who'd had to borrow airfare to England.

"I will ask at the hotel to recommend a place," Richard said.

Adrian nodded, recognizing Richard's intent in inviting him out for dinner when he'd just explained that he didn't eat. It was politeness, noblesse oblige. Oddly, Adrian was enjoying spending his time with Richard, even though the other man was a king. His dislike of the nobility seemed childish when in the man's company. Richard was imperious, yes, but he was also unfailingly polite. A king was a different sort of noble, anyway.

'If the Baron saw me now,' Adrian thought, dwelling briefly on that most despised member of the nobility, 'he'd be laughing his head off.'

He wondered briefly how Richard and the Baron would get along, and dismissed that thought. They wouldn't understand each other at all. Richard came from an earlier, bloodier time and would have no patience with the Brotherhood's tactics.

"I'd be honoured to have dinner with you tomorrow night," Adrian said. "Simply leave me a message either on my e-mail or on my answering machine as to where and when to meet you."

Richard looked puzzled. "Are you unavailable during the days? Is that why I could not reach you yesterday?"

"Do you not know?" Adrian echoed the confused expression. "I am asleep during the days, Richard, I'm a vampire."

"I do not understand. The only vampire I have met could function during the day."

Oh. Of course. Richard had only dealt with Gabriel at any great length. "The majority of us are like myself," Adrian explained. "Sunlight is greatly harmful to us, even fatal to some. We sleep during those hours, though it need not be in a coffin full of native earth."

"Then what is true of one vampire is not necessarily true of another?"

"No," Adrian confirmed.

"Then, my friend, I shall certainly leave you a message about which establishment I choose to dine in tomorrow evening. And I shall not be there until well after sunset."