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

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Will and his Sa'idans were fresh and ready to fight. Wedged between two segments of the enemy, the Saravan guards found themselves mowed down by gunfire at first; and then as Will and his closed in, the fighting degenerated to something more like a Saturday night brawl in a really nasty dockside tavern. Fists and feet met flesh and bone with sickening crunching noises. At least two of the vampires were using this chance to grab a quick snack; their chosen dinners writhing as fangs clamped on wrists or necks. Knives flashed and the floor became littered with bodies, body parts, blood and urine. The glass walls, those few that had survived, were splashed with blood.

The huge blond knight waded right into the centre of the fighting, and physically pulled a crazed Saravan guard off of Ed Perry. The guard met a marble pillar. The marble cracked, blood running down the newly opened path, and the guard's body hit the floor in a way that suggested that several key parts of the skeleton were no longer properly functioning to hold things together. Will helped Ed up. The former CIA man had added a few new injuries to the ones he'd sustained in Khelat, but he was still mobile.

Adrian, who'd learned to fight on the streets of London in the 16th century, was doing something very nasty to a guard with a knife. The guard would now qualify for harem duty. Will shook his head--that was no way for a gentleman to fight--and waded through the bodies and blood to reach the vampire's side. One quick twist, a few crunching bones, and the newly created eunuch was a dead eunuch.

"The radio room," Will rumbled when Adrian glared at him. "You must reach it."

Of course he was right, Adrian reflected. He signaled to Ed and Shapour and the three of them got the team's attention. The plan was quickly laid out. The eight vampires and Ed would go and take out the radio, while Will and his Sa'idians kept guard on this corridor and watched over the wounded Saravanians to ensure they stayed down.

If the corridors, with their marble pillars, were sheer Arabian Nights; then the offices were sheer... well, 1950's. Bulky metal filing cabinets, huge heavy black phones with rotary dials, goosenecked lamps, chairs that had never heard of the concept of ergonomics. Ed, knife in hand, efficiently cut the line to each telephone they came across in their search for the radio.

Finally, tucked away in behind a lot of other cubicles, was a room with a locked door. When they approached it, shots rang out and bullets punched holes in the door. Shapour grunted, shoved Adrian and Ed out of the way, and put his massive shoulder to the door. He shuddered as bullets slammed into his body, but they didn't slow him down. With the angle he was to the door, there was little chance one would take him in the heart or the spinal column. The door, already weakened by bullet holes, shivered and splintered under the force of the big black vampire's attack. Shapour, blood from his wounds already down to a mere trickle and the earliest ones healing, grinned at Adrian and spoke to him in French.

"What did he say?" Ed asked.

Adrian shrugged. Fortunately for him, he wasn't easily embarrassed ... or embarrassed any other way. Shame was a foreign concept. "He said that he expects a good fuck out of me for his getting the door open," he replied.

Ed might have turned slightly pink under the sweat, grime and smeared blood on his face. "Oh," he said.

"Don't sweat it, Ed."

There were two guards in the radio room. They died quickly. Shapour needed to replace the blood he'd lost.

"What do you think?" Adrian asked Will and Ed. He didn't bother to consult Shapour. "Should we leave the radio intact, or disable it?"

"Can we continue to guard this room?" Ed asked. "If we can't spare the men to guard it, we should disable the radio."

"We might need it, though," Adrian looked doubtful.

"Perhaps we should consult with his Royal Grace," Will suggested.

"If he's not too busy killing somebody," Adrian agreed. 'Yo, Jake!'

Jake's mental voice came back a little faintly. 'Yo, Adrian.'

'Tell Richard we have secured the radio room; and does he want us to destroy the radio or just guard it?'

'I can't find Richard,' Jake sent back. 'He's wounded, but I think he's still alive. It's just sheer hell over here, Adrian.'

'Get out of there, Jake. Get over here, if you can. Richard will be okay, just clear out, okay?'

'Gotchya. I can hear T'beth from the harem, by the way. She wants to join the fighting.'

The harem was just out of range for Adrian, but he could imagine. 'Ask her if she'll come out and give Richard and the others a hand where you are,' he suggested, 'then get the hell out of there.'

He looked at Ed and Will. "Not good," he said, "Jake's lost sight of Richard, says sheer hell is breaking loose over there. I've told him to get the hell out of it. Let's disable the radio."

Ed was already halfway to the radio, whipping out a multifunction tool from the pockets of his Banana Republic pants. "We might need it again," he said. He fiddled with the radio for awhile, and then triumphantly held up something that looked vital--Adrian wasn't very good when it came to bits and pieces of electronic devices. "We can just put this back in if we need it; and it won't work without it."

"I have sinned, Mother Superior," Adrian muttered.

"If you start singing 'Eidelweiss,' I'll shoot you myself," Ed warned.

"Fair enough."

Adrian turned to consult with his vampiric followers, who in turn consulted with the Sa'idi villagers. Shapour gathered a group to go off and go to Richard's rescue. Adrian elected, with a few others, to stay and wait for Jake.

Jake, down in his particular section of Hell, gave one last look for Richard. Coughing in the cloud of marble dust and smoke, he gave it up. Richard would be okay, wherever he was. He couldn't join Nasrin, either, for other reasons he’d rather not think about. So he lit out on his own and made his way towards the front offices to join Adrian.

Shit, there was going to be no living with the little bastard now.

Jake couldn't have counted the number of explosions. After the first, his ears didn't seem to be working anymore. But the entire corridor, between his position and the barracks door, and even beyond his position, back toward the cross corridor, had erupted in a boiling cloud of smoke and marble dust and something that sizzled and sparked ... probably electrical wiring blown loose from within the walls, since all the overhead lights suddenly died. There was still light, from the cross corridor, and from something burning somewhere within the smoke and haze, but the dimmer, reddish glow had cut down even more on Jake's ability to see just what the hell was happening and who was doing what to whom.

Along with the shattered marble flying through the smoke, bullets whizzed and thudded into the walls and the door behind him as he leaned carefully out, looking down the corridor toward the barracks. If this wasn't hell, it was as close as Jake ever wanted to be to it.

He didn't wait to see guards; he started shooting into the heaving mist, reasonably confident that somewhere inside it, the guards were coming. Richard, across the way, was shooting too, as was Nasrin, who was down on one knee just below him. The reddish reflection in their eyes only reinforced the image of hell. Nasrin seemed to be shooting in bursts, not continuously, and Jake realized that she was conserving ammunition, to be able to cover for him and for Richard when they needed to reload.

This happened before he was even aware of it. Unable to hear, he was a long moment realizing that his rifle was clattering on empty, and he made a quick, exaggerated gesture to get Nasrin's attention. She nodded calmly, and switched over to full automatic while he fumbled for another filled clip in his pouch. He could be grateful, now, for the heavy ammunition pouch; when Richard had insisted that he carry so much, he'd thought it was overkill.

It wasn't. They would be lucky, he knew now, if they had enough.

Another grenade went off in the corridor, and then another. The waves of concussion threw Jake back against the open door behind him; he had been leaning out too far. He wasn't hurt; the small, stinging bites on his face and neck were the marks of flying marble chips ... annoying, but nothing more. He already had his gun firing steadily again.

Still, even with three guns firing into the destroyed corridor, when enough guardsmen threw themselves forward, someone was bound to get through. Jake didn't even see the man before he came flying out of the thick smoke to slam into him with stunning force. The man's mouth was wide open, his eyes glazed with fear or fanaticism. He had an automatic pistol in his hand, blazing away without hitting anything because he couldn't see any better than Jake could. Before he could bring it to bear, Jake swung his rifle up and brought the overheated barrel against the side of the man's head hard enough to drop him.

More guards had reached Richard and Nasrin, and there was a struggle going on there that Jake couldn't sort out ... too many bodies, clawing and straining against each other. Jake kept firing into the clouded corridor, trying to keep any more of the guards from reaching the melee. From the corner of his eye, he saw a brief, bright flash, and when he took a quick glance that way again, he saw Richard, grinning ferociously, letting the last of those who had reached him slide off his dagger. Below him, Nasrin pulled the body away and shoved it back into the corridor with the other two or three she and Richard had killed.

Nasrin said something to Richard that Jake couldn't hear, and Richard nodded. With a sudden, darting lunge, Richard threw himself across the corridor and into the open doorway beside Jake. Jake could barely hear the words Richard shouted at him from six inches away. "We must drop back! Anoush and his people are firing from the cross corridor behind us! Follow me and stay low, beneath their fire!"

Jake nodded, and Richard crouched low and scuttled out into the corridor again. Trying his best to get as low as Richard was, Jake followed. Nasrin, he saw, was already gone. Up ahead, he could see several men ... the Sa'idians, standing in the mouth of the cross corridor, pouring a steady stream of rifle fire over their heads as they crawled.

There was another explosion behind him and something hit Jake, very hard, in the back of the head. He went limp, aware, but somehow unable to control his body at all. He felt Richard's hand grab a handful of burnoose and shirt at his shoulder and haul him physically along to the cross corridor, and around the corner to momentary safety. Nasrin was on her knees beside him immediately, probing at his head; her fingers came away sticky with blood.

She was smiling at him with surprising sweetness. "Not bad, Vaje Jake," she said, close to his ear. "Your head is very hard. Maybe later, you show me this hard?"

It took him a minute to realize that she had placed her hand very firmly, on his genitals, her smile slipping from sweet to salacious. Jake stared at her. What was it with these people? They were gonna be lucky to have a later ...

"Down!"

Jake heard Richard's yell just barely in time. He couldn't get down any further, but he bent forward and buried his head in his arms, as Nasrin did. The grenade that hit the back wall of the cross corridor deafened him, again, and showered him with more disintegrating marble. The lights in this corridor, too, had died, and the only light now came from whatever was still burning ... and from off to Jake's right, where another corridor crossed this one. It was enough for Jake to see far more than he wanted to of what had happened to the Sa'idians who had been caught out in the open by the blast.

Three men lay dead in the corridor ... and two of them didn't have heads. Jake looked at them with a peculiar numbness ... not sick, not horrified, and aware of a sneaky, guilty little prickle of gladness that it hadn't been him out there.

Through the blowing dust and smoke, Jake heard Richard yelling, "Fall back! Now!" It had to mean the guards were out of the barracks in larger numbers now, and that it wasn't possible to hold this position without more men. But Jake couldn't even see Richard ... or anyone else from the Sa'idi group.

He couldn't stay here, and he didn't like the odds of trying to find Richard in the confused swirl of smoke and dust with god knew how many guards about to break into this corridor. "This way!" Nasrin hissed, and, crouching, took off to the right, down the corridor and probably away from Richard and whatever Sa'idians were left. Jake couldn't really see any option; on his hands and knees, he followed her.

There was an abrupt and very long exchange of gunfire behind him somewhere. Jake hesitated, not sure whether or not he should go back to try to help. Nasrin grabbed his arm and pulled. "We cannot go there," she said fiercely. "Too many. If you are dead, you are no help."

She was a vampire. She could hear better than he could, and probably see more in the hellish light. If she said there were too many guards between where they were and where Richard was, she was very probably right. Jake nodded, and Nasrin grinned at him. She really was astonishingly pretty ... the vague thought found its way into his dulled brain. Maybe later, they really could...

She turned and slipped away, down the corridor, toward the light, and Jake pushed himself to his feet to follow. He was still feeling the effects of the blow to the head. The floor seemed a long way away and his feet weren't going exactly where he was trying to send them. Nasrin was getting too much of a lead on him; she was almost to the corner and if he didn't get a move on, he was gonna lose her, too. He had taken only three steps when he saw, as Nasrin must have, the grenade that bounced and rolled into the corridor just in front of her from beyond the corner just ahead. Nasrin had time only to whirl around to face him before it exploded; Jake was looking in her eyes when the force of the blast hit her.

She was smiling at him.

There was a door to Jake's left; he kicked it open, slid into the darkened room beyond, slammed the door behind him and fell back against it. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to cry.

He wanted to kill.

He could hear, distantly, through numbed ears, shouting and running footsteps in the corridor outside ... coming from the same direction the grenade had come from. Jake didn't stop to think. If he had, he would have realized how monumentally stupid a move he was making.

He opened the door and stepped out into the corridor ... and some playful god had decided to have pity on him. The guards who had just run past this room, the same bunch who had just made Nasrin true dead, were not immediately followed, and Jake had a good ten seconds to shoot. With no feeling at all, not even satisfaction, he mowed down the entire group before any of them realized he was there. By the time more guards came around the same corner, Jake had disappeared back into the room and was moving quickly through the darkness toward another doorway in the far wall.

'Jake!' It was T'beth, almost screaming inside his head. 'Jake! What in the hell is going on out there?'

She was reading what he felt, he thought ... and she wasn't liking it a damned bit. 'Just a war,' he sent back to her, even his mind numb. 'No biggie.'

'Dammit, Jake, if you and Talbot leave me in here while you have all the fun, I'll kick both your asses the whole way back to Toronto!'

Fun? Jake swallowed something in his throat that didn't want to be swallowed. T'beth would think this was fun. T'beth would be having the time of her life out here.

Jake would never forget what he had seen happen to Nasrin if he lived to be a thousand ... oh yeah, he probably would live to be a thousand. He kept forgetting. All he had to do was live through this night.

Inside his head, faintly, distantly, he heard Adrian's sudden, 'Yo, Jake!'

Shit. What was he gonna tell Adrian? He'd lost Richard. He'd more than lost Nasrin. He was alone and probably being surrounded by guards...

The hell with it. 'Yo, Adrian,' he sent back....

(Meanwhile, back at the Refuge…)

"Stephen, I'm trying to talk to you. This is serious stuff. Stop that!"

"You can't be serious, Doni. The first time we've had to ourselves in over a week and you want to talk? Talk about Lily and Richard?"

"No! I want you to talk to Richard about Lily and I'll talk to Lily about Anne." She saw the look on his face and added sweetly, "Think of it, darling, as foreplay. When I'm distracted, you can't have any fun. Because I won't play. Un-distract me and we can play all you want, and anything you want ... even prison warden's wife and the escaped prisoner.

"But I'm very distracted right now, and worried, about Lily. She’s making herself sick and hurting the child as well, for no good reason. Because nobody will talk to Himself, Mr. Majesty Plantagenet and tell him that the reason the love of his life is miserable and killing herself is because he has too many women in his life and he's not talking to any of them. Which should sound like a familiar problem to you, too, now that I think of it."

Stephen, tried beyond endurance, gave up trying to undress his mate and reached for his clothes. Bed clothes that is, which, in his case, meant not much beyond pajama bottoms. He loved this woman more than anything in this or any other life. He understood her less than anyone he knew, and understood her better than anyone else who knew her. But he was baffled. Didn't she know Richard would figure out the problem in his own time and his own way? And if he, Stephen, went charging in, butting into Richard's personal life, especially this part of his personal life he, Stephen, would have to be a very fast talker indeed. Richard was the definition of a private person. Lily was the last thing he'd talk about ... to anyone. Except maybe to Lily, or less likely, to Anne.

And Stephen needed Richard more than ever. He could not afford to fumble the relationship now. Besides, he liked Richard. And Richard could handle Lily, if Lily got a little prodding in the right direction.

On that thought he took off his 'jammies and got back in bed, reaching for Doni in a manner that allowed no refusal or negotiation. "I will talk to Lily. Now, the foreplay is over. And I get to pick the next game..."

Anne Neville had created a garden, and she was the loveliest of its blossoms. All around her, flowers bloomed luxuriantly in printed covers on sofas, chairs and seat cushions, on drapes, and in living glory in potted plants everywhere in the room. Winter blooming amaryllis, in shades of crimson, pink and white, raised their huge heads above small pots of copper and of blue-glazed pottery, and in baskets of willow twigs, on the glass-topped rattan table by the windows. Forced narcissi and hyacinths perfumed the entire room from their colored glass containers on the windowsills. Every shade of green, every contour of leaf and stem, filled hanging baskets and corner floor pots, and large planters that divided the room into living areas...the deep emerald of pothos trailing from the ceiling, the forest green of ficus in the form of ceiling-height trees against the walls, the apple green of Boston and maidenhair ferns spilling from huge wickerwork stands, the hazy mist of an asparagus fern, free-standing at one end of a flowered sofa. And Anne, smiling serenely in the center of it all, was dressed in rose-pink slipper satin lounging pajamas that Doni remembered from the Valentino section of the Nieman-Marcus Christmas Wish Book.

Anne had been brushing out her hip-length dark blonde hair and had pulled it all forward over one shoulder. She tossed it back now as she leaned forward to exchange quick cheek kisses with her visitor. "Time to check the patient?" she said, without irritation. "Or am I lucky enough just to have a friend drop in?"

"Both," Doni said. Anne was so small; at just over four months, her pregnancy was already clearly visible beneath the lightweight fabric. "I brought some hot chocolate, if you're in the mood. Kate still refuses to allow either of us a real cup of coffee."

Anne took the tray from Doni's hands and led her over to the glass-topped table. "You, too?" she said.

"Me, too." Doni sighed. "You know her, Anne. She says I'll be pregnant before the month's out, and she'll not have her coffee messing up the baby, no matter what I say. I might as well be a bricklayer instead of a Healer, for all the attention she pays to my expertise."

When they were seated, and the chocolate had been poured out, marvelously fragrant in the quiet room, Anne said, "She's right, though, isn't she?" She looked up through thick dark eyelashes at Doni. "That is the plan, I thought."

"Well, if working at it will get the job done, she is," Doni admitted, and then regretted the words. It was so hard, in Anne's presence, to talk about her own happiness.

But Anne understood and smiled softly. "It's all right, Doni. My friends are still allowed to make love, and to enjoy it ... and even to talk about it. You've got to stop treating me as if I'll dissolve in tears at any moment. I won't, you know."

Doni studied the small, heart-shaped face, the too-large navy blue eyes. She wondered if Anne would ever cry again. But the steel inside her was evident. "You're right. I'm sorry. A little of my own raging hormones coloring my view of the world." She held out her hands. "Let's get this part over with, Anne. I have to check on the baby's condition, at least."

Anne gave her own small hand willingly and sat quietly while Doni's mind followed the pathways into her body. Anne's health was improving; her body was coming to terms with the alien symbiote that had invaded it with Richard's tainted blood. And the child was thriving. The only problem was the size of the fetus...and the size of Anne's pelvis.

Doni released her hand and sat back, sighing. "Anne," she said carefully, "everything seems fine. Actually, I'm pleased that you've gained a little weight and seem to be getting stronger. But I think that we have to face the fact that you are unlikely to be able to carry this child to term. I think that's what went wrong before, the reason you were never able to have children after the first one. You simply aren't large enough to carry a full-sized fetus to term and bear the child normally."

She had all of Anne's attention now. "Can you save her?" she said immediately.

"Oh ... of course. You mustn't worry. That's something we ... the Awakened, can do with no problem." She watched Anne's sudden tension dissipate. "But we may have to remove her to ... it's a sort of tank, Anne, and I know it's a rotten alternative. But it works. It's an artificial womb, where she can complete her development safely...and without jeopardizing your health while she does it. I would recommend that we do this no later than the sixth month of your pregnancy, for your sake and hers. I'm going to suggest to Bella that we move you Home then, so that you and she can be monitored constantly. It's the only way to ensure that both of you will be entirely safe. Will you agree to that?"

The idea was distasteful, obviously, but Anne would always be Anne. What was necessary, she would always be able to do. She said, "I will agree to whatever you decide is necessary to protect her. You know that."

"Good. Then I think I can promise you that both of you will come through this just fine. And you will be able to have other children."

Anne was quiet for a moment, sipping her chocolate. But the sad smile told Doni she'd put her foot in it again. After a minute, Anne said, "I rather doubt that, but I'm happy to know the possibility exists."

The opening Doni had hoped for was there, and very probably Anne had created it deliberately. Anne was the strongest woman Doni had ever known, and one of the smartest. But now that the door was wide open, Doni found it impossible to walk through it. The two women she cared for most in all the world loved with all their hearts the same impossible man, and one of them ... or perhaps even both of them, was going to be devastated for the rest of her life.

Lily had been Doni's dearest friend for longer than she cared to remember, and Lily was in such bottomless agony at the moment that she and the child she carried were both at risk. The simple truth was that Lily quite literally could not live without him. She had been trying, with destructive desperation, to stay away from him...and could not. But even going to him, while he slept, was not easing the pain that was destroying Lily and her child. And Lily, damn her eyes, would not go back to him so long as she believed he would return to Anne eventually.

But Anne ... Doni could not keep from remembering the enormity of Anne's joy when Richard was first brought here, the quiet, intense happiness of those first days she had with him here, and all her hopes for their future together. Even though it had begun to go wrong so quickly, even though Richard's own misery and self-loathing had almost immediately shattered all Anne's hopes, how could she expect Anne to let him go, when he had been, would always be, her lifelong obsession?

The strongest woman Doni had ever known smiled at her now with affectionate understanding. "Doni," Anne said, "we have to talk about it. I don't mind. How is Liliana?"

"Oh, god..." Doni shook her head miserably. "No one has the right to interfere in this, Anne ... least of all, me. It was Stephen who sent her to him. You know that."

"Yes."

"Because he was so deeply troubled that the burden of living was almost unbearable, and it was only the promise you had forced him to make that was keeping him alive. Stephen simply could not stand by and watch the man suffer, and there was only one way he knew to relieve his pain. He sent Lily, Anne, because she had already bonded with him." This was the only part of it Anne would not already know, and the part that Doni had been determined to make her understand. "The night I lost my child, Anne ... it happened because of the exertion I had to make to hold Richard here. He was dying, in spite of everything I and the other Healers had been able to do, and there was no one there to help. He wanted so much to go, and I fought his will to die as long as I could..."

Anne's hand came out to close over hers. "Doni, I know. This isn't necessary."

"This part is." Doni took a deep breath. "What I never explained before is that, when Lily found us, there was only one way she could release me from him and still hold him until the other Healers and Stephen got there. She bonded with him, Anne ... the way Stephen and I are bonded. It should not even have been possible, since Richard is not Awakened, but Lily was going to lose him if she couldn't do it, and if she had not already been in love with him, even though she probably didn't even realize it then, she wouldn't have been able to save him.

"The bond is a lifelong joining, Anne. It can only be broken by death. It means that some part of Lily is with him, always. She is aware, all the time, of his emotions, of his physical condition ... and very often, of exactly what he's doing and where he is." It was so hard to explain to a normal mortal, but Anne was listening intently, so Doni tried. "It's not an intrusion; that is, I don't have the ability to see and hear what Stephen does when we're apart. But I know if he is physically active, or if he's with someone or alone, and I always know where he is, and how he feels. As Lily does with Richard."

"How is he?" Anne had zeroed in on the one thing that would always matter most to her.

And Doni was not going, this time, to lie to her. "He is as miserable as Lily is. And he is deliberately placing himself in danger in the hope that he will be killed in some manner that will not break his promise to you."

Anne's eyes closed, briefly. She set her cup down, very carefully, and was quiet for a long time. Doni didn't press her. This was Anne's decision to make, and even Doni's fear for Lily didn't give her the right to try to influence that decision. But it was past time for someone to tell Anne the truth.

Finally, Anne sighed lightly and said, "How can we make her go to him?"

"Oh, Anne." It was Doni who was going to cry if this kept up. Angry with herself, she fought it back. "Are you sure?"

Anne turned now to look at her. "That they should be together? Of course. Why would you think ... oh, Doni ... you don't mean she's left him because of me? Oh, dear god ... Doni, he was not going to come back to me, even if Liliana had never come back into his life. I have known that since Lily shared his memories with me in the infirmary. He is not capable of living a lie ... and from the day he first made love to her, and found in her what he had never found in me, I had lost him forever."

Her hands reached out to clutch Doni's. "I can't change. I wish I could. He has always been my champion, my hero, and he always will be. I called it having faith in him; I didn't know, until she showed me, how it drove him so unmercifully, how it always drove him until he failed. But I don't now how to change. To this day, I cannot believe he can fail at anything.

"It wasn't Richard's brother who made him hate himself. And it wasn't Gabriel Tallant. It was me. Dear God, Doni, if I can face that, if I can accept it, can't Liliana? He desperately needs what he found in her. She has to go back to him."

There was no question that she meant it. Doni was almost sick with relief. She said, "Anne, she is dying without him."

"Oh, God ... all this time ... why didn't you tell me? Why didn't she? Doni, make her understand, please. I will love him all of my life, but what I want for him is for him to be happy ... and Liliana is all the happiness in life for him. Please tell her ... or I will, if you want. She has to go to him before something happens to him..."

She had to go to him, Doni thought grimly, before something happened to her ... or to the child she carried. But she almost found herself wishing there were some way that these two women she loved so much could share him. "I'll tell her, Anne. The only thing that has kept her from him is how much she cares for you."

Anne's smile was both loving and exasperated. "It's my fault. I should have told her long ago ... but I thought she knew. Don't admire me too much, Doni. I'm sick with jealousy. If there was the smallest chance that I could make him happy, I would fight her tooth and claw for him."

Impulsively, Doni reached out and pulled the smaller woman into her arms. "Anne Neville," she said, "that is what I admire about you most."

Well...

My last message on the subject of Lily was ignored, I see. But then, that has always been how you handled my kind. Ignored us and hoped we'd be short-lived like your forebears. However, Lily never did.

So, it might interest you to know she has fainted twice in the last four days and the normal doctor who deduced all by himself she's pregnant say's she should be in a hospital. That way she can be force-fed. Or something. I will only hold him off for a single day.

Take a hint.

Dinah

Stephen found the letter on the Spiritual Telegraph before Doni, fortunately. He was already planning on visiting Lily soon, very soon. But something always got in the way. Now, he'd have to go and take Doni. Because Lily was more than just making herself sick. She was sick.

He whirled his chair around and took a few moments to gaze out the window at the snow covered Blue Ridge, not noticing the beauty of the western slope, or the grounds, white covered with brown and green accents, thinking of all the things he had to accomplish. The compound was a beehive of New Ones no one trusted; watched, trained and screened by people who were doing their learning OTJ. The infirmary was full and Tango getting more tense every day. Doni, flat in the face of Stephen's disapproval had taken command of the Healers and the Infirmary. So there was less time for them to be together everyday.

But Lily was a priority, as was Richard.

And then Doni, knowing his need of her, walked in without knocking. She knew and was prepared. Her pain and anguish for Anne, formed into in a streaming flow of salt-tears when she told him about their talk, had stopped. The swollen, reddened eyes were gone and replaced by her serene, every day look. But not the grief and the hurt for Anne.

Surprisingly, she looked willing to not wage war with Dinah. Dinah, grandchild of the bond-mated children of a pure Awakened coupling but unawakened herself. Dinah, who could possibly have children that might be Awakened, was fiercely proud of her independence from the Awakened. Dinah, who was so protective and fond of Lily she was sending an SOS to the last people she would have wanted to send it to. Dinah was demanding help from the Awakened.

They were there in an instant, catching Dinah eyeing the handyman on his way up to the roof. Stephen winced at Doni's smirk and prayed to god's he'd forgotten he knew there would be no blood on the walls of this hotel today.

To the fly on the wall the picture was clear. Mac presented a view of his superb back end in those patched-in-just-the-right-places jeans that was highly entertaining to the female of the species. Dinah was demonstrating her own entertained reaction when Stephen and Doni arrived. Her continued reaction, oblivious to their arrival, caused Stephen to delicately clear his throat in a gentlemanly sort of announcement of his presence. It caused Doni to burst out laughing.

Pyewacket, if he'd still been there, since demons would always understand women better than men ever could, would have told Stephen that Doni's laughter was the first lob, the equivalent of a fifty caliber shell across Dinah's bow, in the current round of the endless skirmishes in the long and pointless war between these two. Dinah's enthralled look revealed just the sort of vulnerability that gave Doni the perfect ammo for this kind of war ... war as only two women could or would fight it, smiling, sweet, oh so polite and charitable, while making pointed little remarks in honeyed tones, masking sharp edges and acid-tipped needles that drew copious amounts of blood. And never a physical blow struck.

Men may have been smarter about it; they were certainly more openly hostile and usually finished it faster and cleaner. They resolved the rivalry problem in blunt and bruising fashion. A left hook to the jaw or a knee to the groin, depending on the dynamics of the moment, was the way men would have fought. But women fought with emotions. And the more sophisticated the woman, the more sophisticated the verbal fight and the more telling the non-verbal gesture.

At Stephen's polite "ahem," Dinah whirled around and Mac looked down from his place halfway up the ladder.

"Well, it took you long enough to get here, Stephen." Dinah stood in her accustomed stance, hands on her hips and her gaze challenging and stormy. She looked, as usual, slightly frumpy, dressed in jeans and a tee shirt, sans bra, her hair unadorned and probably uncombed, her face scowling past the wire rimmed glasses that hid her matchless sea green eyes. She was returning Doni's fire, actually escalating the battle by ignoring Doni and focusing totally on Stephen. "Did you maybe think when I said Lily was really sick, I meant a head cold?"

"Sorry Dinah, I had to wait for Doni to join me. I promised her I wouldn't come..." He stopped short, stricken, already aware that there was no recovery from the fumble.

There was a moment's silence. Mac, up on the ladder, watched the next event with delight and amazement. Dinah, in that instant of understanding the exact nature of Stephen's faux pas, transformed herself before his very eyes. He would never really be able to say exactly what had changed. But as Dinah took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, she was no longer frumpy. Everything Mac knew she truly was bloomed into vibrant life, shining like burnished, sun-struck silver ... a tall, slim, confident woman, whose appeal to him had been growing daily.

Doni's eyes narrowed; there was an "aha!" of suspicions confirmed in every line of her still face. This was the Dinah she had always felt was in there somewhere, every time Stephen came here.

Stephen, floundering like a fish on a hook over his slip of the tongue, saw the transformation as well and understood at last why Doni had never let him visit Dinah alone. Doni would never believe it, but until this moment, Stephen had scarcely been aware of Dinah as female at all. She had always been the plain, bookish, unremarkable associate he had often found useful when unobtrusiveness was the most needed quality in an agent. He had never paid her enough attention to realize that, beneath the deliberately down-played exterior, there was a Dinah who was not at all unobtrusive, and this was information he filed away for the future.

Dinah turned her defiant gaze to scan Doni from head to toe, then back to Doni's unwavering brown eyes. Holding his breath, Stephen saw Doni flush scarlet and then, just as quickly, go deadly pale. She took a deep breath. Through their bond, he felt the unforgivably sarcastic words forming in her mind and getting ready to spill out her mouth, and he was beginning to think that, this time, they were about to move to actual blows. He was saved from overt intervention and its dangers by Mac, who suddenly, inexplicably ... and adroitly, lost his balance on the ladder and came crashing down into the shrinking space between Dinah and Doni as the ladder went flying neatly the other way. He landed, Stephen noted, with all the awkwardness of a trained acrobat, in spite of the immediate groans of painful distress he was mouthing.

The entire situation altered dramatically. While Dinah hovered, fussing, and Doni went into Healer mode, Stephen's eyes met Mac's. They exchanged a slight, unobtrusive man-thing nod ... the nod of two men, long-suffering and forbearing, who understood each other perfectly. The skirmish was averted, or at least postponed.