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“Huh,” Flynn replied, surprisingly unsurprised.

Then, slow: “’M sorta . . . thirsty . . .”

Elder’s smile widened. Sharpened.

“Yeah. I just bet you are.”

Thinking: I give you about thirty years at the most, buddy. Starting now.

More like fifty, as it turned out. But by the time it finally came to pass, nevertheless, all she could find it in herself to feel was: Hmm. Gee.

Right again.

* * *

“This cadre of yours,” Eudo began, disapproving, as the second millennium drew to its close outside—sitting pretty in the back of his limo, parked on the outskirts of Elder’s first official all-vampire rave. “A haphazard collection of strays, detritus . . . ”

Outside, Flynn shot Elder the high-sign through the limo window, then put on a serious face, and asked one of Eudo’s Familiars what looked like a fairly intimate question about his mother. The Familiar, doing a passable Eudo imitation, simply ignored him.

“Our Blood is not to be passed on lightly, Elder. There are channels, levels of approval.”

Elder nodded. “Same ones you were following, when you made me,” she suggested, idly playing with the hem of her shirt-cuff.

“I do find this continual harping on the circumstances of our first meeting remarkably tedious, Elder.”

“I know you do. Eudo.”

Beyond Flynn, Ulrike was augmenting her usual ballet-based dance moves with a series of Faster, Pussycat!-style go-go gestures. Tall, blue-eyed, blue-haired Ulrike, wearing nothing above the waist but a cross made from bondage tape over either tiny nipple. Ulrike, formerly single-name famous, who always struck Elder as having been genetically engineered to prove, through sheer embodiment, the general public’s sneaking suspicion that no one who looked like—or was—a supermodel could really be quite human.

But here was Eudo again, still making that obnoxious, I smell something face of his: “I can’t shield you forever, Elder. The Clave demands respect for tradition. You would do better—”

“I’ll do what I want, ‘magistere’ meo.”

He sniffed. “As you say.”

“That’s right.” Elder opened the limo door, stood up—snapped her fingers at the Familiar, who passed her her cane; Flynn came running at the sound, grinning. Throwing back, to Eudo, over a feel-it-in-your-chest-loud rush of sound: “Exactly as I fuckin’ say.”

So don’t let the coffin-lid hit you in the ass on your way out, motherfucker.

* * *

Later, she peeled Ulrike’s crosses away—delicately, using only her blunt lower teeth—while Ulrike moaned in soft appreciation. Behind them, Flynn busied himself with the fourth occupant of their communal bed (some wannabe Familiar too pathetic to distinguish a valid invitation to the dance from yet another potentially fatal milking), baby-birding blood straight from the jugular back and forth to both women via long, exploratory, open-mouthed kisses. Ulrike, not normally interested in anyone born with more equipment than herself, tolerated this only because she wanted the hit; each successive draught made her shiver in Elder’s arms, clutching, arching.

Elder, meanwhile, lay back on Flynn’s heaving barrel chest, letting his sloppy worship drizzle crimson down the length of her naked torso. She felt him stiffen and hunch against her, heard his vestigial parody of breath grow ragged, while their shared victim’s own breathing dimmed and clogged to a wet death-rattle. And wondered why this entire process—pleasant as it had once seemed, when she was still as young as Flynn or Ulrike—now made her feel far more bored than sated.

Thinking: Things have to change. And knowing full well that they would, eventually—no matter what she did.

Or . . . didn’t do.

She turned her head in the hollow of Flynn’s throat, and whispered—into his convulsing jawline—

“So: Big guy—”

“Uh.”

“That scientist you were telling me about? One who works for NASA?”

Murky, mouth full: “ . . . Uhuh . . . ”