Zara Carmillen sat on her bed - not huddled, she thought stubbornly, sat, as if it was just an ordinary day and her life wasn't about to change in any strange or significant way - and picked up the book that had lain by her side for the last hour.

 But no matter how many times she read the words, they made no sense, slipping from her like soap. Nothing sank in except the clammy lump of fear in her stomach.

 Love and fear, she thought. Will they become a constant in my life? It seems that way, sometimes, but there must be more than this.

 Darkstar. The name felt false on her lips, and indeed, she knew it wasn't his real name, but it was the only one he could remember. He was a vampire, a Night Lord who moved in corporate circles with the easy threat of a shark swimming shallow waters, and he was her soulmate.

 She knew everything about him, and she knew nothing about him, and she knew that she was more afraid than she had ever thought she could be. He would make her a vampire, and she would lose a dozen small things that she had never thought mattered.

 Food. She hadn't realised how much meals were part of her life; going for a weekly hamburger with Jepar to catch up on the gossip. Futile cooking lessons with Lisa while they discussed dream men and the real, flawed ones. Popcorn in front of movies while Cougar made up his own dialogue.
 
 She could still eat, but it wouldn't satisfy her.

 Children. She didn't want them, but maybe someday she would, and she would be denied. Her only legacy was herself, and she wasn't sure that would be enough.

 Her friends. Oh god, how she would miss them. But every last one of them was wanted by the Nightworld for crimes great and small, and while Darkstar might be persuaded to leave them alone, there was no guarantee those who worked with him would. Nor could she stay in Ryars Valley, a place which held too many people who weren't supposed to exist.

 Home had become this house, as bare of decoration as its owner, stark edges and clean lines. She felt like a squatter, briefly living someone else's life.

 So much to lose.

 And so much to gain, she reminded herself. But the dread wouldn't go away.

~*~

 She must have fallen asleep, because she was shaken awake. Zara opened her eyes onto her soulmate's face, half-lit by the lamp, cut into shapes of gold and black.

 "You looked so cute, I didn't want to wake you."

 "You look so cute, I'm glad you did," she responded, and was momentarily horrified to hear something so slushy come from her own lips.

 That was the problem with love. It changed you, without so much as a please or a thank you. Her vinegary wit had been diluted by a desire to see that rare smile, to bring something to his life no one else could.  

  "Really? Is that why you hit me with a pillow last time?" He was crouched by the bed, arms resting on the covers. "You were so glad to see me?"

 Dull heat crept up her face. "I thought I was still at home-" She caught herself. This was home now. "In Ryars Valley, I mean."

 "And it's custom there to concuss people with a sack full of feathers...?"

 She shrugged. It was impossible to explain her friends' foibles to people who didn't know them. "It is if certain annoying shapeshifters like to bounce in at 5am and ask if you want to go for a run."

 "Ah. I'd use something a bit more solid, myself." He brushed her hair back from her face, fixing her with that quizzical, intense look that had frightened her the first time she'd seen it.

 Zara had thought he was measuring her somehow, but later, she had realised he was simply staring at her, learning her face with a lover's tender attention. It was just that tenderness hadn't been a big part of his life, and he probably didn't realise he was wearing an expression that would have given Wes Craven the shivers.

 "So, are you ready?" he said, as if he were asking her to go for coffee, not into death and back again.

 The fear flared up again, and she linked her hands together so he wouldn't see them shaking. Zara tried to hide it, but the dread had become terror, overwhelming, a panicky animal reaction.

 Those dark eyes widened, all the lethargy stolen from them. He drew back, and she thought for a horrible moment that he had mistaken her fear of what would happen for fear of him-

 "You don't have to do this, you know," he said simply.

 She cleared her throat. "I know."

 "It's not like there's any hurry."

As always, there was a certain oddness to the way he spoke, as if he still clung to old pronunciations of words. It was hard to remind herself that this boy beside her had been born in the hot heart of Egypt, brought up in a dying pharaonic cult.

 In almost every aspect, he could have been a teenaged boy from anywhere. In her looking-glass life, spent among the inhuman and immortal, Zara had become used to knowing people who had lived for a hundred years, but wore only a score of them on their face; used to thinking of telepathy as a cheap equivalent to text messaging, calling her vampire friends to fix a flat tyre because they could jack up the car with one hand, but it was still hard to reconcile Darkstar with that topsy-turvy world.

 With everyone else, she could comprehend the numbers they'd thrown to her. Twenty years? All caught on TV. A hundred? Written down in books, made into movies. But three thousand? The number was so large she didn't know where to begin. He might as well have been an alien.

 Only his face gave away the life he might once have had, heavy-lidded eyes and a blunt mouth, set in caramel coloured skin and framed by curly black hair. His beauty was stark and simple as the pyramids and was the very reason why he had been thrust into immortality without a choice or a chance to protest. She couldn't imagine how terrifying and senseless it must all have seemed.

 But I have a choice, she reminded herself. And I have him. "I don't want to lose my nerve."

 "This isn't about nerve," he said, his voice as unhurried as ever. If she hadn't seen him lose his temper, she might have doubted that he had one. "It's a big decision. Don't make it on a whim. I don't want you to regret it."

 "I won't regret it," she said, and there was some truth to that. Even in his absence, she felt him and if she concentrated, she could even gain some sense of where he was and what he was doing: he had become a background motion, vital and unnoticed as breath.

 Zara couldn't imagine her life without him now. She couldn't bear the thought of aging and dying, of the tragedy of it all: of forcing him to watch her wither and decay as she crumpled into the creases of her own skin, to bear her death knowing she was lost to him forever.

 And worse, that he could have done something to save her.

 "Easy to say now," he cautioned, curious appeal in his eyes. "The change isn't easy, Zara. It's frightening to wake up and find you have more senses than the five you started with. To spend days misjudging every movement because you constantly underestimate your own speed and strength. To find yourself hungering for living things, unsure if you have the willpower to let them live on."

 He was making it hard, and she didn't understand why. Didn't he want her as his companion? Why paint such a bleak picture of her future, changing it from something bright and hopeful to something ugly, almost  shameful?

 "Was that what it was like for you?" she asked, knowing part of the answer already. In the few memories of his she had seen, he'd been barely more than a wild creature, driven by base impulses that bypassed the brain and came right from the gut.

 "At first," he said slowly, bemusement crawling through his voice. His eyes took on that dazed look: as if he was peering through thick fog to try and glimpse his past. "I think I lived by the river. Me and the crocodiles, we weren't so different. Then one day the priests came for me. They gave me clothes and blood - in a cup, I remember that much, as if cutlery made it all civil somehow - and cared for me until I could think for myself again. They knew what I was, but they weren't afraid. Fools. They even gave me a name." He said that with a certain bite, as if in doing so, they had wronged him in a way she didn't understand.

 "What was it?" she said, curious.

 "Not mine, that's what it was." He gave an irritable shrug. "I've been walking round under other people's labels for three thousand years, and I'm no closer to finding out who I was. I suppose I'm further away with every year."

 "Where did your name come from?" she asked. "Darkstar, I mean. It can't be yours."

 He glanced up, and for a moment, she felt the weight of ages in his gaze, the void between them briefly impassable by something so frail as love. "No. It isn't."

 She waited, impatient and glad of a distraction.

 "I've been known as Darkstar since...oh, Roman times. When they conquered Egypt, the priests offered me up to protect themselves. A real live wonder." His mouth was taut with disapproval. "So off I went to Rome, where the physicians prodded me and pushed me and proclaimed me nothing more than a healthy young man with freakish strength and a taste for blood. Then they handed me over to a minor noble, and I stayed there long enough to steal some money and food, and have my fortune told by an old slave who liked to pretend she had mystical powers."

 "Maybe she did?" she suggested.

 "Unlikely. Most of what she foresaw never happened. Anyway, she told me I was born under a dark star, and I told her there was no such thing, and she said, 'Well, I'm looking at you, aren't I? And if you look up tonight, you'll see another one.'"

 "What happened?"

 His smile was rueful. "There was an eclipse that night. I took it as an omen - and took the name. By the time I'd grown out of my beliefs, everyone knew me as Darkstar and I was just about menacing enough to pull it off." He spread his hands, brushing her leg with his fingers. "After that, I could hardly start calling myself 'Fred'."

 "Fred?" she echoed, staring at him.

 "I've always liked Fred," he said thoughtfully. Was he teasing her? "Short. Zippy. Hard to mock."

 Zara batted at him, and he caught her hand. The touch sent frissons through her, and the air seemed to grow a little heavier, as if someone had filled it with potent scent. "Who's ever mocked you?"

 "Tri," he said sorrowfully. "Shopkeepers. When all you have on your credit card is Darkstar Jones, you tend to get some odd comments."

 Zara tried to stamp on her laughter, but too late: a snort escaped her, and then she had to give in. "Jones? Darkstar Jones?"

 "I was trying to fit in."

 "Fit in?" she squawked. "Look, if you'd called yourself Darkstar Doomshaker, no one would have said a thing because they would have assumed you were a nutjob or an actor. But Jones? Come on."

 "Hmm." A reflective expression. "You make a good case."

 "See," she pointed out. "You need me around. Who else is going to point out your flaws? All your minions are too scared of losing their Christmas bonus," and their life, she added silently, unsure just how ruthless he was, "and Tri's too busy smooching with Hunky McDragon-"

 His mouth twitched. "Don't call Iager that to his face. I'm told his temper is...explosive."

 She waved a hand. "Whatever. So yeah, I'm the only honest girl around. Imagine what your ego will be like in a hundred years if I'm not around to manage it."

 He raised his eyebrows. "That's by far the most bizarre argument anyone's ever used to convince me to make them a vampire. Besides, I managed for three thousand years without you, whereas you have had a scant seventeen without me, and in the time I've known you, you've managed to annoy almost everyone I know."

 Zara was entirely used to such criticisms, having heard them on a daily basis from Cougar Redfern. "It's a rare talent."

 "And here's some rare advice," he said, his voice gentle and bare of anything except pleading. "Don't make your decision because of me, or what you think I want. Do it for what you want."

 She opened her mouth to say that he was what she wanted, but he shook his head to forestall her.

 "And don't make it in haste. Please, Zara, think about it - really think. Talk to some vampires - Tri, your friends. If you haven't changed your mind in a couple of months, then I'll change you then. But..."

 From the soulmate link, she caught the agitation of his mind. Sudden insight struck her. "What are you afraid of?" she asked.

 He smiled, but his eyes were solemn. When he spoke, there was a roughness to his voice that stung her. "Losing you."

 "Why would you think that?"

 "I've seen it happen before. Our life isn't all glamour, Zara-mine. When you get down it, we steal life to keep on breathing, and there is no way around that. Love doesn't wash out the bloodstains."

 He bared his teeth, and his eyes filled with a fey light, taking on a strange shimmering quality. That's why the old woman named you Darkstar, she thought, for your beauty and your strangeness, for the worlds you've walked through that are long abandoned by time, for the distance that you can put between us in the moment when you become more inhuman than human.

 In that simple gesture, he had become infinitely alien, his stare famished, as if he had hungered for a thousand years and yet could not slake his thirst on an ocean of blood.

 But I love this too, she thought, and as if a spring had been released, part of her was soothed. Was that what I feared? That I couldn't bear the truth of what you are? Yes...I think perhaps it was.

 And I think that's what you fear too: that I only love the boy who whispers soft words and touches me like he's afraid I'll shatter in his arms.

 We were both wrong. I don't fear you, whatever form you wear.

 She slid from the bed, and stepped up to him, knowing that this was what he needed: acceptance. She stood on tiptoes, and reached up to that strained mouth, and planted a kiss at each corner, then on each of the two wicked fangs, feeling like she moved to music he couldn't hear.

 The eerie expression trembled, and she cupped his face in her hands, thinking: when did anyone do this? When did they touch as if you were a human being, warm with need, even when you didn't look like one?

 "And bloodstains don't erase love," she said firmly. "Are you going to leave me standing on tiptoe all day, or are you going to kiss me?"

 The tension began to drain from his body, and imperial as any Pharaoh had ever been, he looked down his nose at her and declared, "Kiss you, of course."

 "Well get on with it, then!" she commanded, unflinching under that predator's stare.

 When he smiled, she knew he had convinced him, and secure in his arms, she thought she understood something that she hadn't until now.

 Perhaps it isn't only me that needs time to make this decision. Perhaps you need time to prepare, to believe that I really am yours, that love isn't just a four-letter word that people bandy about with the intensity of a curse.

 My mind won't change. I just have to wait for you to make up yours.