The Lady Carinna flicked her fingernails. Those long, dagger-like fingernails.

"You want me to what?"

Sandrine shivered and stood behind Blue. I'm scared of him, she thought. I'm terrified of Blue but I'm using him as a shield from these two. Better the devil you know?

Blue reached around and dragged Sandrine forward. She stood in front of them, this trio of elegant, vibrant creatures in her rags and her tags, in the weeks of ingrained grime and wished she was elsewhere.

The other boy was unnerving her. He was staring. His eyes, an extraordinary leaping gold that seemed to come directly from Hunter Redfern, looked through her dispassionately, pausing to take note of her face and sliding to her throat. And his head tilted back and forth in an odd, snake-like motion.

"I want you to taker her as your lady's maid. You need one, Carinna, and this girl is the one you're looking for. She's modern mortal. Smart enough to keep quiet, not intelligent enough to escape." Blue must have noticed Sandrine bridling. "Spare me a mortal's pretensions of pride."

"Pride's about all I have!" Sandrine said angrily, forgetting her company before she clamped her mouth shut and dropped her eyes to the ground.

Those long, unnatural nails lifted her chin, digging in sharp lines. Then she was looking at an arrogant face, blinking in surprise at the tattoo that replaced one eyebrow; the stem of a blue rose whose flower bloomed on this lamia's temple.

"Impudent," Lady Carinna remarked. "Prideful too." One nail flicked and Sandrine winced as she felt pain and the sluggish warmth of blood. "Low pain threshold. I'm not sure if the girl has the quality I expect in a slave."

"I'm sure," Blue said and smiled his tiny, cold smile.

"Does she have a name?" The question came from the gold-eyed boy, the one with the crow's wing hair that shone with health in the sunlight. He was still staring, but the gaze had become less disinterested. "Or is it just a favoured meal again?"

"Sandrine," Blue said. "Since when have you cared about slaves' names?"

"Since when have you cared about slaves?" the boy threw back, eyes glinting coolly.

Lady Carinna let go of her chin and Sandrine, relieved, let her head drop a little. Then she was startled when a voice, smooth as melted butter and brimming with power cut across the argument of the two vampires.

How long have you been here, Sandrine? It was Carinna's lazy voice, heavy as honey. And though Sandrine looked up, startled, Carinna wasn't looking at her, nor did her lips move. It's telepathy. A little trick we vampires have.

Lady?

A weary sigh. Answer the question, girl. I do not have time to waste. And it's Carinna. It's only lady when others might hear. Though I must admit, the walls seem to sprout ears in this poky hellhole.

What was going on? Although the voice was the same, the tone was so vastly different, Sandrine could only stare and wonder. Hellhole? I've...never heard any vampire call it that.

I've lived on the other side for six decades and you know what?

She could read no message in the vampire woman's green, green eyes. I know nothing here.

I like your world. I've spent sixty years, near as dammit, learning to survive without slaves and rules and archaic laws. And I like it. I like doing everything for myself, I like having a job and most of all, I like being able to wear clothes other than these stupid heavy things.

Lady, your clothes are lovely! Sandrine protested. The rich dark green velvet suited the lady, matching her eyes with the perfect cut accentuating her figure.

It's Carinna. She thought she saw a wry twist to the vampire woman's mouth. You must have been here a while to have picked up such meekness, though not so long they've broken you completely.

A year and a half. I was kidnapped on my way back from a ballet lesson that overran.

Intriguing. And Blue seems to...well, I wouldn't go as far as to say he likes you, but compared to his last slave, you're getting adoration and worship.

Sandrine slid a sideways glance at Blue. The young vampire's eyes dripped blue light and the first indents of fangs were beginning to show.

"-don't know why you've decided to help that girl-thing. You don't give a damn about humans," the other boy was saying, stabbing a finger accusatorily at Blue. "They're just...just fast food to you!"

"Some of them are indeed fast," he agreed, completely missing Cougar's point. "You'd think they spent their lives running. That last batch-"

"Were professional athletes, you asshole," Cougar said with understandable scorn. "And seeing as you probably don't know what those are, they're humans who get paid money to run."

"Money?" Blue frowned, but that familiar glimmer of curiosity was back in his eyes.

Cougar rolled his eyes. "It's this weird thing humans have. Money's sort of...solid power."

Oh dear, Carinna's voice said with a little sigh. Telling Blue anything about power is not advisable.

"How do you get it?" The lamia boy's anger had all gone now; he was listening intently to Cougar.

"You..." Cougar paused. Sandrine couldn't stop her shiver as his eyes flared gold. "I think you earn it. Father'll know."

"Your father," Carinna interjected smoothly, "is in the east wing study."

The two vampire boys exchanged looks and for a second, were utterly similar. "Good," they said, and disappeared.

~*~

"My rooms," Carinna said casually, shutting the door behind her. "You must have made quite an impression on Blue for him to be so...kind."

Sandrine couldn't stop her gasp or her wide grey eyes as she looked around. The rooms were vast, well-lit by torches and decorated in rich, dark golds and reds. Compared to the cramped, damp corner where she huddled in sleep at night, it was paradise.

"What?" Carinna looked at her face and smiled. It should have been reassuring but served only to show the perfectly pointed fangs that gleamed a little. "Oh, the space. Of course. You humans aren't used to it." She waved a pale hand. "The door to the left is your room. The door to the right..." she hesitated. "...is not your business."

"I understand, lady," Sandrine said meekly. She should have known she would not be staying in these elegant rooms. But the lady had been so kind that she had assumed…stupid of her. They're all the same. You know that really, however nice they pretend to be, they aren't human and they aren't right.

That tattooed rose stem arched. "I doubt it. Girl...what is your name?"

"Sandrine."

"Sandrine. Pretty. I'm not here to terrorise you. I don't need a slave, though enclave rules demand I have one. I can take care of myself; and I will. All I require you to do is tidy up after my slobby self." Again, that odd smile that was meant to be reassuring. But combined with her honey-heavy voice, it was merely...menacing. "I'm very much a nineties girl. I like Boyzone and Take That."

Sandrine nearly choked. It didn't fit Carinna at all. She looked like she should be moshing at a concert, not dancing along to the strains of 'Could it be magic now?'.

"But they're awful!" she said before she could stop herself and hastily clamped her hands over her mouth.

She was startled to hear Carinna laugh. And it was a genuine sound, rich and thick as butter-icing and made her for a brief instant, human. Human and beautiful.

"I know," the woman said, her oddly green eyes sparkling. "But...well, compared to the funeral music here, they're wonderful."

"Compared to here a strangled cat would be wonderful," Sandrine ventured and was pleased when her mistress merely laughed again.

"Perhaps I see why Blue likes you," Carinna murmured. She pushed back her heavy hair, eyeing Sandrine. "Blue said you wanted a bath. There's one in your rooms. And..." The corner of her mouth twitched. "Shampoo and conditioner."

"Oh!" Sandrine said, closing her eyes at the thought of a steaming bath. To be clean again, rid of the dirt and the grime.

"And..." A faint tone of distaste. "There's delouser in there too. Be sure you use it. And burn those clothes. There are more in your room."

Perhaps, Sandrine thought guardedly, perhaps everything will be all right.

Perhaps the sun would drop from the sky.

~*~

"Hey! Red! Where you going?"

Cougar rolled his eyes at the voice, and turned to see the two vampire children running towards them. They were Blue's friends, both of them, and he didn't like them one bit.

For starters, they kept calling him Red.

"Nowhere," he said cagily. "What do you want?"

The girl tossed the wild tumble of curls that clung to her face, and gave him a coy look that he was more used to seeing on teenage beauties, not a kid like Telerana Orage. "It's not polite to ask a lady that."

"You ain't no lady," the other boy chirped, giving her a furtive elbow in the ribs.

Telerana scowled at him. "What would you know, Aspen Martin?"

"More than you," Blue cut in smoothly. Cougar was disturbed to see the lofty amusement on his face as he watched his quibbling friends. Blue was somehow far, far too old. Twelve years in body, about twelve hundred in mind. "We were going to go and ask Father what money is."

"It's that metallic stuff vermin use, stupid," the girl said carelessly. She was a pretty thing, a cluster of gypsy curls and golden skin, a little plump for a vampire, but still, that was unnoticeable under the gleaming brightness of her smile. "They have these discs made from copper and silver, well, mostly, and they use them for trade."

Blue's stare could have cut rock. "How do you know that?"

"Daddy's started sending me to a school Outside," she declared. "Hey, Red, how come you didn't tell me it was so much fun? And how'd you manage not to figure what money is?"

His little brother snorted. "Cougar's far too good to mix with mere vermin." His voice arched disdainfully. "He complains about them every time he comes back here."

"You going to school soon?" Telerana asked coolly, the swimming darkness of her pitch-black eyes unfathomable. "You'd like it, Bane. They're all so easy to manipulate...it's like an all-day buffet."

Blue shrugged. "Father's not exactly fond of me," was his laconic response.

All of them knew that Blue and Cougar's fathers had been different. Blue's had disappeared after his mother, Fharille, had had a brief affair with him. No one knew who he was, but considering the way Blue had turned out, Cougar didn't think that was necessarily a bad thing.

Cougar's father however, was not overly fond of Blue. Especially since Blue seemed to be so razor sharp, but claimed he had trouble with the most basic things, like reading and writing. He just plain refused to learn.

It had earned him a lot of bruises and broken bones.

And it scared Cougar the way that Blue didn't even care. He would just wait until he was healed, and not say a word or do anything but stare at Cougar's father with cold, unfathomable eyes and then leave.

Telerana shrugged. "So? He sends you out into the Outside, he doesn't have to see you for a while. We all win."

"I don't need to see what vermin learn," Blue said proudly. "There's more to know than what they teach in schools."

"How would you know?" Telerana threw back, her dark eyes flashing. "You've never been."

His mouth turned down at one corner. "You don't have to go Outside to see what's there."

Aspen's childlike eyes widened. "You been using forbidden spells!" he gasped, and then a wide grin spread over his face. "Who'd you get to do 'em?"

"Does it matter?" he answered lazily. Cougar could have sworn that impassive though his half-brother's face was, he was laughing at them. "I did. That's the important thing. And I know what you've all been up to..."

Cougar glanced uneasily at the other two, and tried to keep the thoughts of his own secret little sins safe in his head.

"Don't know what you mean," Telerana said, but her mouth had gone small and tight, and the first hint of a flush dotted her dusky skin. "You've gotten nasty lately, Blue."

How true that was. One taste of the forbidden Outside, and Blue had glimpsed a world that to him was like Tutankhamun's tomb, filled with wondrous things and ancient promise.

And like a tomb, it would be filled with dead if Blue had his way.

But his brother smiled in his enigmatic, disturbing way and murmured, "I've always been that way."

A pause, and he looked at the three of them and for a moment, Cougar thought he would never see anything as cold or bold or oddly old as Blue's eyes in that instant.

"I've just stopped playing now."

~*~

The visit to the study was forgotten. Cougar went to find Carinna - no doubt, Blue thought, to tell her about his little brother's latest revelation. Telerana went trailing hopelessly after him - she was so obviously besotted with Cougar - and Aspen went off to his home.

His dark, squalid little home. Yes, Blue knew what Aspen Martin lived through. It was all written there in the shadows under his eyes, the shyness that was not merely unusual but unheard of in a vampire, the way he flinched and hated darkness.

And Aspen was well, if not a friend, not one of those Blue considered an enemy.

He sat himself up in the branches of one of the horse-chestnuts that grew in the garden, shrouded behind the leaves but able to see most of the garden. Perfect for seeing the clandestine riptides in the blood-red sea of the enclave.

There went Carinna, sweeping her skirts up and over the long stone steps as she trotted up to the house. Not all she seemed, Blue often thought. But he hadn't the strength yet to break her formidable mental shields.

Strolling out of the maze, his mother, Fharille Redfern with her narrow, sculpted face that became tight and pinched when she was annoyed, which was inevitably when she saw Blue.

She had never wanted him, so Blue made a point of being in her presence as much as possible. It amused him to see her reminded of her folly, her fling with his father whoever he was.

Behind her...Blue raised an eyebrow, and leaned forward to check his vision did not deceive him - Audley Badenot. The big Badenot wolf, as he was known among the enclave.

Someone, he suspected, had been indulging in a little 'how's your father' among the yew maze.

And there-

There was a rustle of leaves, and the fluttering beat that Blue recognised as wings. He turned sharply, and saw a hawk perched upon the branches, a hawk that slowly expanded and reformed to become a girl.

A girl he knew to be forbidden from the enclave.

"I wasn't expecting company," he said quietly. "Especially not such illustrious company."

"Illustrious." She stretched out. She was a small thing, light-boned, with a nose that dominated her face like a hooked beak, and pale yellow eyes. "A big word from a boy who can't read."

He shrugged. "I know other words too. Like illicit, incarcerated, torture and demise. All of which could shortly apply to you."

She laughed. It was a sound with almost a shriek in it, lilting up. "Ah, they were right about you, my lad."

Intriguing. Blue watched her fluff up her short downy gold hair, and then said mildly, "What do you want?"

"You," she answered. The crocus-yellow eyes narrowed, and looked him up and down. "They speak about you often and softly here."

"They fear me." A touch of pride crept into his voice, despite all he did to stop it. "And they hate me."

"Yes, they despise you," the woman agreed. She was older than he, maybe a score years and five. "The Redfern bastard-"

"My name is Malefici." His voice was hard as iron.

"Aye, made by evil. They're right about that, at least. They used to torment you when you were a child. Yet I see no scars on you?"

He tilted his head on one side. "How do you know that?"

She ignored him, but continued in her piercing voice. Her eyes were set oddly apart, making them hard to meet. "Put you in their Iron Maiden, for hours and sometimes days. Let the other children practise their hunting technique on you, send you out into the woods as quarry, and bring you back battered and bleeding and send you out again the next night."

Yes. He remembered those nights. He saw them through a glass layer, distant and silent. They had tried to hurt him so often, but he-

"And never," a vague hint of puzzlement, and perhaps respect in her voice, "Never once did you complain, or cry, or rage...or do anything but make those flippant little remarks that enraged them all so. That, I find amazing. Impressive, even."

He smiled faintly. How odd that she couldn't see the obvious. "I never lose. They couldn't hurt me. They couldn't even touch me."

"Those pictures I've seen of your cuts belie that." Dangling her feet from a branch almost casually, yet keen interest in her face.

"They could do what they want to my body, but that isn't me, Aurenna Ravija. They hurt me, and I walked the..." He paused. He didn't know the names for them. "The places where the spirits are," he said finally.

She gaped. "You can project yourself astrally?"

"It's easy." Laughably, ridiculously easy.

A flick of her fingers. "It takes our most learned members years to learn that."

"Our?" he seized on it, sensing he had her rattled. "Who is 'us'?"

She sighed, and then the hawkish eyes became harder and barbed. "That, Bane Malefici, is what I have found you for."