"Is it really that close to sex?" I asked.

The humor left his face and he just looked at me. "You've really never been rolled completely by a vamp, have you? I mean I knew you had partial immunity even before the marks, but I thought someone somewhere would have gotten to you."

"Nope," I said.

"Sometimes I'm not sure, but it may be better than sex, and almost everyone who's been doing me has been a guy."

"So you're bisexual?"

"If what they're doing now counts as sex, yeah. If it doesn't then ... " he laughed, and the sound was so abrupt in the silence that I saw Zane and Jamil jump. "If this doesn't count as sex, let's just say that 'where no man has gone before' no longer applies."

Damned if I didn't want to ask who it had been. Maybe I would have asked, but Cherry spoke and the moment was gone. "His pulse is stronger. Losing this much blood, he should be getting weaker, but he's not."

Asher drew back from the wound. "We are not so much drinking blood as drawing out the corruption." He stood one hand under Nathaniel's thigh. He moved the leg back onto the bed, straightening his limbs as if he were a sleeping child. A moment before, it had been utterly sexual; now there was something in the way Asher acted that was tender, careful.

Damian pulled away from the wound. There was a spot on his lip, not red, but black. I wondered if it had tasted bad. He wiped the spot away with the back of his hand. If it had been pure blood he'd have licked it off. So it hadn't been pleasant.

He crawled out from under Nathaniel, laying him carefully on his back. He drew covers over Nathaniel as he moved off the bed.

Cherry had her first aid kit open. She recleaned the chest wounds with antibacterial antiseptic. The first few sterile cloths came away smeared with pus. We'd all moved next to the bed without realizing it. The smell was stronger here, unpleasant, but fading. When the skin and wounds were completely cleaned, the flesh was whole, and bright red blood welled into the slashes.

Cherry flashed the room a smile so warm and bright that you had to smile back. "He's going to be all right." She sounded surprised, and I wondered how close it had been.

Someone drew a hissing breath. I turned to the sound. Damian was backing up. He was staring at his hands. That pale, milky skin was turning dark, a blackness flowing under the skin. The flesh of his hands began to peel back while we watched.

"Shit," I said.

Damian held his hands out to me like a child that had burned its hand. I didn't know which was worse, the terror in his face or the almost resigned look in his eyes.

I shook my head. "No," I said, but my voice was soft. "No," I said it again, louder, stronger.

"You cannot stop it," Asher said.

Damian stared at the darkening flesh of his hands, soft horror on his face. "Help me," he said, and he looked to me.

I stared down at him and didn't have the faintest idea how to save him. "What can we do?" I said.

"I know you are accustomed to riding in on your white steed and saving the day, Anita, but some battles cannot be won," Asher said.

Damian had gone to his knees staring at his hands. He ripped his shirt off in pieces, leaving remnants of the sleeves on his arms. The rotting flesh was halfway to his elbows. A fingernail split and fell to the floor with a burst of something dark and noisome. The smell was back, sweet and sickly.

"I healed Damian once of a facial cut," I said.

Damian made a sound between a laugh and something more bitter. "I didn't nick myself shaving, Anita." He shifted his gaze from the peeling flesh of his hands to me. "Even you can't heal this."

I dropped to my knees in front of him, reaching out to touch his hands. Damian jerked away. "Don't touch me!"

I put my hands over his hands. The skin felt almost hot to the touch, as if the corruption were cooking him from the inside out. The skin was soft as if, if I pressed too hard the skin would give way like a rotted spot in an apple.

My throat was tight. "Damian, I'm ... sorry." Dear God, it was an inadequate word. A thousand years of "life" and he'd given it up for me. He would never have taken such a risk if I had not asked. It was my fault.

The look in his eyes was grateful, and pain-filled. He pulled his hands gently out from under mine. Careful not to press too hard against my hands. I think we were both afraid my fingers would sink through his skin and into the flesh inside.

His face twisted in pain, and a small sound escaped his lips. I remembered Nathaniel's cries of how it had hurt.

The ends of his fingers burst like overripe fruit, spilling something black and greenish onto the floor. It spattered my arm. The smell was growing in sickening waves.

I didn't swipe at the drops on my arm but I wanted to. I wanted to slap at them like a spider, shrieking. My voice held some of the strain I was trying to keep off my face. "I've got to at least try to heal you."

"How?" Asher asked. "How do, even you, begin to heal this?"

Damian made a low whimpering sound. His body shuddered, face ducking, neck twisting, and finally he screamed. Wordless, hopeless.

"How?" Asher asked again.

"I don't know," and I was screaming, too.

"Only his original master, the one who saved him from the grave, would have any chance of healing him."

I looked at Asher. "I called Damian from his coffin once. It was accidental, but he answered to my call. I kept his ... soul, whatever, from fleeing his body once. We are bound together, a little."

"How did you call him from his grave?" Asher asked.

"Necromancy," I said, "I am a necromancer, Asher."

"I know nothing of necromancy," he said.

The smell swelled stronger. I breathed through my mouth, but that just put the odor on the back of my tongue. I was almost afraid to look at Damian. I turned slowly like a character in a horror movie, where you just know the monster is right behind you, and you delay looking because you know it will blast your sanity forever. But some things are worse than any nightmare. The rot had moved past his elbows. Naked bone showed through the back of his hand. The smell had driven all but the three of us back. I stayed kneeling in the rotting fluid of Damian's body. Asher stayed close, but only I was still within touching distance.

"If I were his master, what would I do?"

"You would drink his blood, take the corruption into yourself as we did for Nathaniel."

"I didn't think vamps fed on each other."

"Not for food," Asher said, "but there are many reasons to share blood. Food is only one of them."

I stared at Damian, watching the blackness spread under his skin like ink. I could actually see it swimming underneath his flesh. "I can't drink the corruption away," I said.

"But I could," Damian's voice came breathy with pain.

"No!" Asher said. He took a threatening step towards us. I could feel his power flaring out from him like a whip.

Damian flinched, but looked up at the other vampire. He held his hands out to Asher, pleading.

"What is going on?" I asked, looking from one to the other of them.

Asher shook his head, face angry, but otherwise unreadable. I watched his features smooth and grow blank. He was hiding something.

"No," I said, getting to my feet. "No, you tell me what Damian meant." Neither spoke.

"Tell me!" I screamed it into Asher's calm face.

He just stared at me, face as closed and impassive as a doll's.

"Dammit, one of you tell me what Damian meant. How could he drink away his own corruption?"

"If ... " Damian started.