Yes! The word pushed up from his heart, threatening to explode from his throat. But there was the vision of Mirelle sagging helplessly in Inea’s grip.

With a wordless cry of anguish, Titus broke away from Abbot’s seductive gaze and fled, running into the corridor and not stopping until he got to the lift where he fetched up against the closed doors and pounded his fists against them. It was only sheer dumb luck that nobody saw, and that he recovered before the security camera swept across him.

Facing his own apartment door, he straightened his clothes and smoothed his expression, suddenly realizing that for all the pain still surging through him, he felt uncommonly good about himself for the first time in a very long time. He had done his filial duty. I feel good about starving so Abbot can feed? God, I must be insane. But there it was, a tremendous release of tension he hadn’t felt until it was gone. I can’t fight him. I can’t win against this because it’s inside me.

But he also knew that he couldn’t win as long as his own son opposed him-and had won Abbot over with lies. Yet if he had been in H’lim’s place, he would have done the same. He couldn’t blame the luren.

Squaring his shoulders, he went in to confront Inea. She was spooning soup into Mirelle, who was propped up in bed, eyes drooping half shut. She was wearing one of Titus’s pullovers now, cuffs rolled into massive donuts around her wrists. Inea looked up. “I went and got my ration. And I’ve given her two of the pills. I’ll take her home in a while-if you think I should.”

The implication was, If it’s safe. Titus answered her unvoiced question. “I don’t know, Inea. But there’s no choice. She doesn’t belong here.”

He didn’t feel awkward discussing Mirelle like this because there seemed to be a dull film over her awareness, the cumulative effect of heavy Influence. How Abbot had avoided detection so long, Titus didn’t know. But both he and Abbot knew it was too dangerous a game to play now. Or if Abbot didn’t know it, H’lim would convince him of it.

In a heavy silence, he helped Inea prepare Mirelle and then take her to her own room, which was a tumbled mess, tangible evidence of depression and enervation. There wasn’t even a threshold barrier, so diffuse was her presence. But Titus could sense the dregs of Abbot’s presence-bitter, savage dregs summoning images of what had occurred here. That almost turned his self-satisfaction to self-hatred. While Mirelle fell into a heavy sleep, they straightened up the place as best they could, then left her alone.

Back in Titus’s apartment, Inea stripped the bed and remade it while Titus went to the refectory to get his own rations. They worked together with only casual comments on what they were doing, as if the deeper subject was a glowing coal, too hot to touch. But while Inea was nibbling on the last crusts of the inadequate meal, she asked point blank, “How long until you’ll have to take my blood?”

Startled, Titus recoiled, “What?”

“You heard me.” Her expression shifted. “You weren’t thinking-of taking from someone else without telling me? Titus, I won’t permit it.”

He laughed out loud. He couldn’t help it. After all the grave, grim tension of the last few hours, the image of a human woman sitting over his kitchen table, eating his rations, wearing his Mark, and dictating terms to him in a “be reasonable” tone was just too much.

Catching the edge of hysteria in his laughter, she frowned. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I wouldn’t think of disobeying you,” he said through a veil of chuckles, and suddenly, she understood the irony and together they laughed uproariously.

In the end, she said, “Well, Delilah could wrap Samson around her little finger, why shouldn’t I boss a vampire around?”

That almost set them off again, but Titus sobered. “Inea, I had no intention of taking your blood-or anyone else’s. I’ve been well-fed, compared to Abbot. I’ll be all right until my supplies arrive.”

“There’s no way to know how long that’ll be. You’ll have to take some blood. What had you planned to do?”

He thrust himself out of the chair and caught himself against the edge of the sink, wanting to run, wanting to accept, and wanting to appear in perfect command. The truth was like bile in his mouth. “I didn’t think about how I’d survive.”

He turned to watch the bewildered shock flicker across her features. “Inea, you’re going to have to grasp something else that may be even harder than the idea that Abbot has the right, under luren Law, to kill Mirelle. I will not take the living blood of a human. I don’t want it.”

“That’s not true. I’ve seen the look in your eyes, over a bleeding wound.”

“So? I’m mortal. I’m subject to temptation. I thought Id explained this before. Haven’t you grasped yet what it is that deters me when I am tempted?”

“How could I? I’m not even sure what’s so tempting. Cloned blood is genetically identical to real blood. If it’s infused with ectoplasm, it ought to be really identical. All this fuss makes me wonder if maybe there isn’t something-unique-in giving blood directly to a vampire. Maybe I’d enjoy it!”

He surged across the floor and plucked her out of the chair by the shoulders, shaking her. “Don’t you dare-!”

The hurt shock that flashed through her knifed across his anger and he froze, horrified at himself. He enfolded her in his arms, burying his face in her hair and rocking her back and forth as he moaned, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

How could he explain to her the ghastly trap he had dug himself out of when he’d left Abbot? He pushed her away, caught her eyes, and repeated what he’d told her so many times. “Inea, it’s addictive. I don’t know if I’d have the strength to break away again. I could do worse to you than Abbot has done to Mirelle and feel just as little remorse over it. I’ve done that, under Abbot’s direction. I lived that way, Inea, and I won’t go back to it. I won’t. Can you understand that?”

“You’re scared,” she said. “That I can understand. Maybe I’ll come to-”

The door signal interrupted her, and only then did Titus feel H’lim’s familiar presence. But not Abbot’s. Not the four guards. “Oh, my God!” He dashed to the door, flung it open, grabbed H’lim by the elbow and yanked him inside, shutting the door and leaning against it. It was the middle of the night for the station. Hall traffic was light, but not wholly absent.

“H’lim, you fool!” hissed Titus.

“I won’t stay long,” he answered with equanimity. From under his capacious lab coat he produced a fat Thermos. “I was trying to explain before you left, that I think I’ve got orl blood you can manage to take. Abbot can’t use it, but I talked him into accepting your gift.”

Titus let him shove the Thermos into his numb hands. What about your guards-the recorders? Carol will-“

“They’ll never know I was gone!”

“H’lim!”

“I’m going. Don’t worry.” With one hand on the door, he Paused to say over his shoulder, “I just wanted you to know, I’m around to count you Fourth Father. And I’ll be proud to introduce y to my First Father.”

Then he was gone.

Titus sank into a kitchen chair, his knees too weak to support him even in the lunar gravity. The Thermos clutched to his chest, he bowed his head over it and blinked away unaccountable tears. I must be as close to the edge as Abbot is.

Inea lifted the Thermos from his grasp. With her help, he choked down the alien substance and kept it down, and by morning, he had regained his equilibrium and soaked up some of Inea’s optimism and determination with her ectoplasm and her love.