By Blood We Live

vechi brbat in the cage, as if that would make things right. I told them they had nothing to fear, that the old man, the vechi brbat, was gone for good, and they were all free now. Just as I was free from the life that had awaited me. No more wrong legends to rule their lives, or mine. I could return to the university. I would not have to marry the vechi brbat, or spend my life taking care of him.

"But the people were not pleased by this; they were so enraged. And terrified. My grandmother struggled to keep them from hurting me."

After a moment, the man said, "And then what happened?"

"He returned. Two nights later. He murdered people in their beds, outside their homes, as they fled into the forest. Women, children, men-even the strongest who tried to fight him off. My…my grandmother. He had been strengthened by the nourishment I'd provided, and he took blood until he became bloated, and then took more. He killed everyone, and it was my fault!"

Her body trembled uncontrollably. The room had become icy. The colors surrounding her, even the white, paled as if glaciers had formed over everything, and the opaqueness that reminded her of the

vechi brbat's eyes as he stared into hers began to spin and swirl like a snowstorm.

"But he didn't kill

you," the man said.

"No," she gasped. "He spared me."

"Why?"

She stared at him, watching his grey features shift and twist and the shape of his face change from human to animal then change again from animal to something dark and otherworldly until the images that formed petrified her.

"Nita, they found you covered with blood.

You, not the vechi brbat. You killed the villagers, because you felt trapped there, destined to a life you did not want."

Her head jerked from side to side.

"Nita, if there were a

vechi brbat, why wasn't he found? Where is he now?"

She screamed, "I-don't-know!"

"Take it easy. You're safe here."

But his words could not quell the horror that gripped her heart. "He disappeared. And I remained with the bodies, the blood-red bodies, stained by color that seeped into the hungry brown soil as if it were a mouth that had longed for this nourishment. The land of my foremothers, of the villagers, those who imprisoned the

vechi brbat. Don't you see? The blood went back into the earth. Where it should have gone centuries ago! Because they imprisoned him!"

Her raised voice brought Dr. Sauers storming into the room. "What's going on here? You're upsetting my patient!" She hit an intercom button on the wall and told a nurse to hurry with an injection.

"No! No more drugs! Let me be free!" Nita jumped to her feet. "Remove these chains! I did nothing to you, why are you holding me prisoner! Help! Someone help me!

Vechi brbat free me, as I freed you!"

But Nita's cries faded soon after the needle pierced her flesh. The world around her receded, the colors dimming and fading to nothing, until she could neither see nor hear those outside her with their demands and judgments and limitations. But she clearly heard the

vechi brbat, for now he could speak and he spoke to her, calling her his bride, assuring her that he would be with her always. That she would not be a prisoner forever. "One day," he promised, "you, too, must dance with me."

The Beautiful, The Damned by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Kristine Kathryn Rusch's most recent novel, Diving into the Wreck, will be published by Pyr Books in November. She is the author of more than fifty novels, including several in her popular Retrieval Artist series. Many of her novels belong to the mystery or romance genres and are published under the pen names Kristine Grayson, Kris Nelscott, and Kristine Dexter. Rusch is a prolific author of short fiction as well, much of which will be collected in the forthcoming book Recovering Apollo 8 and Other Stories. She has been nominated for the Hugo Award thirteen times, winning twice-once for writing and once for editing, making her the only person to ever win a Hugo Award in both categories. She has also won the World Fantasy Award, the Sidewise Award, and numerous Asimov's Readers Choice Awards.

Rusch describes this story as a kind of sequel to The Great Gatsby-with vampires. "For some reason, I reread The Great Gatsby every two or three years whether I need to or not," she said. "Like Nick Carraway, I am a child of the Middle West, a person who has moved away to a land that's not quite familiar and people who are a bit strange. I have always seen ties between vampirism and alcoholism (and I am the child of two alcoholics). I dealt with that tie in my novel Sins of the Blood, a vampire book, and I deal with it here too."

On one rereading of Gatsby, Rusch realized that the characters were metaphorical vampires, and that was all the inspiration she needed to come up with the tale that follows.

Chapter I