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step out.”
    She did, bracing for that first splash of rain. But it didn’t come. She took another step. Still nothing. She made it to the middle of the porch and was still dry, while rain beat down all around her.She looked up. There was nothing over her head. Nothing to shelter her. She turned toward Vasic.
    “Put your hand out,” he said softly.
    She did, and felt the hard sting of the fast-falling rain against her palm. Then the rain softened, and turned cold. Ice-cold. Snow covered her hand. She stared at Vasic.
    “Do you still want to know?” he asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Then come inside and I’ll tell you.”

T WILIGHT

 
    A nother life taken. Another year to live.
    That is the bargain that rules our existence. We feed off blood, but for three hundred and sixty-four days a year, it is merely that: feeding. Yet before the anniversary of our rebirth as vampires, we must drain the lifeblood of one person. Fail and we begin the rapid descent into death.
    As I sipped white wine on the outdoor patio, I watched the steady stream of passersby. Although there was a chill in the air—late autumn coming fast and sharp—the patio was crowded, no one willing to surrender the dream of summer quite yet. Leaves fluttering onto the tables were lauded as decorations. The scent of a distant wood fire was willfully mistaken for candles. The sun, almost gone despite the still-early hour, only added romance to the meal. All embellishments to the night, not signs of impending winter.
    I sipped my wine and watched night fall. At the next table, a lone businessman eyed me. That was the sort of man I often had the misfortune to attract—middle-aged and prosperous, laboring under the delusion that success and wealth were such irresistible lures that he could allow his waist and jowls to thicken unchecked.
    Under other circumstances, I might have returned the attention, let him lead me to some tawdry motel, then taken
my
dinner. He would survive, of course, waking weakened and blaming it on too much wine. A meal without guilt. Any man who took such a chance with a stranger—particularly when he bore a wedding band—deserved an occasional bout of morning-after discomfort.
    He did not, however, deserve to serve as my annual kill. Yet I found myself toying with the idea more than I should have, prodded by a niggling voice that told me I was already late.
    I stared at the glow over the horizon. The sun had set on the anniversary of my rebirth, and I hadn’t taken a life. While I would hardly explode into dust at midnight, I would weaken as I began the descent into death. I could avoid that simply by fulfilling my bargain.
    I measured the darkness, deemed it enough for hunting, then laid a twenty on the table and left.
    A bell tolled ten. Two hours left. I chastised myself for being so dramatic. I loathe vampires given to theatrics—those who have read too many horror novels and labor under the delusion that’s how they’re supposed to behave. I despise any sign of it in myself, and yet, under the circumstances, perhaps it could be forgiven.
    In all the years that came before this, I had never reached this date without fulfilling my obligation. I had chosen this vampiric life and would not risk losing it through carelessness.
    Only once had I ever come close to my rebirth day without fulfilling the bargain, and then due to circumstances beyond my control. It had been 1867 … or perhaps 1869. I’d been hunting for my annual victim when I’d found myself tossed into a Hungarian prison.
    I hadn’t been caught at my kill—I’d never made so amateurish a mistake even when I’d been an amateur. The prison sojourn had been Aaron’s fault, as such things usually were. We’d been hunting my victim when he’d come across a nobleman whipping a servant in the street. Naturally, Aaron couldn’t ignore such an injustice. In the ensuing brawl, I’d been rousted with him and thrown into a pest-infested cell that wouldn’t pass any modern