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I would kill you, mortal vampyre, before you did this.

You would kill your child? For when I die, your son within me also dies. I could practically hear her smile as she drifted into deep sleep, knowing how these words would be like daggers to my heart. My bond to her had not yet loosened, and though I could not trust her, I also could not risk losing her.

When the sun sank below the horizon, and twilight darkened, I opened my eyes.

She sat above me, looking down as if studying me. "You and I are so different," she said. "Still, I feel as if you know me more than anyone has."

"It is the breath of the Sacred Kiss," I said, sleepily. "It binds us."

"No," she said, her mood darkening a bit. "It is something more."

She had already drawn off all the rocks and dirt that had covered us in the day. The night was thick with clouds and silence. I smelled rain as if at some distance.

"We could return," she said.

"What?"

"A night's journey to the shore. Not to Nezahual. There is a country deep to the south of Aztlanteum. Emerald jungles rise up along twisting brown rivers, where none know the paths, but many mortals live. Abandoned cities from the first age of the Great Serpent still stand, carved from cavern walls lying deep in hollowed wells. You and I would be gods there, Falconer, as our tribe was in nights long past. Our child would be born, untouched by these pains and prophecies. He would grow to be king. I would grow old, but I am not jealous. You could take other lovers."

I sat up and grabbed her at the shoulder, wishing to shake her. "You would say anything to save your own skin."

She tugged away from me. She flashed a sullen look like a scheming child and pushed herself up. She stood over me, as if about to say something, and then thought better of it. She walked to the edge of the rock shelf that jutted out over the sea and pointed back to where our journey had begun. "It is not so far. You can hate me there as well as here."

"You know what I must do."

"How do you keep a dream from becoming flesh?" Pythia asked. "Medhya is a dream all vampyres know of, yet few have known her. A phantom. The darkness of night itself, held back by the Veil. She whispers like her Myrrydanai jackals."

"Like the Great Serpent," I said.

She half smiled as she looked at me, watching my face as if I might betray some knowledge. "You have never seen the Serpent?"

"In visions, I have seen a statue. I have felt his power in the stream"

"My father spoke with the Serpent, as did the Nahhashim priests, and the Myrrydanai before their souls became corrupt. He is all around us, they tell us. I don't believe it. I was a priestess—a Pythoness—and only felt stirrings of him. To make us guardians of mortals. These are stories priests use to control us. I think the Great Serpent has been vanquished, a dream disturbed. Medhya will come into this world in flesh. It is you—and this ritual—that will bring her to flesh and blood. Do you think I will live through this? Your child? Will he be born if you do this? You cannot understand how the mortal world exists until you have watched lifetimes pass, Falconer. When you came to me, in the tower of Hedammu, I did not know you were anything other than a young soldier, ready to be bled. When I brought the Sacred Kiss to you, I saw where your journey will end."

"I saw this, too," I said. "On an altar stone. You wear this mask."

She glanced back at me. "I did not see the mask in my own vision. I saw you, looking at me. I saw a curved blade in your hand, like no other—it was jeweled and made of a burning gold. All around us, I felt her. Medhya. Standing near. Waiting for the Veil to tear. I heard the first whispers of the Myrrydanai priests, for the Sacred Kiss had awakened them. You—coming to Hedamm—to my tower—to my arms. This brought them."

"You can't be afraid of this," I told her. "You can't run from what you see in visions. Not everything that has been foretold will come to pass."

She shook her head, closing her eyes. "You came to pass. I had a vision of you long before we met."

"Why did you run from me then?"

She closed her eyes and in opening them scanned the darkening sky. "Let us not argue. We can cross a thousand miles or more if we fly swift and true." Her wings spread from her shoulders, and I remembered how she had been terrified when she had given me the kiss that brought the breath of immortality into my lungs.

I grabbed her by the wrists. "Why did you run from me if you knew these visions?"

"Let go of me," she snarled, shaking of my hands. "I saw your destruction. I saw my own death. A terrible shadow descended upon the earth, a terrible cry from the earth itself. I saw your doom. Mine as well. That is where your journey takes you, Falconer—Maz-Sherah—to your Extinguishing."

Is this yet another game of yours?"

Her eyes lit up in anger. Her lips curved downward as she spoke.

"Yes, I am playing games. A liar. Thief. Betrayer. Believe that, if you like. It will serve you well when you watch them murder your child that grows within me. When they kill me."

More softly, I said, "There are others who suffer. I would not save my own flesh and know that I leave them to die in torment."

"They are mortal. They will die whether tomorrow, or in a thousand tomorrows."

"Some are of our tribe."

"Like the youth named Ewen who was like a ewe, tagging after you as if you were the great vampyre lord."

"He... I could not have survived without him."

"Yes, you love him. You with your mortal traits still intact. After more than a hundred years or so, those instincts erode."

As I remembered Ewen, something struck me. "How could you know about him? You had fled when I brought him back to life." In an instant, it came to me. "You... followed us?"

She moved away from me, never letting her glance leave me. "Did you think I just vanished? When the breath passes from one vampyre to another, the stream between them grows deep."

"How long did you follow?"

"Until I saw you and your companions heading toward your capture," she said. "I could not follow you there. But I have felt you since. I sensed you. I hid from those whispering shadows of the myrrydanai. When the plagues came, I saw the ice of Medhya's breath. But I knew you existed. Even in the obsidian city of Ixtar, I knew you would come to me."

"You left us there, all those years."

"What is a decade among my many thousands of years?" She narrowed her eyeslids, as if trying to judge what to reveal and what to keep secret. "The mask called to me. You do not understand because you have not felt its call. I wished to put the seas of the earth between us that I might never see you again. You are my destruction, Falconer. I know this."

She ran toward the shoreline, leaping into the air, as her wings bore her aloft. I followed after—the creature that had killed me, and brought me to this existence, was my only hope—for our fates were bound together.

We soared upward. The heaviness of night drew close in a quiet mist that descended across the sea.

7
As we flew, hour by hour, I did not see anything but the dark of sky and sea and the ghost-light of the stars beyond the mist.

After many such hours, when the wind had stilled, I felt the slight warmth of a slow daybreak like a soft warning behind us, in the east, hours away, yet it bothered me to know it would come. My breath began to feel ragged. Thirst tore at my throat and dried my mouth. The pain of it had begun to grow intense, but I did not want to drink from Pythia gain, for it would weaken her more than it would strengthen me.

Pythia did not fare much better. She began flying low, almost down to the waves themselves, as if expecting to dive below them should the sun reach out with its fire toward her.

The sky went from blackness to a rich purple, and we both knew the sun would burn the skies behind us within a few hours.

I saw vague shapes as if great luminous beasts lurked in the depths of the sea—serpents and tentacled creatures, behemoths and leviathans roaming the wide ocean; some I would alter come to know as whales and dolphins and large schools of squid, others vanished from the earth before mortals could observe them.

I saw what seemed to be human faces of creatures as they swam, clinging to the backs of rays and long narrow fish as they moved along the surface of the water.

As we soared farther, the sea calmed as if dead. It grew heavy and impenetrable with weed and grass at its surface.

This made me think there might be some island nearby. As we went into the fog that thickened around us, I had nearly lost hope.

The stillness of the mist, and the quiet of the water—not twenty feet below where we flew—gave me an ominous sense that we had somehow left the sea itself and had crossed the Veil.

After an hour of flying through this, I began to feel the hackles of panic along my wingspan. Within the stream, I felt Pythia's movement draw me from the moonless sky, to a great ship with its sails slack, a prisoner within this silent calm sea.

Here was our island for the morning.

We would have extinguished in the sunlight above the great sea to the west of Aztlanteum had Pythia not seen the ship, still in the middle of the sea, as if docked.

With less than an hour to sunrise, we dove down as if falling toward the vessel.

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