"I remember a little more now... I remember Korliss's face. I don't remember the fall or... even how I got out of the water without drowning. I remember thinking that Dullahan had been wrong again... and then... the sun rose, and everything changed... I became cold."

"...think she just moved."

"Don't... before they've hatched. The doctor... and... was dead."

"No, Fa... she just moved! Have you ever seen a dead woman move?"

"... hello? Young lady?"

Amilei's eyes opened to blindness. Nothing more than swirling white filled her vision, dimmed only by the painful tears that welled between her lashes. She closed them almost immediately, giving an involuntary groan.

"I can't..." she spoke with a thick, raspy tone that, to her ringing ears, was the irritating din of another person whispering behind her. "The light..."

"Derek, dim those lights. She's probably concussed, the poor thing," a woman's voice rang out somewhere to the apprentice's left, with neither the regality of old age nor the singsong of youth. "Father, ring the doctor back. Young lady... can you hear my voice? Say your name if you can hear me."

"A..milei." Her eyes squinted open a bit in the dimming light, enough that she could make out the form of a thirtysomething woman leaning over her, a cloth in hand.

"Ah," the woman, whose sprightly smile brought an instant, if somewhat brief, wave of warmth to the unfathomable chill that possessed Amilei's body, "I wouldn't have taken you for French. You gave us one hell of a scare, Amilei, one hell of a scare." The cloth pressed to the girl's forehead, drawing a shiver from her freezing muscles. "Don't try to talk, save your strength. Jesus... we were afraid you might not wake up. My son cried for you, he did, said that he was sad that he hadn't had the chance to meet you before you went to Heaven. But you don't need to hear such depressing talk," the woman smiled again, and as much Amilei wanted to return the expression, she could not help but think that she could never match the depth of that smile. This woman was a rare beauty... not so much in the physical sense as in the aesthetic sense, but still. "My name's Rebecca. My husband Derek found you on the road back from Longford, said that you were soaking wet, lying right next to the highway."

Amilei listened as intently as she could manage to musings of this woman, perfectly aware that Rebecca's words were intended only to keep her from slipping off again. She would correct that 'French' assumption later. As she lay there, staring upwards at the unmistakable ceiling of a mid-scale pub, her attention gradually shifted from her loquacious caretaker to the all-consuming thirst gripping the innards of her throat. Her breath clung to the roof of her mouth, as is she had swallowed a handful of cotton.

"Miss... Rebecca..." her sharp green eyes came out of focus for an instant as she spoke, "... thirsty. Please..." Rebecca smiled that same smile even as her free arm waved excitedly in the other direction.

"Derek, get a glass of water. Not too cold you silly man, she's already got the chills." A moment later a tall glass of not-too-cold water was tilted to Amilei's lips, and she drank greedily until Rebecca took the glass back, admonishing her for drinking too much, too fast.

The apprentice had just gathered the strength to reply when the first of the pains struck. It was like she had swallowed a cupful of motor oil. Her stomach muscles contracted all at once, jerking her violently into a sitting-up position while her hands clawed in vain at her chest and neck. Only the most vague understanding of her surroundings registered over the scalding agony that ran from her tongue to her gut, a scalding that only subsided when she rolled gracelessly to the hardwood floor and emptied her stomach of its new contents. Water pinked with blood spilled from between her lips in great gushing waves until she could not even lift her head from the newly filthy floor The stench of iron and bile turned her empty stomach, but there was nothing more to empty.

"Good lord,"a horrified man's voice cried out in a somewhat queasy tone itself. "Rebecca, she can't be far from gone. I'm sorry, I should have taken her straight to the doctor, I should never have brought her here."

"Shut up, Derek," Rebecca snapped, her voice quivering with what might have been sympathy thoroughly blended with a fair serving of disgust, "just shut up, and help me get her back onto the cot. Christ, she'll bleed to death for sure. Prop her head up on that pillow, Derek, and father, bring me a bucket!"

The world passed in and out of Amilei's recollection in short patches after that. She drifted off, woke a dozen times from nightmares as vague and meaningless as they were horrible. Shifting, tumbling dreams they were, whose only moments of lucidity encompassed the presence of the devil's own horseman and his sole spoken word, "Amilei." Twice she awoke to the deep bass of a wiry Irishman singing sprightly tunes, once to the warm, invasive hands of a grim-looking physician, but more often than not the only sight to greet her weary eyes was the rose-red hair and gentle, cream-colored skin of miss Rebecca's worried face. Sometimes her saviors spoke to one another, but apart from the singing on the part of Derek there was little in the way of sound within that dusty tavern. Amilei felt sure that such was the way it ought to be.

The last nightmare that passed across Amilei's mindscape was broken by something entirely different. Though the windows had been shuttered and the door tightly locked, the apprentice girl could tell that the sun had fallen behind the hills. Her clothes had been replaced with a simple hospital gown, her neck braced with a heavy bandage... apparently she had been given a second, somewhat more competent examination during her last bout with unconsciousness. She stared into the darkness, amazed at how much better she felt with the lights off, and was about to entertain the notion of attempting to stand when she felt something warm slide across her hand.

"Are you gonna die?"

Amilei turned her head, a task that proved far more arduous than she would have first thought, to behold a young boy standing at her bedside, a dark-haired lad who couldn't have yet seen seven birthdays in his entire life. His eyes shined the same soulful blue as Rebecca', but his facial features were certainly those of the honey-voiced Derek, and so the apprentice drew the obvious conclusion as to his roots.

"Not... for a long time, I hope." Her answer seemed to greatly please the boy, who wasted no time in placing a soft plush bear against the crook of her arm. She smiled down at him, deeply moved by his gesture of sympathy. "I'm Amilei..." said she, her voice retaining some semblance of its previous velvet, "... what's your name... young man...?"

"Ian," answered the boy. "Ian Connely. My mother says that you're a French woman, is that true? You don't look French." The sound of wood groaning against wood caught her attention again, as little Ian dragged a stool from the bar to her bedside, climbing to the top as if it were his own personal set of monkey bars.

"I'm not," she assured him, "my mother was, though. She lived... just outside of Bergerac. Came with my father to live in Longford long... before I was born." Ian grinned the kind of grin that only a six-year-old can manage, his eyes ever observant as he looked her over.

"I didn't think you sounded French. Mother didn't think so either, but she didn't ask because you were asleep." The child blinked, wiping his nose on a pamama sleeve in the same instant. "Are you sick?"

"Ian Connely, get yourself down from that stool and stop bothering miss Amilei. She's not well, you little scamp, she needs her rest."

"Mother, she's feeling much better. Lookit, she's talking to me!" Despite Ian's observation, the little fellow hopped down from the stool and raced to his mother's skirted legs, looking happily upward. "She looks better." Rebecca reached down and patted her son's tousled hair, but her eyes remained locked upon Amilei as she approached the bedside.

"You'll have to excuse things here," she explained to the bedridden apprentice girl, "my father has this lunatic notion that you've brought a curse under our roof." The bank of her hand pressed gently against Amilei's forehead, checking her temperature in the only way she knew. "The only thing I worry about is that the boys might take a shining to you. Do you want another blanket?"

"A blanket?" Amilei blinked, smiled a recovering smile. "No, thank you... I feel much warmer."

"That's odd," the taverness frowned, "because your skin is freezing cold. You're white as a sheet, and you aren't shaking or chattering your teeth at all." Amilei tilted her head, grimacing when the bandage at her neck caught and pulled her hair. Rebecca took hold of the stained material, peeled it back with a sigh.

A sigh that became a gasp in a great hurry.

"What's wrong, miss...?"

Rebecca didn't answer at first. Amilei tilted her head back the other way, eyes inquisitive.

"Miss Rebecca?"

The bandage slipped out of Rebecca's hand.

Her eyes locked upon the two round scars near the base of Amilei's neck.

"Vampire..."