"I don"t see how you can," she said. "I mean, you went in, and you said you fight vampires all the time. You must be incredibly brave."

"No," I replied. "Bravery is about overcoming fear, not about not having it. There"s plenty I"m afraid of. Just not vampires."

"We fear the unknown," she said. "You must know a lot about vampires."

I nodded and moved my flight bag around to get more comfortable. It was still unzipped, but the sides were pushed together at the top.

"How to fight them, I mean," she added. "Since no one really knows anything else. That"s the worst thing. When my sister was in... infected and then later, when she was... was killed, I really wanted to know, and there was no one to tell me anything"

"What did you want to know?" I asked. I"ve always been p.r.o.ne to show-off to pretty girls. If it isn"t surfing, it"s secret knowledge. Though sharing the secret knowledge only occurred in special cases, when I knew it would go no further.

"Everything we don"t know," sighed Jenny. "What are they, really? Why have they suddenly appeared all over the place in the last ten years, when we all thought they were just... just made-up."

"They"re killing machines," I explained. "Bioengineered self-replicating guerilla soldiers, dropped here kind of by mistake a long time ago. They"ve been in hiding mostly, waiting for a signal or other stimuli to activate. Certain frequencies of radiowaves will do it, and the growth of cellphone use..."

"So what, vampires get irritated by cellphones?"

A smile started to curl up one side of her mouth. I smiled too, and kept talking.

"You see, way back when, there were these good aliens and these bad aliens, and there was a gigantic s.p.a.ce battle-"

Jenny started laughing.

"Do you want me to do a personality test before I can hear the rest of the story?"

"I think you"d pa.s.s," I said. I had tried to make her laugh, even though it was kind of true about the aliens and the s.p.a.ce battle. Only there were just bad aliens and even worse aliens, and the vampires had been dropped on Earth by mistake. They had been meant for a world where the nights were very long.

Jenny kept laughing and looked down, just for an instant. I moved at my highest speed-and she died laughing, the splinter working instantly on both human nervous system and the twenty-four-hours-old infestation of vampire nanoware.

We had lost the war, which was why I was there, cleaning up one of our mistakes. Why I would be on Earth for countless years to come.

I felt glad to have my straightforward purpose, my a.s.signed task. It is too easy to become involved with humans, to want more for them, to interfere with their lives. I didn"t want to make the boss"s mistake. I"m not human and I don"t want to become human or make them better people. I was just going to follow orders, keep cleaning out the infestation, and that was that.

The bite was low on Jenny"s neck, almost at the shoulder. I showed it to the VET people and asked them to do the rest.

I didn"t stay to watch. My arm hurt, and I could hear a girl laughing, somewhere deep within my head.

Life is the Teacher.

by Carrie Vaughn.

Carrie Vaughn is the bestselling author of the Kitty Norville series, which started with Kitty and the Midnight Hour. The seventh Kitty novel, Kitty"s House of Horrors, is due out in January 2010. Her short work has appeared many times in Realms of Fantasy and in a number of anthologies, such as The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance and Fast Ships, Black Sails, and is forthcoming in Warriors, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.

Vaughn says that the modern seductive vampire is very different from the old-school folklore vampire. "It"s an interesting evolution seeing how the one became the other in film and fiction," she said. "I think audiences are intrigued by the power-supernatural power, seductive power, political power-that vampires are made to wield. They become these avatars for the dangerous and alluring."

This story, which first appeared in the anthology Hotter Than h.e.l.l, is about a new vampire learning to hunt, using her newfound powers of supernatural seduction.

Emma slid under the surface of the water and stayed there. She lay in the tub, on her back, and stared up at a world made soft, blurred with faint ripples. An unreal world viewed through a distorted filter. For minutes-four, six, ten-she stayed under water, and didn"t drown, because she didn"t breathe. Would never breathe again.

The world looked different through these undead eyes. Thicker, somehow. And also, strangely, clearer.

Survival seemed like such a curious thing once you"d already been killed.

This was her life now. She didn"t have to stay here. She could end it any time she wanted just by opening the curtains at dawn. But she didn"t.

Sitting up, she pushed back her soaking hair and rained water all around her with the noise of a rushing stream. Outside the blood-warm bath, her skin chilled in the air. She felt every little thing, every little current-from the vent, from a draft from the window, coolness eddying along the floor, striking the walls. She shivered. Put the fingers of one hand on the wrist of the other and felt no pulse.

After spreading a towel on the floor, she stepped from the bath.

She looked at herself: she didn"t look any different. Same slim body, smooth skin, young b.r.e.a.s.t.s the right size to cup in her hands, nipples the color of a bruised peach. Her skin was paler than she remembered. So pale it was almost translucent. Bloodless.

Not for long.

She dried her brown hair so it hung straight to her shoulders and dressed with more care than she ever had before. Not that the clothes she put on were by any means fancy, or new, or anything other than what she"d already had in her closet: a tailored silk shirt over a black lace camisole, jeans, black leather pumps, and a few choice pieces of jewelry, a couple of thin silver chains and dangling silver earrings. Every piece, every seam, every fold of fabric, produced an effect, and she wanted to be sure she produced the right effect: young, confident, alluring. Without, of course, looking like she was trying to produce such an effect. It must seem casual, thrown together, effortless. She switched the earrings from one ear to the other because they didn"t seem to lay right the other way.

This must be what a prost.i.tute felt like.

Dissatisfied, she went upstairs to see Alette.

The older woman was in the parlor, waiting in a wingback chair. The room was decorated in tasteful antiques, Persian rugs, and velvet-upholstered furniture, with thick rich curtains hanging over the windows. Books crammed into shelves and a silver tea service ornamented the mantel. For all its opulent decoration, the room had a comfortable, natural feel to it. Its owner had come by the decor honestly. The Victorian atmosphere was genuine.

Alette spoke with a refined British accent. "You don"t have to do this."

Alette was the most regal, elegant woman Emma knew. An apparent thirty years old, she was poised, dressed in a silk skirt and jacket, her brunette hair tied in a bun, her face like porcelain. She was over four hundred years old.

Emma was part of her clan, her Family, by many ties, from many directions. By blood, Alette was Emma"s ancestor, a many-greats grandmother. Closer, Alette had made the one who in turn had made Emma.

That had been unplanned. Emma hadn"t wanted it. The man in question had been punished. He was gone now, and Alette had taken care of her: mother, mentor, mistress.

"You can"t bottle feed me forever," Emma replied. In this existence, that meant needles, IV tubes, and a willing donor. It was so clinical.

"I can try," Alette said, her smile wry.

If Emma let her, Alette would take care of her forever. Literally forever. But that felt wrong, somehow. If Emma was going to live like this, then she ought to live. Not cower like a child.

"Thank you for looking after me. I"m not trying to sound ungrateful, but-"

"But you want to be able to look after yourself."

Emma nodded, and again the wry smile touched Alette"s lips. "Our family has always had the most awful streak of independence."

Emma"s laugh startled her. She didn"t know she still could.

"Remember what I"ve taught you," Alette said, rising from her chair and moving to stand with Emma. "How to choose. How to lure him. How to leave him. Remember how I"ve taught you to see, and to feel. And remember to only take a little. If you take it all, you"ll kill him. Or risk condemning him to this life."

"I remember." The lessons had been difficult. She"d had to learn to see the world with new eyes.

Alette smoothed Emma"s hair back from her face and arranged it over her shoulders-an uncharacteristic bit of fidgeting. "I know you do. And I know you"ll be fine. But if you need anything, please-"

"I"ll call," Emma finished. "You won"t send anyone to follow me, will you?"

"No," she said. "I won"t."

"Thank you."

Alette kissed her cheek and sent her to hunt alone for the first time.

Alette had given her advice: go somewhere new, in an unfamiliar neighborhood, where she wasn"t likely to meet someone from her old life, therefore making her less likely to encounter complications of emotion or circ.u.mstance.

Emma didn"t take this advice.

She"d been a student at George Washington University. Officially, she"d taken a leave of absence, but she wasn"t sure she"d ever be able to continue her studies and finish her degree. There were always night cla.s.ses, sure...but it was almost a joke, and like most anything worth doing, easier said than done.

There was a place, a bar where she and her friends used to go sometimes when cla.s.ses got out. They"d arrive just in time for happy hour, when they could buy two-dollar hamburgers and cheap pitchers of beer. They"d eat supper, play a few rounds of pool, b.i.t.c.h about cla.s.ses and papers they hadn"t written yet. On weekends they"d come late and play pool until last call. A completely normal life.

That was what Emma found herself missing, a few months into this new life. Laughing with her friends. Maybe she should have gone someplace else for this, found new territory. But she wanted to see the familiar.

She came in through the front and paused, blinked a couple of times, took a deep breath through her nose to taste the air. And the world slowed down. Noise fell to a low hum, the lights seemed to brighten, and just by turning her head a little she could see it all. Thirty-four people packed into the first floor of this converted townhouse. Twelve sat at the bar, two worked behind the bar, splashing their way through the fumes of a dozen different kinds of alcohol. Their sweat mixed with those fumes, two kinds of heat blending with the third ashy odor of cigarette smoke. This place was hot with bodies. Five beating hearts played pool around two tables in the back, three more watched-these were female. Girlfriends. The smell of competing testosterone was ripe. All the rest crammed around tables or stood in empty s.p.a.ces, putting alcohol into their bodies, their blood-Emma could smell it through their pores. She caught all this in a glance, in a second.

She could feel the clear paths by the way the air moved. Incredibly, she could feel the whole room, all of it pressing gently against her skin. As if she looked down on it from above. As if she commanded it. There-that couple at the table in the corner was fighting. The woman stared into her tumbler of gin and tonic while her foot tapped a nervous beat on the floor. Her boyfriend stared at her, frowning hard, his arms crossed, his scotch forgotten.

Emma could have him if she wanted. His blood was singing with need. He would be easy to persuade, to lure away from his difficulty. A chance meeting by the bathrooms, an unseen exit out the back- No. Not like that.

A quartet of boisterous, drunken men burst into laughter in front of her. Raucous business school types, celebrating some exam or finished project. She knew how to get to them, too. Stumble perhaps. Lean an accidental arm on a shoulder, gasp an apology-and the one who met her gaze first would be the one to follow her.

Instead, she went to the bar, and despite the crowd, the press of bodies jostling for s.p.a.ce, her path there was clear, and a s.p.a.ce opened for her just as she arrived because she knew it would be there.

She wanted to miss the taste of alcohol. She could remember the taste of wine, the tang on the tongue, the warmth pa.s.sing down her throat. She remembered great dinners, her favorite Mexican food, overstuffed burritos with sour cream and chile verde, with a big, salty margarita. She wanted to miss it with a deep and painful longing. But the memories turned her stomach. The thought of consuming anything made her feel sick. Anything except blood.

The gla.s.s of wine before her remained untouched. It was only for show.

She never would have done this in the old days. Sitting alone at the bar like this, staring into her drink-she looked like she was trying to get picked up.

Well, wasn"t she?

When the door opened and a laughing crowd of friends entered, Emma turned and smiled in greeting. Even before the door had opened, she"d known somehow. She"d sensed the sound of a voice, the tone of a footstep, the scent of skin, a ripple in the air. She couldn"t have remembered such fine details from her old life. But somehow, she"d known. She knew them.

"Emma!"

"Hey, Chris." Finally, her smile felt like her old smile. Her old friends gathered around, leaned in for hugs, and she obliged them. But the one who spoke to her, the one she focused on, was Chris.

He was six feet tall, with wavy blond hair and a clean-shaven, handsome face, still boyish but filling out nicely. He had a shy smile and laughing eyes.

"Where"ve you been? I haven"t seen you in weeks. The registrar"s office said you took a leave of absence."

She had her story all figured out. It wasn"t even a lie, really.

"I"ve been sick," she said.

"You couldn"t even call?"

"Really sick." She pressed her lips in a thin smile, hoping she sounded sad.

"Yeah, I guess." He took the cue not to press the question further. He brightened. "But you look great now. Really great."

There it was, a spark in his eye, a flush in his cheek. She"d always wondered if he liked her. She"d never been sure. Now, she had tools. She had senses. And she looked great. It wasn"t her, a bitter voice sounded inside her. It was this thing riding her, this creature inside her. It was a lure, a trap.

Looking great made men like Chris blush. Now, she could use it. She knew how to respond. She"d always been uncertain before.

She lowered her gaze, smiled, then looked at him warmly, searching. "Thanks."

"I-I guess you already have a drink."

The others had moved off to claim one of the pool tables. Chris remained, leaning on the bar beside her, nervously tapping his foot.

Compared to him, Emma had no trouble radiating calm. She was in control here.

"Let me get you something," she said.

For a moment-for a long, lingering, blissful moment-it felt like old times. They only talked, but the conversation was long and heartfelt. He really listened to her. So she kept talking-so much so that she almost got to the truth.

"I"ve had to rea.s.sess everything. What am I going to do with my life, what"s the point of it all." She shrugged, letting the implications settle.

"You must have been really sick," he said, his gaze intent.

"I thought I was going to die," she said, and it wasn"t a lie. She didn"t remember much of it-the man, the monster"s hand on her face, on her arms, pinning her to the bed. She wanted to scream, but the sound caught in her throat. And however frightened she was, her body responded to his touch, flushed, shuddered toward him, and this made her ashamed. She hoped that he would kill her rather than turn her. But she awoke again and the world was different.

"You make it sound like you"re not coming back."

"Hm?" she murmured, startled out of her memory.

"To school. You aren"t coming back, are you?"

"I don"t know," she said, wanting to be honest, knowing she couldn"t tell him everything. "It"d be hard, after what"s happened. I just don"t know." This felt so casual, so normal, that she almost forgot she had a purpose here. That she was supposed to be guiding this conversation. She surprised herself by knowing what to say next. "This is going to sound really cliche, but when you think you aren"t going to make it like that, it really does change how you look at things. You really do try to live for the moment. You don"t have time to screw around anymore."

Which was ironic, because really, she had all the time in the world.

Chris hung on her words. "No, it doesn"t sound cliche at all. It sounds real."

"I just don"t think I have time anymore for school. I"d rather, you know-live."

This sounded awful-so false and ironic.