Abel had never wanted to say so much-and so little-to his brother as now in the months after his bloodlust had begun. They walked together side by side through the forest as they attempted to find food that would be nourishing and hearty. More likely, however, was that they would take whatever food they could find. If they could find any.

"How are you feeling, brother?" Abel asked once they had come to stop beneath a tree. To give them enough stamina and energy they needed to get through to the next stopping point they boys made a snack out of some fallen, bruised apples. At first Abel no longer found normal food satisfying, but he could still eat it in between feeding on blood. It helped hold of his predatory instincts a little longer, and he found he could go as much as two weeks without feeding. As time went on, he found himself less and less able to eat normal food, although he didn't have to hunt much more often. Soon, he knew, he would not be able to eat ordinary food at all, and then Cain would ask questions. . . .

Cain. He would be sixteen soon. Abel could warn him. It would be better that way.

Cain finished chewing a piece of the apple and then sighed. "I'm fine, Abel. How do you feel?" Cain asked, his eyebrows raised in a questioning pose.

"I am well. Can I ask you something?" Abel mused, looking at a butterfly hovering over Cain's hair.

"Sure," Cain replied gamely.

"Did Eve . . . did you collapse and then Eve gave you the bite, or were you conscious?"

Cain was unsure how to respond. After Eve had changed them, both boys had been unconscious for days, days in which Cain could not be sure if he was losing his mind or not. During the transformation, Cain at times felt terrified as he hallucinated that he was chained to a wall inside a cave. Other moments he felt blissfully at ease when an exotic-looking young woman bathed his feet in a pool of clear blue water and he sipped from a chalice of red liquid. It was confusing to him, what, if any of it, had happened and what had not. He was embarrassed-embarrassed by the things the exotic-young woman had done with him in what he thought was the privacy of his dream.

"I was conscious. She had already bitten you-that was after you collapsed from malnourishment and exhaustion. When she was done, she came over to me. I let her. I let her bite me," Cain said, "and I let her drip her blood into the wound."

Abel watched his brother as keenly. "Why did you do it? I would have run. Do you remember what Mama and Papa told us about vampires when we were back home with them?" Abel asked.

"Mama and Papa said that the vampires cannot be trusted. They said that vampires are evil, creatures of the Lord of Death. They do the bidding of the underworld and prey on the souls and blood of the living," Cain noted, his voice stretched and pained, his eyes glazed over as if he were living life somewhere else. "I had a dream-" he began, and then fell silent, flushing.

Abel folded his hands behind his back, head bowed. "When Eve bit you," he said dully, finishing his brother's sentence. "I dreamed as well, but I thought it was only a dream."

"This is about why you keep disappearing," Cain said suddenly, realizing. "Or . . . is it?"

"It is." Abel shook his head, as if to clear out cobweb thoughts. "I have to tell you this. I don't know where to begin, but-Cain, vampires are real."

His brother was watching him expectantly, waiting for what Abel really needed to say.

"Cain," Abel said quietly, his voice strained, "we're vampires."

Cain laughed. "No we aren't. That's impossible. We don't drink blood." He caught his brother's expression. "That is, I don't . . ."

"It started on my sixteenth birthday," Abel explained reluctantly, and then recounted what had happened that night, and what had happened since, and what was happening now. "I could barely eat that apple. In another month, maybe two, I won't be able to eat at all."

"It's almost my birthday," Cain whispered, eyes wide, never for a moment doubting his brother's words. "Why didn't you tell me any of this sooner?"

Abel squeezed his eyes shut, and bloody tears oozed out. "Because I was frightened," he admitted in a ragged voice. "Because I didn't understand. Because I wondered if it would be better to kill you before you became like this-like me. Before you become evil too."

"You're not evil," Cain said stanchly.

Abel shook his head again.

"You aren't," Cain repeated. "All our parents told us were legends. We decide our own rules."

Abel turned to him swiftly, fiercely, and for the first time, Cain saw his brother's new, impossible swiftness. "Rule," he said sharply. "One, absolute rule: never make any more of our kind. Never bite a human. Swear it, Cain. Swear it to me now! We never spread this curse."

"I swear," Cain said fervently, digging his fingers into the bruised, half-eaten apple.

The brothers walked on, under sun-dappled trees, and Cain realized that Abel had, since his birthday, avoided standing in full, open sunlight. His heart clenched, but he dared not ask. He turned his mind to other questions, and eventually spoke again.

"Can I be honest with you, brother?" Cain asked, finding a seemingly endless amount of fascinating details in the bruised, half-eaten apple.

"Yes, of course," Abel replied. He felt his hands start to sweat and brushed them on his thick fur trousers.

Cain said, "I am suspicious of Eve. I know that we are supposed to want to save the dragons just like Mama and Papa did, but I have hatred for them so severe it rocks me to my core. Sometimes I just cannot breathe because my chest feels tight."

"I do not think that Eve wants to hurt us," Abel said thoughtfully. "I think she is confused by her own motivations. She wants to go to Eden to destroy Amos, yet she also wants to save him because he was one of her childhood friends. I don't think I understand it any better than she does."

Cain nodded his head and finally dragged his eyes over to his brother's. "Maybe we were not supposed to be dragon saviors like our parents were," Cain suggested, clearly afraid to voice the reservations he had held for a while now.

"Perhaps not."

"Perhaps," Cain went on daringly, "we're supposed to be the ones to wipe them out."

"Perhaps," Abel said noncommittally. "I suppose we'll learn, in time."

"I suppose we need to stick with Eve, for now," Cain muttered. "Maybe for a long time."

"Why do you think that, brother?" Abel asked.

"Well, first of all, there are things she can teach us. There are things she knows, that we have to make her tell us, things about survival, things that could come in handy one day. And second, do you remember what Prophetess Talia said to us?"

"Of course. You think that Eve is the woman we were fated to meet? One of the women, I mean."

"I'm not sure, but I intend to find out," Cain answered. "Besides, we have nothing to lose by letting Eve succeed in killing Amos. If she dies afterward, whether it is by our hand or someone else's, we have to restore humanity to its rightful place."

Abel nodded. "Come on," he said, stomping his feet on the hard crust of snow beneath them. "We better start heading back. The sun is beginning to set."