Farid turned his head towards me. "So you want me to tell you everything?"

I nodded.

"I don't know everything," he said. "But if I told you the little bit I do know, we'd probably be talking here for weeks."

"I'm not going anywhere."

He smiled—and the smile lingered for more than a heartbeat. "Okay. Let me start with something you mentioned earlier today. You said it doesn't make sense for them to be here." He gestured at the cave's exit. "Why should the U.N. Peacekeepers send a ship to this forsaken island? But it does make sense. Them and the plane crash, it's all linked."

"Are they looking for survivors?"

He nodded. "In a sense, yes. Do you remember that our flight was delayed?"

"Yes." I had spent hours reading at Hong Kong airport.

"I should have realized it back then. This was all part of their plan. As I told you, I was with a group of people on that plane. All of us were..." He hesitated.

"Vampires?" I tried to add ridicule to the word, but it came out fearful.

"Yes, Vampires if you want to use that word. We had a meeting in Hong Kong with others from all over the world. We were discussing business, and we were forging plans to fight those who are trying to kill us... those that run the soldiers out there. They hold high positions in the U.N. and in some government institutions. They're... vampires, too. And they're calling themselves the Syndicate. Anyway, after our meeting, many of us took that plane. Only, the Syndicate knew about it, apparently. They must have delayed the flight and tampered with the plane. As I told you, they're powerful and influential. They'd be able to pull this off. Many of the passengers were booked into other flights. None of our group, though. I should have become suspicious right then. But I didn't." He pressed his lips into a thin line and shook his head.

"Not all other passengers were booked into different flights."

"Right. I guess they didn't do that because it would have made the set-up too obvious. So they sacrificed normal people, too. Anyway, they must have sent someone to sabotage the plane. You remember what Pamela said about the incident? She said that all electronics went dead when the engines stopped and that it was weird."

I nodded.

"That sounds like sabotage, doesn't it? And later, the explosion... what are the chances of the two events hitting the same plane on a single flight? And that bomb went off right where most of us were. Bruna and I had been assigned to new seats, maybe to trim the aircraft, which probably was why we survived."

My head swam in a sea of questions.

"And why didn't they... the people from that Syndicate, arrive right after we crashed, to finish off any survivors?"

"Pamela told us the pilot had changed course during the descent. And it was quite a long glide. They probably had to search a vast area."

I tried to make sense of it all.

Here I was—lying feet over head in a narrow tunnel on a lonely island in the Pacific, next to a man who might be a vampire, hunted by the U.N. Peacekeepers.

I closed my eyes and opened them again. Still stuck here, and so was he.

In spite of it all, I felt calm and lucid.

"What does this Syndicate want?" I asked.

"As far as we know, foremost they want to keep our existence secret. They're in influential positions, rich, probably wealthy beyond measure, and they live for centuries. All of that might change when the world learns of our existence. So they eradicate any of us who's not a member of their group and who hasn't sworn them allegiance."

"So, they're the bad guys," I said. "And you're the good ones? What's your business then?" Would he be any better than the people hunting us?

"Business?"

"You said you were discussing business in Hong Kong when you met."

"Right," he said. "When you live as long as we do, you tend to accumulate wealth. We're investing our funds—specialized long-term investments. That's the business we talked about."

"So, if you're so rich, why did your friends travel economy?"

"When traveling together, we try to be inconspicuous. This time, we pretended to be a group of middle-class salespeople on a trip to Asia."

"And what kind of specialized long-term investments do you run, exactly?"

"One of our focus points is the blood plasma industry. Comes in handy for us."

I snorted. "Seriously?"

"Seriously." He looked at me and gave me a full-sized grin. "It may sound funny, but I'm not kidding."

"Don't strain your face muscles there."

"Why?"

"You're not used to smiling. If you smile that much, your muscles might be sore tomorrow. And you might have run out of smiles the day you die."

His smile remained, though. He turned to his side and faced me. I did likewise, breaking contact with him. The gap between us measured a hand's width.

His eyes twinkled, probably a trick of the light seeping through the small gap.

"You do look much better when you smile," I said. "You should do it more often."

Darn, was I flirting with the guy?

"Smiling's not easy, you know, when your whole life is ruled by craving."

"Craving?"

"Craving for blood." His smile had left.

"And how do you deal with it?"

"Some of us fight it, try to stay detached, away from temptations, seeking another release for their passion, such as art or science, whatever helps you focus on other stuff. And we drink blood plasma. That's me, probably. You know, when you get used to suppressing emotions, all of them, it becomes easier over time."

Farid the non-smiler.

"But some of us," he continued, "they live it. They don't rein in their instincts. For them, blood plasma is but a pale copy of the true thing."

"Bruna?" I wondered if she was still alive.

"Yes. Under her calm looks, she's wild and ferocious. When the craving hits her, she won't stop until she's tasted blood, fresh blood. She's a hunter and a killer. That's why I didn't want you to be alone with her."

"And how do you cope with it?" I prodded his chest with a finger. I felt I knew the answer—he coped by fleeing into detachment and books.

"I killed." His gaze wandered to the muddy ground between us. "Back in 1910 when I caught it, the virus, I was sick for weeks, and I almost died. But I survived and grew better. The craving took hold of me then. It filled me, ruled my every thought and muscle. And I had the means to satisfy it. The disease had left me strong, powerful... invincible almost, and full of livid anger. So I sought out the invaders, the French and Spanish. The soldiers who had caught my comrades and me. Those who had wielded the whips to tear my skin. And the officers who had given them their orders. I killed them all and drank their blood, relishing every moment of their dread and every drop of their life... and hating myself for it."

His fingers dug deep furrows into the mud.

"Then," he continued, "one night I ran into the old man, the one I had caught the disease from. The one who had turned me into the monster that I was. It was in an alley in Agadir, late at night. I recognized him in an instant, and he recognized me. He seemed glad to find me alive. I wasn't, and I attacked him. As I said, he was old for our kind and frail, no match for me. He was down in an instant, in a puddle of his blood. He didn't seem unhappy, though. He smiled at me. Then he told me about the disease and what little he knew about it. And you know what he said then, his last words?"

It was a rhetorical question. I just shrugged. Mere inches separated his fingers from mine.

"He said 'forgive yourself'. That's all. I wasn't sure what he meant by it, but that night, I decided to stop it. To stop the killing. There was just one more kill I had on my list... myself."

The last word was not much more than a whisper, yet it pained me.

I moved my pinky to touch his hand.

"But I was too much of a coward for that," he continued, not pulling away the finger I touched. "So I tried restraint instead. But it didn't work. At some point, the craving always grew too strong. Sometimes, it was after months of abstinence, sometimes after no more than a few days."

I placed my hand on his.