Robert Jameson paused outside the hospital entrance and took a final look at the world. Blue sky, tall pines, colorful flowers, green grass. A single bird sang a sad, melodious song. He listened briefly, then stepped inside. Sterile white hallways and antiseptic air greeted him, driving home the irony of his presence. After defying death for centuries, he had come to this place of healing and modern medical miracles to die.

  As he followed the too familiar route to the room he hated and the one mortal he loved, a teenage girl walked toward him wearing the blue-and-white dress of a hospital volunteer. She paused to stare at him. He flashed a reassuring smile. She hesitated for an instant and then hurried past.

  Robert wondered for at least the thousandth time what made some people stop and stare while so many others walked by him without a second glance. He knew they saw nothing special about him, just a six-foot-tall man, handsome to some, dark hair graying at the temples, dressed in a casual sport coat and jeans. Perhaps they saw something in his gray eyes, some hint of the centuries he’d seen. Or perhaps they, like he, possessed a sixth sense that allowed them to recognize those like him.

  He shook his head. There remained dozens of mysteries about his kind that he had never solved.

  Soon, he thought as he reached his destination, those mysteries will no longer matter.

  He drew a deep, unsteady breath and entered the room.

  A nurse stood beside the single bed. She held a clipboard and jotted down readings from the equipment that monitored the bed’s occupant. After a moment, she glanced over her shoulder and smiled.

  “Hello, Mister Jameson.”

  “Hello, Cynthia.” Robert avoided looking at the young man in the bed. “How is he today?”

  “No change, I’m afraid.”

  Robert nodded. He hadn’t expected any.

  “I’m almost finished here,” the nurse said, “if you’d like to spend some time alone with him.”

  “I would.”

  She made several more notations and then stepped toward the door. As she passed Robert, she touched his hand.

  “We’re doing all we can.”

  He forced a smile. She was right. Everything medically possible was being done, had been done. He had made sure of that. Now it was time to try something beyond medical understanding.

  The door clicked shut, and Robert gazed at the bed.

  Save for the stark white bandages that swathed his head and hid a scalp shaved of the fine, dark, unruly hair Robert knew so well, he saw no evidence that Christopher Davis was anything but asleep. His skin glowed with the healthy tan acquired from the outdoor activities he and Robert enjoyed. Chris’s arms, lying atop the white bed sheets, still showed the fine musculature gained by those activities.

  Robert shook his head. It had all happened so fast. Less than three weeks ago, they had been skiing in Utah when Chris collapsed with a blinding headache. Robert paid to get him to the finest specialists. Days later, the diagnosis came: brain tumor. The only chance to save him was an operation to remove the cancerous growth. The doctor who performed the surgery pronounced it a success, and Chris was well on his way to recovery when he collapsed and slipped into a coma.

  Less than three weeks, Robert thought again. Amazing how quickly things can change.

  He sat in the chair beside the bed. Too familiar that chair, that bed, the monitoring equipment, Christopher’s peaceful countenance, the long, dark lashes so still on his cheeks.

  “Chris,” Robert whispered. He gazed at the young man who was almost a son to him, a best friend, a confidant in all things but one. The most important thing, Robert now knew. That would change. Today, Chris would learn the truth.

  He recalled the first time he had seen Christopher, a precocious five-year-old child who dared to approach a brooding stranger in the park, to ask if he wanted to help fly a kite. Chris’s father, Jack, had hurried over to save Robert from the boy’s attentions, but Robert refused to be saved; he went with the boy and his father to fly the kite. It was the first time in decades he could remember experiencing true happiness.

  Robert became friends with Christopher’s parents, Jack and Sara. Three years later, when they went on a second honeymoon, Chris stayed with Robert. A sailing accident took the life of the boy’s parents, and no relative showed any interest in raising him. A few signatures made Robert his legal guardian and gave Robert something to live for.

  Now, fifteen years later, that something had been taken away.

  “Chris,” he said again, studying the young man’s face. “I've heard it said that people in comas can hear what is said to them, that they know what goes on around them and can remember what happened after they awake. I want to tell you something now, something to… explain what happened, so you can understand when you awake.”

  He withdrew a sealed envelope from his coat pocket. On the front of the envelope, he had written the name “Christopher.” He slipped it under Chris’s hand.

  “I’ve written everything in a journal, in case you don’t remember what I say. This will tell you how to find the journal and… other things. Accounts I’ve set up in your name to help you over the years, and… warnings. Things you will need to know to help you survive…”

  Again and again, he had gone over this moment in his mind, rehearsing what he would say. Now that the moment had arrived, words failed him. He cleared his throat.

  “Chris, I’m not like you. Not like other people. I’ve lived for centuries. There are others like me. Not many, but a few. No one knows what we are or how we came to exist, at least no one I’ve met. Our existence has inspired ancient legends and modern tales. We are a lot like humans, some good, some evil. We have the same drives, the same desires. I’ve inhabited bodies other than this one you know as Robert Jameson. I know you’ve seen me age over the years, but that is only because I allowed this body to age, to hide this secret from you. If I had not met you, I would probably still look like I did that day you came to me in the park.

  “I could tell you many things about the lives I’ve lived, the people I’ve been, but none of that is important now. There is only one thing you need to know about, and one person, so you can understand what I’m going to do and why.”

  He closed his eyes, pushed away the pain he had denied for so many years, and looked at Christopher again.

  “Her name was Jessica. She was… like me. A long-lived soul, able to survive across centuries, to change bodies when desired or needed. She saved me. We met in Boston sometime around the year 1800. I’ve heard it said among humans that each has a soul mate, a special someone in the world who is their perfect match. I believe my people, too, have soul mates, and I found mine in Jessica.

  “For forty years and more we were together. We traveled the world, had adventures and misadventures.” He smiled. “Met people, saw things, learned and laughed and loved. And every time I looked at her, every time I touched her or kissed her or held her, it was like the first time. Life with Jessie was perfect.

  “We returned to Boston after each trip we took together, to visit the street where we met, to celebrate finding each other, to celebrate life. After one such celebration, when we’d had a little too much to drink and were feeling a bit reckless, a bit daring, willing to challenge the world with our seeming immortality, we decided to take a shortcut to the rooms where we were staying. It was through a bad part of town, but who were we to worry?”

  Robert shuddered as emotions suppressed for nearly two decades called forth powerful memories: Jessica clinging to his arm, giggling as they stepped from the gas-lit main street crowded with people, horses, and carriages into the dim surrounds of a narrow, fog-shrouded lane.

  “You devil,” Jessica whispered with a smile. She squeezed his arm and kissed his cheek. “We’re only going this way so you can get me into your bed faster. Wicked man.” She giggled again.

  He feigned a woeful look. “Alas, after all these years you have found me out.” He stumbled on the uneven cobbles, but Jessica held tighter to his arm, supporting him.

  Thickening fog swallowed their laughter. Above, low clouds reflected the glow of gaslights from nearby streets, illuminating the area with a dim, eerie light.

  Five young men appeared from the haze around them. They were all in their late teens or early twenties, wearing dirty, ill-fitting clothes and hard, bitter expressions. Three of them came at Robert. One brandished a club, another a knife, the third—a big, burly youth—needed only his fists. The other two pulled Jessica from Robert’s side and thrust her back against the brick wall of the nearest building.

  Robert reacted quickly to the attack and disabled the knife-wielder with a sharp upward blow of elbow to chin that was as much luck as skill. A well-placed kick sent the man reeling to the ground.

  He turned to face his other attackers, but the club smashed into the side of his head, and the world exploded in sparks. He staggered back against the alley wall, scrabbling at the rough surface to keep his feet under him. Pain and the hot wash of blood in his eyes blinded him. Jessica’s muffled cries, the sounds of her struggles, and her attackers’ lewd, eager comments rang in the narrow lane.

  Robert knew Jessica could hold her own for a time, but eventually the men’s natural advantage of strength would overcome even her years of experience and guile. He struggled to go to her, but something hard—the club again, he suspected—slammed onto his shoulder, driving him to his knees. He swiped the blood from his eyes. The burly youth rushed toward him, armed with his fallen comrade’s knife.

  Robert lurched to his feet and tried to move away, but dizziness betrayed him. He stumbled, and the knife plunged into his side. Agony spread from the blade in burning waves, and his knees started to buckle. He groped for the knife as rough hands tore through his pockets, removing coins, watch, wallet. Half-numb fingers closed on the weapon’s hilt. With a scream, he yanked it free and slashed out blindly. The blade skittered along ribs, sank into flesh, and a guttural scream drowned out Robert’s own.

  He allowed himself to collapse. Air rushed over his head as his remaining attacker made a grab or punch. The man’s hand crunched into the bricks, and another scream rent the night.

  Acting on instinct, Robert thrust out and up with the knife, driving it deep into soft flesh. He forced his arm higher, the knife still in his attacker’s body. The scream became a gurgling groan, and a heavy weight collapsed against him, reeking of sweat, cheap alcohol, urine, and death.

  Ignoring the stench, Robert sent the restorative energy that allowed him to keep his body young and vital pouring into his wounded head and side. Fractured bone, torn flesh, and punctured organs grew warm and started to heal. The pain doubled. Robert sucked in a lungful of air, fought down a scream, and worked the knife free from the body that covered him. The heat and agony of the healing threatened to overwhelm him, but he regained control and shoved the body away.

  The first man Robert had disabled lay sprawled, unmoving, on the cobbled street before him. The second knelt nearby, bent double. An agonized groan issued from deep in his throat.

  A few feet to the side, Jessica stood with her back to the wall. Her attackers had ripped the bodice of her dress and part of the skirt. A string of pearls she had worn littered the dirty ground like dim, fallen stars. One man faced her. Blood dripped from a long gash on his left arm, inflicted, Robert knew, by the stiletto Jessica always carried. Now she held the weapon close and waited for an opening to attack again or escape. Her second assailant lay on the ground behind his comrade. Blood poured from his nose, and one of his eyes was beginning to swell shut.

  Robert struggled to regain his feet and go to her.

  The man standing in front of Jessica made a feint toward her. She slashed out with the stiletto and tried to duck past him, but he reversed direction and wrapped his arms around her waist. His momentum drove her hard against the wall. Her head snapped back, a dull crack echoed through the fog, and she went limp in her captor’s grasp. He wrenched the stiletto from unresisting fingers.

  “Jessica!” Robert stumbled toward her.

  She looked up weakly. Her lips formed his name, and her gaze flicked over his shoulder.

  He wheeled at her unvoiced warning. His second disabled attacker had regained his feet. He charged Robert with a yell, arms widespread, the front of his shirt sliced open and soaked with blood.

  Robert ducked aside and stabbed out with the knife he held. The man’s momentum ripped the weapon from his grasp. His attacker stumbled headlong into the wall and collapsed at its base, the knife buried in his chest.

  Robert turned back to Jessica. Her captor held her to him, one arm across her chest, the stiletto pressed against her neck.

  Robert froze.

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  With a slow, wicked grin, the man drew the blade across Jessica’s throat, thrust her toward Robert, dropped the knife, and ran.

  “No!” Robert caught Jessica. Blood pumped from the gash in her throat and a warm stickiness coated the back of her head. Robert stared at her, heart pounding in horror, and pressed a hand to her throat in a vain attempt to staunch the flow of blood.

  “Jess,” he whispered. The sense that allowed his people to find one another, that had brought him and Jessica together all those years ago, felt her soul, the essence of the woman he loved, begin to fade. “Jessie.”

  Her beautiful eyes met his and drifted to the side.

  The bloody-nosed man lay nearby, dazed and gasping.

  Ignoring the searing pain in his healing head and side, Robert carried Jessica to the man and laid her on the damp ground beside him. Robert knelt beside her, draped one of her arms across the man’s chest, and held her other hand in his.

  The man groaned and tried to roll away.

  Robert grabbed the front of the man’s shirt with his free hand, hauled him close, and pressed him to the ground. He met the man’s eyes. “It’s over,” he growled.

  The man struggled for a moment and then lay still.

  Robert held him pinned beneath his fist and watched his eyes. His other hand held tight to Jessica’s. Her already weak grasp loosened completely, and her essence faded from her body. Robert gritted his teeth.

  The man struggled again and then went limp.

  Robert closed his eyes and prayed for Jessica’s success. Taking a new body was always risky, a struggle against the body’s current occupant, with no guarantee which being, which soul, which essence, would triumph. The part that carried the ability to heal and restore, to live on through centuries, became the prize in the struggle. Taking a body of the opposite sex, something Robert had never attempted, was said to be the most difficult struggle to win. Worse, Jessica had been badly injured before attempting the transfer. Even if she had not willed it, her essence would have spent much of its strength trying to heal her head wound and stop the flow of blood from her throat long enough for her to locate a new host.

  Robert pushed away the bitter thoughts. Jessie’s will was strong. She knew what she was doing, what was required, and the man was wounded and dazed.

  She would win. She had to. She would win and survive. They would find a new body for her, the body of a dying young woman, someone who could not live without the healing essence, for Jess had never taken a body from a healthy, unwilling victim, and she had made Robert promise never to do so again.

  For uncounted minutes, Robert knelt beside Jessica’s cooling body and imagined the struggle taking place within the body of the man beside her.

  The man’s breathing quickened at one point, then he gasped and lay still. Finally, his breath evened out, and the swelling around his eye began to lessen.

  “Jessica?”

  The man continued to take slow, steady breaths as his wounds healed.

  A new body could be disorienting; one of the opposite sex must be doubly so. Robert imagined Jessica struggling to make sense of her new surroundings, testing her healing powers.

  The man drew a sudden deep breath.

  “Jessica?”

  The man’s eyes opened, and his hand darted out to grab Robert’s wrist in a powerful grip.

  In that instant, Robert knew Jessica had lost and, remembering his own awakening, knew the man felt charged with the power of the restorative essence that filled him. He knew also that it would not last.

  He tried to pull his hand away, but the man held tight. His other hand shot for Robert’s throat.

  Robert jerked back, unbalanced, and the man flipped him hard onto his wounded side. The knife wound reopened and fresh blood flowed. Robert groaned.

  The man rolled to his feet and stared at the bodies that littered the narrow lane.

  “Ya killed ’em!” He spun and aimed a kick at Robert’s head.

  Robert caught his foot in both hands and twisted, throwing the man to the ground, and then rolled to his hands and knees. He struggled to will away the pain and blackness that threatened him. For an instant, he considered giving up the fight. If the man killed his body, their souls could battle. It was a battle Robert would willingly lose. He did not care; he would not fight. Without Jessica, life was no longer worth living.

  He glanced at her body. Pale, bloodied, it was still beautiful, but not nearly so beautiful as her soul. He looked at the man again. He had killed her soul. He had taken everything she was. Anger flared, and Robert shoved away his despondence. This man killed Jessica. He scrambled to his feet.

  The man rose as well, searching the ground around him, and then lurched away.

  With a savage cry, Robert leaped onto his back and drove him to his knees. The man surged forward, one arm grasping for something on the ground before him. Jessie’s stiletto.

  Robert reached it first. One hand wrapped around the weapon’s hilt while the other slammed his opponent face-first into the ground. Robert rolled to his feet. He used his healing essence to rebuild his strength and the flare of his anger to drive away the pain of his wounds and loss. And then the anger dissolved, replaced by a dangerous, lethal calm.

  The man struggled to his hands and knees, nose smashed and bleeding again, the initial rush of energy from his awakening spent.

  “You took everything she was,” Robert said, his voice too calm even in his own ears. He held the stiletto at his side while the man staggered upright.

  He watched Robert, wavering, and took a step back. Robert grabbed the front of the man’s shirt and slammed him against the wall. With a groan, the man braced his hands on the rough bricks and struggled to remain on his feet.

  Robert brought the stiletto up under his chin. “Remember what I said before, bastard. It’s over.” He drove the blade up through the man’s lower jaw and into his brain. He watched the man’s eyes as he died, and gave a grim smile when he felt the feeble attempts of the essence that had so recently belonged to Jessica try to overpower his. He gathered energy, swatted the man’s soul away like a bothersome fly, and walked into the fog.

  He did not remember returning to his room.

  He awoke the following morning, healed. Scraps of charred cloth peppered the hearth, and he vaguely remembered burning his ruined clothing before going to bed. The only other evidence that anything had happened was his memory—much of it seeming like another man’s remembrance, so chilling had been his behavior—and Jessica’s absence.

  Despite his horror at the memories, the cold calmness remained. It grew like a lump of ice around his heart, deadening him to the world.

  He donned old, tattered clothing and roamed the alleys and back lanes in search of the man who had cut Jessica’s throat. He found him easily enough; he had joined another gang of backstreet miscreants. For days, Robert shadowed him, following his every move, learning his habits. On occasion, he would let the man catch a glimpse of him and then disappear into the fog or shadows.

  Finally, the time came to end the game.

  The man had been drinking late with his comrades, but he’d wandered off on his own after an argument with one of them about the ghost he swore was haunting him. He carried a bottle and drank from it often as he made his way through the dark lanes toward the hovel he called home.

  Robert got ahead of him and hid in a shadowed doorway. While he waited, he fed restorative energy to a body and limbs already well rested and honed for action. Decades earlier, he had discovered that doing so afforded a brief period of heightened strength and reflexes. The trick was not without its price, but at that moment he did not care.

  His victim approached. Robert stepped out in front of him, knife in hand. The man froze, and the bottle he carried fell from his grasp. It shattered at his feet in an explosion of glass and liquid. He shook his head as if to deny Robert’s presence, took one staggering step backward, turned, and ran.

  Robert let him get several yards away before starting after him. He caught him easily, grabbed his arm, and threw him against the side of a building with enough force to drive the breath from his lungs. Robert took hold of the front of the killer’s shirt with his free hand.

  The man stared at him, his face pale. “Mister, I think you’ve got—”

  Robert plunged the knife deep into his gut, then wrenched it free.

  The man groaned, and his hands grasped at the hole the blade had torn in his belly. He tried to pull away.

  Robert shoved him against the wall again and pressed the bloody knife to his throat. “You did not have to kill her.”

  The man’s bowels loosened, and the odor of urine and feces flooded Robert’s senses.

  “No, mister, no,” the man gasped. “I was scared, mister. You hurt my friends…” He drew a ragged breath. “I can get you anything, mister. I can get you—”

  Robert slashed the knife across the man’s throat. Blood showered him. The man’s pleadings became a wordless gurgle, and his body slid down the wall.

  Robert looked at it. “Coward. You don’t have anything I want.” He dropped the knife beside the body and turned away.

  He made it several blocks before the extra strength melted from his limbs and the horror of what he had done struck him. He collapsed into the gutter. With shaking hands, he tried to wipe the blood from his clothes, but succeeded only in smearing it further. He retched up the contents of his stomach, but his gut continued to seize and wrack his body long after his belly was empty. At last, the spasms stopped. He rolled away from the stench of bile and curled around himself, filthy, reeking, shuddering with sobs.

  Slowly, the coldness left him, his ice-heart melted and reality seeped back in. His breath caught in another sob. Jessica’s killers were dead, but she was still gone.

  Nothing had changed.

  * * *

  “It was then that I realized who truly killed Jessica.” Robert watched Chris’s unchanging face and struggled to keep his voice calm. “Lying there in the gutter, it came to me that I had not only led her down that dangerous lane and been too slow to come to her rescue, but I had driven away the only link to her, the essence of what she’d been.”

  He took a deep breath. “Chris, my people have no more idea than yours do what happens after death, after we fail to secure a new body when the one we are using can no longer support us. Perhaps we fade away. Perhaps we continue to exist in some other place, waiting to be reborn. Perhaps we are not truly different, only human souls that refuse to give up.

  “Whatever the truth, I realized then that I had destroyed any chance to save Jessica when I drove away the essence that had belonged to her. I believe that thought had been in the back of my mind all along, driving me to return to the hard, unfeeling person able to seek such cold-hearted vengeance against the man who had taken her from me.

  “Before I met Jessica, I had nearly become that person for all time. Boredom with life and too little courage to end it had turned me against the world, made me into a cold, emotionless creature. Jessica brought me back to… humanity, but her death nearly turned me away again. I vowed that would not happen, vowed I would remember Jessie, what she taught me, the promises she had me make.

  “Every day for nearly a century, until I met you, I forced myself to remember Jessica, to think of her each morning when I awoke and each night before I fell asleep. And, of course, I dreamed of her. Too often, I would awaken from such a dream certain she was there. She wasn’t, of course. Or perhaps she was. Perhaps she still exists, her spirit floating free, to come and go as she pleases, to watch over me. Wherever she is, I’ve decided to go to her now.”

  He paused to gather courage for what he was about to say, what he was about to do.

  “Christopher, I cannot bear to sit by and watch you die when there is a way to save you. In a moment, I will leave this body you know as Robert Jameson and go into yours. I will not fight you. I give freely of the immortal essence that exists inside of me. With it, you will be able to heal yourself. You will live a full life, and more. I… want you to have this.”

  He stopped speaking. There was so much more he wanted to say, but it was all in his journal. Christopher would read it. He need not say it now.

  He placed a hand on Christopher’s and laid his other hand on his friend’s chest. For a long moment he sat like that, a thousand thoughts, feelings, and memories churning through his mind, and then it was time.

  He closed his eyes and called forth his healing essence, but instead of focusing the power inward to strengthen or mend, he sent it outward, along his arms, to meld with the body beneath his hands.

  The energy flowed into Chris’s body and pulled Robert’s awareness with it; his senses funneled down to flow with the energy. Natural human reflexes arose, urging him to fight the odd pulling sensation that felt too akin to death. He forced them away.

  With a sharp, almost physical tug, he broke free of his body and entered Christopher’s.

  Robert sought a sense of his friend, found him deep in a place he had never known existed. He willed himself to join Chris, but only part of his being obeyed the command. And then Chris was there with the small part of Robert that had followed his will. Others were there, as well.

  Chris’s awareness of Robert’s presence, his warmth and fondness, flooded through Robert. He knew Chris had heard the story he told; heard, understood, accepted. He knew also that Chris was content to remain where he was.

  Undaunted, Robert attempted again to draw close, to call his friend to him, to no avail. Chris sent only comfort and happiness.

  Robert turned his attention to the others with them. He sensed Jack and Sara, Chris’s parents. Had the coma forced Chris to retreat into some deep core of his mind, to seek solace in his memories?

  No, Robert realized when he sensed the identities of some of the others, humans—mortals—only he had known. Nowhere did he sense another like him. Nowhere did he sense Jessica.

  He called to Christopher again, urging him to come away from the others. Chris did not respond.

  Robert focused his attention on Chris’s body. Was there some damage that prevented his return?

  Already, Robert’s essence had begun to mend the injured areas of Chris’s brain. Dimly, the heat and ache of the healing registered in Robert’s awareness. He channeled more energy toward the wounded areas and tried to stay detached enough to prevent his essence from claiming the body as its own. Around him, Chris’s body began to awaken.

  Robert willed himself to return to Chris. The barrier rose again, stronger this time, and Chris drifted farther away. Robert called to him. Still, Chris sent only contentment and well being.

  Desperate, he called to Chris again. From somewhere beyond his immediate awareness, others joined in his calls, bidding Chris to return.

  “Chris.”

  “Mister Davis.”

  “Christopher.”

  The voices added to the urgency of Robert’s calls.

  Chris’s body began to gasp for breath. Unnatural chemicals pumped through his system, and his heart raced. Hands touched his body, harsh, forceful, their insistent presence demanding a response. Robert fought the demands, aware that should he respond, there would be nothing for Chris to come back to.

  He tried to return his attention to Chris, to show him the way back to his body, to let him answer the desperate calls, but the barrier stood solid now. He tried in vain to force his way through.

  “No…” He moaned and opened his eyes.

  Medical personnel filled the room. Half of them hovered above him, expressions of concern on their faces, the rest worked beside the bed, their movements frenzied but disciplined.

  The body of Robert Jameson lay stretched out on the floor. One of the medics looked up from it, met the eyes of another, and shook his head.

  Robert balled a fist. Paper crackled beneath his fingers. He raised his head to look at what he held. A sealed envelope with the name “Christopher” written on it.

  His head dropped back to the pillow, and the young man the world knew as Christopher Davis closed his eyes and wept.