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month ago she had discovered the healing properties in the soil here. She had already known of the healing agent in her saliva. Shea had planted a garden, vegetable and herb. She loved working in the soil. Quite by accident she had cut herself, a rather deep and nasty gash. The earth seemed to ease the pain, and the cut was nearly closed by the time she finished working.
    She began to wander aimlessly along the trail, wishing her mother could have experienced this place of peace. Poor Maggie. Young. Irish. On vacation for the first time in her life, she had met a dark, brooding stranger, one who had used her and discarded her. Shea shook her head, tears welling up; she refused to shed them. Her mother had made her choice. One man. He had become her life to the exclusion of everything else. To the exclusion of her own flesh and blood, her daughter. Shea had not been worth the effort of trying, of living. Only Rand. A man who had deserted her without thought, without warning. A man who had passed on a disease so vile, his daughter had to hide it from the rest of the world. And Maggie had known. Yet Maggie hadn’t bothered to research it or even to ask questions of Rand to find out just what her daughter would be facing.
    Shea stooped to grasp a handful of soil, then let it trail through her fingers. Had Noelle, the woman her mother had named as his wife, been as obsessed with Rand as Maggie had? It sounded very much as if she had. Shea hadno intentions of ever taking a chance that she shared her mother’s failings. She would never need a man so much that she would neglect a child and eventually kill herself. Her mother’s death had been a senseless tragedy, and she had abandoned Shea to a cold, cruel life without love or guidance. Maggie had known her daughter needed blood; it was all there in the diary, every damning word. Shea’s fist clenched until her knuckles turned white. Maggie knew Rand’s saliva carried a healing agent. She had known that, yet she had left it to her daughter to find out on her own.
    Shea had healed herself countless times as a child while her mother stared dully out a window, half-alive, never once hearing a toddler’s cries of pain when she fell learning to walk and run, learning everything alone. She had discovered the ability to heal small cuts and bruises with her tongue. It had taken a while before she realized she was unique in such a thing. Maggie had been an emotionless robot, caring for the barest minimum of Shea’s physical needs and none of her emotional ones. Maggie had killed herself the day Shea turned eighteen. A low sound of sorrow escaped Shea’s throat. It had been terrible enough to know she had to have blood to exist, but to grow up knowing her mother couldn’t love her had been devastating.
    Seven years ago, a kind of madness had swept Europe. It had seemed so laughable at first. For eons uneducated, superstitious people had whispered of the existence of vampires in this region her father had come from.
    It now seemed probable that a blood disorder, perhaps originating here in the Carpathian Mountains, had been the basis of the vampire legends. If the disease was indigenous only to this region, wasn’t it possible that those persecuted down through the ages had suffered from this condition Shea’s father and she shared? Shea’s excitement had set in at the prospect of studying others like herself.
    Then the modern-day “vampire” killings had sweptthrough Europe like a plague. Men mostly, murdered in ritual vampire style, stakes through the heart. It was sickening, repugnant, frightening. Respected scientists had begun to discuss the possibility of vampires being real. Committees had been formed to study—and eliminate—them. Evidence from some earlier source, combined with samples of a female child’s blood—hers, Shea was certain—had raised further questions. Shea had been terrified, certain those