She examined the mosaic portrait of Lamia carefully. Miriam kept it with her always, to look into those resolute eyes and remember. Her mother had been strong. She devoted herself to the incredibly dangerous process of childbearing, for the good of the race. Miriam could still remember the last pregnancy, her mother gushing blood, her father trying to cauterize the wound, the puddles horrible on the floor. Her mother had died in a hide tent on a desert night when Egypt was still young.

Miriam opened the front door onto a luscious spring morning. She hurried up to Fifty-seventh Street. The first two cabs she saw she rejected. Too many rattles, drivers too tired. A third one was acceptable. She got in, sat well back, felt compulsively for seatbelts she knew would not be there.

Sitting in the cab, she considered what must be done. In her previous touches Miriam had experienced Sarah’s fierce will directly. The woman would not cease making efforts to save herself until she was beyond rational thought.

And yet it was that fine will that could blossom into a true hunger. Nothing less would suffice. Of course, it was going to be a struggle. Miriam consoled herself that she had never yet failed. True, some had died during the transfusion process, but not one who lived through the kiss of blood had long resisted her. And yet . . . she had never taken one with so much will or quite so good a mind.

Would she succeed this time?

Sarah must be made to realize that she could not save herself. When they were together Miriam could touch her deepest being, guide her, comfort her. It was not hard to transform a body, but the matter of capturing a heart was much more difficult.

Even with touch it was going to take time. She shifted uneasily in her seat, watching nervously as the cab went straight through a changing light, thinking of all the different kinds of danger she was being exposed to today.

For a long time she had known that her own mind was delicately balanced. She was so profoundly alone. She believed in her vulnerability to accident, but she had constantly to remind herself that humankind was also a threat. She had once seen a film of a tiger being captured in a net, and it had made a profound impression on her. Despite the gravity of its situation, the beast had remained calm and confident until the ropes actually sprang up around it. The men laying out the net seemed of little danger to the tiger, it having eaten one of their number the night before. That they might actually capture it was so far beyond its belief that they were able to do so.

The tiger spent its remaining years in a six-by-ten cage, the property of a circus.

What would she do if they brought out guards with guns to capture her?