Aidan held onto his faith as week after week passed. He continued to guard Lucy, meeting with her vampires, going to the club, and going out in search of new contacts. He was a bit surprised to find out how much effort went into researching a book like that. Lucy told him that she expected to spend at least a couple of years before she had enough materiel to begin writing the final draft. “Another few months will see me finished with my work here in Utah,” she told Aidan. “Do you plan on coming with me when I head for San Francisco?”

“I don’t know,” Aidan replied. “I’ll have to see what happens between now and then.” They were again at The Sanctuary, sitting on the couch as usual. It was a Thursday, so there wasn’t much of a crowd. Owen was there, and a few other regulars, but Aidan and Lucy had the couch to themselves. “Who knows, by then I could be back home.”

“We can hope,” said Lucy with a smile.

“Hope springs eternal,” responded Aidan, grinning toothily. He was still homesick, but he was holding on to his faith. He’d never been particularly religious. Faith in God didn’t come easily to him. But faith in his wife was the center of his own personal belief system, such as it was. She had been the one constant in his life, always there for him since the day they’d first met.

“Looks like its time to head for home,” said Lucy. The bass beat from the dance floor had ended, replaced with some cheesy old song. It was the club’s way of gently reminding the patrons that the night was over and it was time to leave.

Aidan and Lucy collected their things, she reclaiming her coat, he his daggers. Suitably equipped to venture out onto the darkened city streets, they made their way along the six blocks or so to the Trax station. They had gone perhaps half way when Aidan heard a voice from behind him. A child’s voice. An impossibly familiar voice. “Daddy!”

He turned around to see a familiar red-headed girl running out of the shadows beyond the streetlamp where he stood. “Spark?” he said, almost not believing it. She flung herself at him and he wrapped his arms around her, tears welling up in his eyes. Then he heard other voices, the sound of other feet running. He looked up and saw the two red-headed boys, shorter and taller, sprinting after their sister. “Dart, Flare!” he said, gathering them both into his arms. And toddling after than was little raven-haired Shadowfire. “Shade!” He let go of the others and knelt down to hug the little girl. And then he looked up to see one last person approaching him. With a smile on her face Flame Song stepped out of the darkness. Aidan stood and stared at her for a moment and then they both ran at each other, coming together in a tight embrace. “Oh Flame, I’ve missed you so much!” Aidan said. Tears were streaming down his face as he held his wife close and wrapped his wings around her.

Lucy stood back and smiled. So this was Aidan’s family. It was very obvious how much he loved them. And then her smile faded as an all-too familiar man stepped out of the shadows, a gun in hand.

“Now isn’t this a sweet moment?” said Janus.

Aidan whipped around, placing himself between Janus and his family.

“I was going to threaten your young friend there, but this is so much better.” He gestured and a second man stepped out next to him. “Aim at the youngest,” said Janus. “If he doesn’t cooperate, shoot her.”

The man stepped to the side and trained his gun on little Shadowfire. “Now,” said Janus, “I have come to the interesting conclusion that you are a real vampire. A genuine immortal. And I want to be immortal. I want it very badly. So here is what will happen. You will do whatever is needed to make me into a true vampire, right now. If you do this, your family will live. If you do not they will be killed one by one until you decide to cooperate. Understand?”

“I understand,” said Aidan through gritted teeth. He looked over at Flame Song. There was a faint blurring hovering over her. She was focused on the gunman and ready to shift shape in an instant. “You realize that in order to change you, I’ll have to take a significant quantity of your blood?”

“Yes. Just remember that if anything happens to me, the girl dies.”

Aidan seemed to slump in defeat. He nodded. “All right. I’ll do it.”

Janus lowered his gun and beckoned Aidan over. He held out his left arm, his intention clear. Aidan bent over and took the man’s wrist in his hands. Suddenly he shouted “Down!” and jerked Janus’s arm downward, forcing the taller man to one knee. Behind him he heard a shot and a man’s scream. He punched Janus in the face as hard as he could, feeling bones give beneath his fist, and spun around. Flame Song, in firecat form, was sitting on the gunman, paws firmly planted on his chest. The four children were all flattened to the ground, but none of them seemed harmed. Lucy was just standing there, staring.

“Is everyone all right?” asked Aidan. The children picked themselves up off the ground, gathering around Aidan for comfort. They all were unhurt. Flame Song didn’t take her eyes off of the man she had pinned, but she said, “I’m fine too. He just grazed me. When he saw me coming he decided he’d rather shoot at me than at Shade, which is what I’d hoped he’d do.”

“You okay too Lucy?” said Aidan.

Lucy started. “Yeah. Just in shock I think.” She shook her head as if to clear it. “Er… what now?”

“I guess we should decide what to do with this fellow,” said Aidan, looking at the terrified gunman.

“I should tear him to pieces,” snarled Flame. “Nobody tries to hurt my daughter and gets away with it.”

“What about Janus?” asked Lucy.

Aidan glanced over at the still, crumpled form at the edge of the streetlight’s circle of illumination. “It’s too late to do anything about him,” said Aidan sadly. “I didn’t want to take chances, so I didn’t pull my punch. I think I broke his neck.”

“Well good riddance,” said Flame, angrily. “I don’t need a longer acquaintance with him to know that this world is better off without him in it.” She turned to the prone gunman, sharp teeth bared. “It would probably be better without this one too.”

The man looked like he was about ready to faint. “Let him up,” said Aidan, “but don’t let him get away until I’m done with him.” Flame got off the man’s chest. “Get up,” commanded Aidan. The gunman scrambled to his feet.

“Now, I’m only going to tell you this once,” said Aidan, his fangs bared in an ugly snarl. “All I want is peace and quiet in my life. You and Janus ruined that, and for that Janus has paid with his life. If you, or any of your little cultist friends, or your relatives, or even your casual acquaintances ever bother me or my family again, you’ll pay the same price, only you won’t go as painlessly as Janus did because I’ll let my wife tear you slowly into little pieces, and I’ll just watch and laugh. Do you understand that?”

“Y-y-yes,” stuttered the man, almost too terrified to speak.

“Then get out of here and hope to God I never see you again.”

The man bolted off into the darkness.

Aidan sighed deeply, letting the tension and rage he’d been holding on to loose. He felt suddenly tired.

“We should get out of here,” said Lucy. “If a policeman happens along we’d be in serious trouble.”

Aidan nodded. “Is it going to be all right if we all go to your place?”

“Of course,” said Lucy.

Aidan smiled slightly. “Thanks.” He scooped up Shadowfire, taking comfort in the living warmth of his daughter, reaffirming to himself that she was unharmed, and said, “Let’s go.”

As they walked down the street Aidan asked Flame, “How did you find me?”

“It was Jordanis, actually. When you didn’t come back… I was afraid you were dead, but somehow I didn’t think you were. I felt that you must still be alive, that I would know if you’d died. So I went to Jordanis and asked him to look for you. When he couldn’t find you anywhere I was afraid I’d been wrong, that you were dead after all, but when he looked back in time to see what had happened he saw you just vanish. It took a long time, but we finally discovered you’d been sent here. Well, he sent you a portal as soon as he found you, but you know what happened with that. You couldn’t go through it. I decided that if we couldn’t bring you back home that I would go to you instead. So we came. That’s pretty much all there is to it. How did this happen though? Why are you here? What about the demon?”

“He’s the one that sent me here. He put a spell on the torc to keep it from going through portals. He thought that eventually I’d be homesick enough to take the torc off so that I could go back to Mysteria.”

Flame shook her head. “The spell isn’t on the torc. It’s on you.”

“What?!” Aidan stopped in his tracks for a moment. Then he started walking again and let out a little laugh. “I might have known. That’s just the sort of dirty trick a demon would pull. I take the thing off, he turns up and nabs it, and then no doubt sticks around and laughs when I try an step through a portal and still can’t.”

“You will be able to go home eventually,” said Flame. “Jordanis is working on undoing the spell. The time flow between Mysteria and here is really unstable though, so there’s no telling how long it will be in Earth time before we can go back.”

“And when I do go back I’m going to be right back in the same mess I was in before, with Asmodeus’s henchmen always lurking around the next corner.” He sighed. “I wish I could just be rid of him.”

By that time they’d arrived at the station. Aidan say down on a bench, and soon he had Shadowfire in his lap and the other children sitting next to him. Flame smiled at the sight. “They’ve really missed you, you know.”

“Well I’ve missed them,” said Aidan.

“Why have we stopped here?” asked Ariana.

“We’re waiting for a train,” said Aidan. “It’s a kind of machine that will take us where we’re going. Like a wagon, but without any horses.”

“Neat,” said Firedart. “When is it coming?”

“Soon,” said Aidan.

When the train arrived they all climbed aboard. Ariana and Phoenixflare got on without any hesitation. Firedart hesitated, but that was because he was trying to see what made it go. Aidan carried Shadowfire aboard, as she was starting to fall asleep.

Firedart was disappointed when the train stopped and they disembarked. He was the only one though. The other three were yawning. At Lucy’s apartment Lucy said, “I’ll let you folks share the bedroom. I can sleep on the couch tonight.”

“You don’t have to,” said Aidan.

“I’m going to anyhow,” said Lucy with a smile. She stretched out on the couch and motioned Aidan into the bedroom. “Go on. Those kids look like they’re about to fall over.”

Aidan shrugged and went into the bedroom. The queen-sized bed proved large enough for the whole family to pile in, and soon everyone but Aidan was sound asleep. He simply lay there waiting for sunrise. He found tears again trickling down his cheeks as he lay there surrounded by his family. He was still trapped here on Earth, but he didn’t care one bit. He had his family back and that was all that mattered.