My sword whistled through the air as I executed a double-hand side swing, stamping forward with my left foot as I did. I recovered, bringing my katana back to the overhead guard position, point forward with my left hand outstretched before me.

Whew! The succession of movements didn't come nearly as easy as they had only a few years before. Of course now that I had been human again for over ten years my body was starting to actually age. I was no longer the skinny 21 year old I had been for the four and a half centuries I had been a vampire. Now I was 32 and had borne three children and was starting to sag in places that I once never thought about having.

I smiled. Fortunately my wonderful husband Mike seemed to have a blind spot for anything he didn't want to see. He claimed with an absolutely straight face that I was even more beautiful now than when he first met me. Pointing out that he had been about 5 years old when I passed through his life for the first time, when I was still immortal and had enlisted the help of his parents to help me search for a wild vampire that had been terrorizing the East Coast, had proved futile. I inevitably faltered in the face of his logic that biologically we were nearly the same age. His wrapping me in his arms before kissing me and carrying me off to bed probably influenced my giving in though.

After carefully cleaning my sword I put it away in its cabinet and locked it securely. I drank the rest of my bottled water and went to take a shower. I started the water and began to pull off my sweaty top and shorts. I never cease to be amazed at the flattering effect that Lycra and nylon have on a body. Of course back in Ireland in the 16th Century I would probably have been in as much trouble wearing something like this as I had been in after I woke up in the family crypt the night I had been turned.

I climbed into the shower and luxuriated in the hot water flowing over my body. I scrubbed vigorously for a bit and then relaxed, my eyes closed and my mind drifting.

I suddenly realized that my thoughts weren't the only things drifting. With what seemed like minds of their own, my fingers were sliding across my body. My left hand was cupping my breast and my right had slid between my legs. I looked at them like they belonged to someone else and had to smother an urge to ask them what in the heck they were doing.

I mean, I knew what they, what I was doing. Well, damn it, Michael had been gone nearly a week and it would be another week before he got home. At first it had been rather fun, the house all to myself with him at a conference in Atlanta and the kids all away at camp. I had gleefully slept late, danced around the house nude with the music loud and generally acted like an idiot. I was ready for them all to be back now. After all the centuries of dreaming of a husband and children it had come true and I missed all of them.

While my mind was wool-gathering, my fingers had continued their assault on my virtue. Oh well. It turned Mike on something scandalous when he watched me masturbate. He had even peeked on me once and got so turned on that our second daughter Linda was the result. So I could argue I was just keeping in practice for... oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph that felt good.

My eyes closed again and I leaned back against the shower wall. I shifted until the stream of water hit me right THERE. Two fingers were already in me, wiggling and spreading and beginning to move. My other hand closed on my nipple. At first I rolled it around and around. Then, as my hand moved faster between my legs, I began to pinch and pull at it, stretching it and letting it go. My fingertips intercepted the warm water and began to rub my clit faster and faster until I thought it was going to catch fire. My knees half buckled under me and I sagged against the wall. Squelching noises from my pussy joined with the low moans of pleasure I was giving out. The shocks raced through my body and I clamped my fingers over my breast, while my dear old fingers brought me to a nice, shuddering orgasm.

I licked my fingers clean and finished my shower. I'd have to remember to give Mike this same show when he got home. I started to walk naked to our bedroom when the phone rang. I darted back into the bathroom and scooped up a towel and wrapped it around myself as I headed for the phone. Silly I know. It was a telephone, who was going to see?

I wondered who it was. Mike had called that morning and there wouldn't be any word from the camp unless... I broke into a run.

"Hello?"

"Bridget O'Brien?"

That was a little strange, but not too much. I had, after all, been "Bridget Gibson" for a decade but I still used "O'Brien" for "Rolling Stone" and other places.

"Yes it is." The next words made my knees sag for real.

"Bridget400."

How long had it been since I heard that phrase? Forty years perhaps. It had originally been my code designation in the OSS before I got "Nightingal" hung on me by one of the original agents. What a joker. I thought he had meant "Nightingale" but no, I was a "Gal" who only came out at night. I couldn't recall his name now. An aircraft engineer and former Navy pilot, he had a sense of humor, unlike most spies. I would have been very happy to get close to him but he had a girlfriend, a war correspondent. I would have liked even more to have got to know both of them, but they were devoted to each other and only each other.

Once I moved to the Agency, the meaning of my original code word shifted. Instead of identification, it became an emergency code, known only to a handful of people. I had last used it during Vietnam. It meant "Come at once, highest priority. Don't ask questions, just come".

I was staggered to hear it again. I had not completely parted ways from the Agency, but I was no longer considered a Field Agent and I knew I had been moved from the special compartment I had been assigned to when my status had returned to the living. After all, I could no longer shrug off bullets or poison gas and my strength was that of a normal woman now. No special night sight, nothing. However I could now go out in the light of day, a big plus.

None of that mattered now. I asked all that I needed to know.

"When and where?"

"There's an abandoned mine complex in the North Carolina mountains." Directions followed. I was expected to memorize them, but out of sheer force of habit from calls about Doctor appointments, soccer games, school plays and everything else I scribbled the directions on the pad that hung by the phone.

"Leave as soon as its dark. You should be safely here by morning."

I was about to protest that I didn't need to wait for nightfall when the phone went dead. I looked at it and shrugged. Someone apparently was working with an out-dated file. Still, that code word had never been compromised. I picked up my keys and started for the door, before realizing that I really needed more than just a towel around me.

I dressed rapidly and sprinted for the door. Reversing course once again, I unlocked the cabinet and took out the Walther PPK I had brought home from Germany after an assignment there, in spite of the 'Jane Bond' jokes I had got from my Agency colleagues. I had never really used firearms before I had become mortal again. After all, vampires usually don't need to shoot people. Mike and the rest of my family had taught me to shoot, and shoot well. I clipped the holster to my belt and added two extra magazines to my jacket pocket.

I hesitated. According to protocol I was not supposed to let anyone know where I was going. I never had before, but that had been before I was human again, much less married and a mother. I wrestled with the thought and finally decided to follow the rules. I considered I must be getting staid in my old age. For hundreds of years I thought rules were simply things that got in your way.

I left at dusk and drove quickly but carefully up the Interstate until I pulled off at the designated exit. I smothered a couple of swear words when I realized I had left the directions beside the phone. Oh well, my memory still worked. I drove on through the gloom, up winding roads and finally through an open gate in a sagging metal fence about ten feet tall.

The few buildings remaining were in a state of crumbling disrepair. I parked in what appeared to be the center of the old complex. Looking around, I saw no one and began to feel a bit uneasy. I pulled out my satellite phone and dialed Robert's direct line at the FBI as I opened the door. Just as I started to get out, lights blossomed all around the car. I threw my arm across my eyes in an effort to shield my eyes and dropped to the ground, my mind screaming "Ambush!"

My association with military units over the last century and a half had taught me that you only have three options in an ambush. You can try to regain fire superiority, you can try to break contact, or you can die. Considering I was armed with a .380 pistol the first choice didn't seem very promising. I REALLY didn't like the third. I dove back into the car and twisted the key. Laying on the seat, my legs still out of the car, I slammed the shifter in "Drive" with one hand and pushed the gas with the other.

The car got about its own length before a burst of automatic fire shredded the engine and front tires. I exited the car and flattened myself as low to the ground as the buttons on my blouse would let me.

"Why, hello Bridget," a voice boomed from somewhere in the darkness outside the floodlights. "I can't tell you how excited I am to finally see you."

Okay, perhaps it was smart-assed of me to answer him. But I had no idea what I had stumbled into and I needed some Intel. Besides, its not as if he didn't already know where I was.

"You have me at a disadvantage," I called out.

"You killed my father, you running dog of an American whore."

I was so caught off guard that I missed his next words while I considered what he had just said. Not the "whore" part, I certainly had been called worse than that over the centuries, although it WAS one profession I had never worked. No, it was the "running dog" part. It sounded like we had someone left over from Korea or Vietnam.

Probably not Korea. After all, that was 80 years ago and I hadn't done field operations in that conflict. Vietnam? I had been blasted out of that country, literally in 1968. Since it was now 2031 it was possible the young child of someone I had fatally encountered in that conflict was still alive and still had a mad on for me. The next words proved I was right, although I would have been perfectly happy to have this turn out to be one huge practical joke.

"I never knew my father. You murdered him before I was born. He was a good man, a dedicated Liberator of oppressed people. And you cut him down, you soulless demon."

I lost the rest again. First, why does everyone assume vampires are soulless? They're not. And second, and much more important, I heard the satellite phone scratchily saying "... reached Deputy Director Dale's office. At the tone leave a message."

I squirmed closer. The tone sounded and I got as far as "Robert! This is Bridget," before the car exploded into flames. I rolled away from it and into the cover of what seemed to be an old well.

"I swore I would get you. It took decades to find you. Whenever I closed in, you moved again. I lost complete track of you twenty five years ago. I nearly despaired, believing someone might have beaten me to you. But then a contact I pay very well in my normal duty routine notified me you were back.

"The hardest part was luring you away from your cover. Brilliant. Who would have suspected you would hide in plain sight, pretending to be a normal woman instead of the merciless killer you are. I still don't know how you accomplished that and I don't care, except I wonder about the kind of people who would shelter the likes of you. Once I found the code word to bring you to me all I needed to do was set this up.

"This town will be your grave, you undead bitch. And my father will rest easier knowing I have at last avenged him. Now, run Bridget."

I didn't need those words to spur me into flight. I sprang from the well, running as hard as I ever had in my life. Once I was out of the direct glare of the floodlights I turned, took careful aim and fired. Two spotlights died and I ran intro the darkness.

"Scurrying like a roach, Bridget? Staying out of the light. Well, there's no way out."

Okay, the first order of business was to head for the fence line. I dodged from building to building until I caught sight of my goal. The shimmering sparks leaping along the fence indicated to me that it had been electrified.

Bullets flew. I turned and ducked back into the remnants of the buildings that surrounded a slightly taller structure I took to be covering the mine entrance. Straining my eyes, I could see shadowy figures moving towards me. No flashlights were waving, no sign of light beyond the two remaining floodlights and the burning wreckage of my car. I wondered if the insurance company would pay for it?

As a couple of figures closed on my location, I slid around the corner of a building. I don't know who was more surprised, me or the pursuer I ran into. I did recover faster and kicked the gun out of his hands. He immediately pulled a knife and swung at me. I danced back and avoided the first swipe, then attacked.

I might no longer be super-humanly strong, but I had begun my training in the martial arts in the 17th Century. My long ago teacher and lover Ling had been dust for 350 years, but she had taught me well and I had practiced. Two blows with the side of my hand, a locking grasp on his arm and the man crashed through the wall of the old shack and slumped to the floor.

Nice going Bridget. Like making noise a lot? I heard footsteps pounding towards me and that unlovely voice barking orders. Climbing through the ruined wall, I searched the guy as quickly as I could.

Okay, night vision goggles. No surprise there. Naturally his head going through the wall had ruined them. I did relieve him of a police-style flashlight. His AK had fallen somewhere outside and I had no time to look for it. I did check one of his spare magazines. It was loaded with wooden bullets. Then voices were right outside and it was time to go.

I crept as quietly as I could until I found a depression in the ground I could hide in and collect my thoughts. There was no doubt I was in serious, deep doo-doo. I was outnumbered, out-gunned, surrounded and those were the bright spots. The only advantage I could see was that my enemies thought I was still a vampire. How could I use that?

I no longer had any of the attributes of a vampire. No inhuman strength, no ultra-keen hearing, no piercing night sight. Night sight. I turned that over in my mind. The Night Vision Goggles I had found were light amplifying. What if I put the pursuers in a position were those goggles were useless because there was no light? They'd be afraid to use flashlights much, because they all believed I could still see in the darkness.

Moving as swiftly as I could, I headed for the building in the center of the mine area. Oh boy, it was dark in here. I shielded the flashlight and looked into the shaft before me. The windlass operated elevator was long gone, but a rude ladder led down into what was looking more and more like the entrance to Hades. Still, if I could find a place to hide until daylight, I might be able to exploit my pursuers mistaken idea that I still had to avoid sunlight. I certainly couldn't think of anything else to try. I carefully committed the stairs to memory, snapped off the flashlight and began to climb down.