“I hung on the side of that hill listening to my sisters’ wails until eventually, the forest got quiet. The next thing I knew, the men were tossing all the bodies into the fire, and that’s when I heard one of them say that Napoleon had paid for six murders, so someone was missing.” Ruby glanced at Bennett. “I almost wanted them to find me. I wanted them to end me because I knew I’d never be able to forget what I’d seen, but it was because of what I’d seen, because of what they did, because of all the rage burning inside of me, I couldn’t force myself to make one sound. Instead, I began trying to think of how I’d get away, and that’s when one of them scoffed, saying something about Napoleon would never know…and a minute later, they rode off into the night.”

***

Ruby’s voice had cracked more than once telling her sobering tale, and while tears didn’t stream down her face, Bennett had seen a few that had found their way. Because of that, Bennett allowed Ruby a few minutes of silence to regroup before Bennett began her inquisition again.

“How did you do all of this?” Bennett said, turning to Ruby. “Was this your plan from the start?”

“No, of course not,” Ruby said, shooting Bennett a look. “I guess you could say everything just evolved. I knew I needed to find Napoleon, and since it always seemed that the vampires kind of stuck together, I figured if I could find others, I could find him. Margory had loathed vampires. She hated everything about them, but that didn’t mean Father didn’t occasionally drop a name. I remembered him mentioning a man named Yannick Bethune who lived in a sprawling estate outside of Paris, and another named Aldrich FitzAlan, who lived in Cornwall.”

“That’s what you meant when you said you were all over Europe.”

“Yeah, and it was 1529, so it wasn’t like I could take a train. Luckily, since Margory had always kept us away from the vampires, none of them knew what I looked like, and since Yannick lived the closest, that’s where I went first. I got a job as a servant and basically kept my head down and listened. Whenever any of the others visited, I hid in the shadows and burned into my memory everything they said. After about two years, I figured I had gotten all the information I could, so I left and moved onto Aldrich. I paid passage for a boat ride to England by sleeping with the Captain and then spent two years scrubbing the floors in Aldrich’s house. It was there I learned of Garrick Neville, so I moved to Eastbourne, and two years after that, I made my way to Spain because, by then, I knew Diego Garza was going to be the key.”