The vampire beamed. “I’ll tell you the secret.” He leaned closer. “It’s in the blood. There’s a ritual, a bonding and pledging and damning of oneself, all in one exquisite act. The Master partakes of the initiate’s blood, and the same in return. That is where the power comes from. The strength, the abilities. The magic.”

“A pact with the devil, then.”

Danner scoffed. “Some things are worth the price. I, for one, was never satisfied before. I needed more, always more—knowledge, excitement. More . . . life?” He smirked. “I left this backwater state as soon as I could, to travel and explore, to dabble in matters both dark and fascinating. I saw things in those days that would curl your toes, Mr. Stiles. Some were perverse even to me, like that damn voodoo nigger magic. And none of it appeased me. So I took my curiosity abroad.”

He leaned back in the chair, all but lost in recollections that stretched back three-quarters of a century. “I came upon him in Paris. He had been stalking men for centuries even then. He told me he was from Britain, just after the Roman invasion. He was tail and thin and not particularly attractive, but his presence . . . it was magnetic. I was easily obsessed with him, even before I knew who, or what, he was. I began to follow him, to his resting houses, his hunts. His kills. But I wasn’t shocked by it all. I was excited. One night he found me watching, yet he didn’t raise a hand against me. He said he saw something kindred in me, what was it . . . ah. A questing soul. So he let me stay with him. I became his familiar, then his companion. Ultimately, his lover. I entered into the rite of blood quite willingly, and I reveled in it. That night, I became more than human.”

“You became very dead,” Stiles said disdainfully.

Danner frowned. “Semantics, my friend. How should we judge life? By the warmth of the skin, by the mechanical lumbering of a fragile heart? I am superior now. I have six times your strength. I can hear better, see farther. I can remember any passage from any book and I will be around long enough to read them all. I can experience undreamed-of changes, discover new times and new worlds where there are television boxes and movies with sound and great iron vehicles that rend the skies above. I can even fly one, and shall, in time. And,” he leered, “no matter what the year, whether this century or ten centuries from now, I can hold the lives of men right in the palm of my hand. You are a hunter, Mr. Stiles. You know what it is like. That tinge of excitement, that heady thrill that the kill brings.”

“No,” Stiles said flatly, hiding his own self-doubts. “I don’t like killing.”

“Really? Come now, my friend. We are too much alike.”

“Not hardly.”