If Garekyn did have that much strength, he’d escape from these cables as soon as they had gone to their rest. And he wouldn’t waste any time breaking open their crypts. He had discovered exactly what he had come here to discover. He had seen it as Armand drew the blood out of him. Amel, the Core, Amel the spirit that did in fact animate them all. Amel was in this being Armand who had attacked him, and in the midst of the struggle, as Garekyn fought the blood drinker who was killing him, he had seen the city, unmistakably the city of Atalantaya, and not as he could ever have envisioned it, but from another perspective, a distant perspective, a godlike perspective as the city erupted in flames and slowly fell into the sea.

He locked these thoughts deep in his mind now, fearing their telepathic gifts, of which they bragged over the airwaves night and day.

What a brazen bunch they were to tell their innermost secrets to the whole world and trade on the credulity of human beings to see them as fantasy makers, role-players in an elaborate game, dedicated and fractured fans of vampire lore. But it made sense. Who would believe Garekyn if he told “the world” these pale fiends were living and breathing vampires? Who believed the ancient tale of Atlantis as told by Plato, which Garekyn had first read in Alexi’s library in Saint Petersburg a century ago?

Even the Prince had not believed the one called Armand when he’d explained that Garekyn wasn’t human.

“All right, listen to me,” said Armand. “The thing’s coming round. There’s only one crypt in the house that can safely hold him, the one made for Marius. Now I’m going to see whether or not I can open it and close it unassisted and somehow secure the door from the outside. You stand watch, Eleni, and you, Benji, come with me.”

Sounds of their retreat, down a passage, up a stairway, the quick steps of the young one, Benji, trying to catch up with the barely perceptible steps of Armand. Up out of this cellar into the house above and on across a wooden floor.

Silence. Only the sound of the female blood drinker breathing. Sounds of traffic, sounds of trucks on Madison Avenue, those big noisy trucks that make their deliveries to the restaurants and bars of the metropolis before daybreak.

Cautiously he opened his eyes. She stood with her back to him, intent on some task. Then he heard it, a tiny electronic voice emanating from her cell phone.

“You know who this is.” A male voice. A blood drinker voice too soft for human hearing. But Garekyn could certainly hear it. “Leave a message of any length.”