“The lost city of Atlantis,” said Marius. He was making notes on a pad in front of him. “Did you hear a name that sounded like Atlantis?”

“Perhaps,” said Armand. “I thought that was a legend.”

“It is a legend,” said Gregory. “Nobody ever believed that legend in my time. But it was repeated now and then.” Though he was the eldest at the table, born some thousand years before he’d brought Sevraine over, he never assumed an air of authority or command. He saved that for his vast enterprises in the mortal world. Here he wanted to be an equal among equals. He went on. “A great empire, thriving in the Atlantic Ocean, that perished in the space of a day and night.”

“And where is this being now,” asked Pandora, “this being that can destroy vampires? Crack their skulls as if they were eggs?” Pandora was usually quiet during these council meetings, but she spoke up with obvious concern.

“We’ve traced it to the West Coast of the United States,” said Gregory. “It’s a male human for all the world knows, with substantial private holdings, and several residences, the main one of which is in London. And it is most certainly an immortal, having arranged to inherit its own fortune at least twice. The account of how this being was discovered in Siberia in the ice by an amateur Russian anthropologist named Prince Alexi Brovotkin is all available in several obscure sites online. Brovotkin died a hundred years ago. The story goes that Brovotkin’s team came upon the starved and frozen body of the individual in a cave in Siberia, and managed to resuscitate it with simple ordinary fresh water and warmth.

“Of course nobody believed the preposterous paper Brovotkin wrote on the subject. But the ‘story’ was popular in Saint Petersburg at the end of the nineteenth century, and the Prince and his protégé were extremely popular in society until Brovotkin died at sea and Garekyn never returned to Russia.”

It was Gremt who spoke up now.

“So this being,” said Gremt, “we are to presume, has been frozen since the fall of the legendary Atlantis, and only came to light due to the explorations of this adventuresome Russian explorer?”

“Perhaps,” said Marius. “Brovotkin never refers to the legend of Atlantis. He offers no speculation as to the origins of the creature. And the trail we’ve uncovered—of Garekyn, and his fictitious son Garekyn, and the next fictitious Garekyn—is a simple one of men of means traveling the world.”

“I saw a group of such creatures when I drank from him,” said Armand. “I received the impression that this creature had been searching desperately to find anyone connected to the fallen city, anyone who might have also been there.”

“And how did Amel figure in the story of the city?” asked Gremt. He glanced at Marius and then back to Armand.