As for me, I was no more resigned to perish than I’d ever been, my dramatic little suicide attempt in the Gobi Desert notwithstanding. But helpless to do anything about the connection between me and Amel, I became obsessed with our connection to the others, and how they might be severed from Amel inside of me.

I told Fareed: Find a way to snip the tentacles of the nano-particle thermoplastic luracastria that bound all vampires to the Core. Then I’d die when Amel was removed from me, yes, but the tribe would live.

I became convinced that Kapetria was giving us time to focus on this, and when she had described this vast web of connections as a failed attempt at propagation, she’d been giving us the only help that she could.

More than once I went on Benji’s radio cast and made vague appeals to her, heavily disguised as general admonitions to blood drinkers everywhere as to how we must always work together, and think of one another, and think of the welfare and destiny of one another. I gave out the number of the cell phone I carried. But no call from Kapetria came.

“If she knew how to sever the connection, she’d tell us,” I said to the others; though why I clung to such a view of her I wasn’t sure. Maybe it was simply that I had liked her, liked all she’d told us of her birth and her brief life in Atalantaya, and I positively loved what she’d told us about the life and adventures of the spirit inside us who had always been known as Amel. I loved that she had volunteered the vial of her blood. Yes, she’d lied to us. But I knew why she’d lied. I couldn’t fault her for lying. I couldn’t yield to a cynical view of Kapetria, or to a cynical view of those with her. And I could not bear to think of their annihilation any more than I could think of ours.

That anything so ancient and mysterious should die—this was unthinkable to me. When Maharet had died, the great unique universe of Maharet had perished with her, and I found it unendurable to think about it. And that was why I couldn’t wish for the death of Rhoshamandes either. Who was I to put an end to a being who knew what Rhoshamandes knew, a being who had seen all that he had seen? Some night, Rhoshamandes and I would talk about it all, talk about what it had been like when he first came north from the Mediterranean into the wild primal forests of the land we now call France. Some night, we’d talk about so many things…that is, if it wasn’t too late.