I stood watching as he drank from her, slipping into her mind now to find him and what he was feeling as all that sweet salty blood flooded his mouth and his senses, as the heart of the woman weakened and slowed. He paced himself, letting her recover ever so slightly—the inevitable images of childhood, fetched in desperation as the body realizes that it is losing its vitality, her head drowsing to her right and his fingers holding her chin firmly—and passersby thinking them lovers, and the voices of the city humming and rustling and the scent of rain coming on the breeze.

Suddenly he collected her in both arms and ascended, vanishing so quickly the tourists walking to and fro never saw it happen, only felt the faintest disturbance in the air. Wasn’t there someone there a moment ago? Gone. Gone the scent of blood and death.

And so he was using all his faculties now, his new gifts, the gifts of the powerful blood, gifts he wouldn’t have come by in the regular scheme of things for maybe another century or maybe never, ascending to the clouds or just up and up into the darkness until he could find a place to deposit her remains on some remote rooftop, tucked between a chimney and a parapet, perhaps, who knew.

Well, if someone did not dispose of the assassin in the subtle disguise, the murder of her husband would take place as usual though all the reasons for it were gone.

But a distant blast of intelligence let me know that Cyril had taken care of the rascal, feasting on him quickly, and then depositing him in the river, while Thorne had hung back to remain with me. Bodyguards have to feed.

Amel was still gone, after all that talk of wanting to see Louis through my eyes, and I’d closed my mind to telepathic voices, and Louis was gone, and I was hungry and tired from riding the wind, and sick at heart. Innocent blood. I wanted innocent blood, not minds and hearts like sewers, but innocent blood. Well, I wasn’t going to drink innocent blood. Not while preaching to so many others that they couldn’t drink innocent blood. No. I could not.

I walked down Pirates Alley in the direction of the river, and then along under the porches opposite Jackson Square. The shops were closed up. And it seemed a shame. There were crowds close to the river, and I heard the calliope of the tourist steamboat, and for a moment nothing in the whole world seemed changed from when I’d lived and loved here before.