Fareed understood that this company was a repository for and a generator of immense wealth, and he also knew that Gregory would soon retire from it altogether, Gregory had once explained this, sinking his fortune into some other enterprise that assured him similar security and opportunity. What that was, Fareed could not guess. “The times will tell me,” Gregory had said. Gregory had at least ten more years to play out this mortal role, and he meant to make the best of them. It was all so easy for him that he couldn’t quite grasp why it surprised or interested anyone else.

What interested Fareed about Collingsworth Pharmaceuticals was that it was a medical enterprise, a conglomerate of research laboratories, and a pioneer in perfecting antiviral drugs. And thanks to Gregory, Fareed had computer access to virtually everything about the company; and Fareed also had access now, through Gregory, to every bit of equipment or drug that Fareed himself might want for his own secret and special work. Gregory had given Fareed total cooperation in setting up his Paris laboratory, and Gregory understood that Fareed was a vampire doctor, wholeheartedly, who lived and breathed now to care for the blood drinkers of this world, and to them and them alone Fareed had transferred the devotion he had once felt for his mortal patients.

Fareed wanted to learn from Collingsworth Pharmaceuticals. He wanted to profit from this unfettered access to its research projects and its experimental drugs. He hoped to expand his own special research under the cloak of Collingsworth Pharmaceuticals. He wanted to exploit to the maximum the complete latitude given him by Gregory for such plans. Gregory had enlarged the Paris Collingsworth compound, specifically for Fareed, and he would shift any project to Paris from its original location on the say-so of Fareed.

But Gregory claimed again and again to know little or nothing of the many projects that now fascinated Fareed.

Fareed got it. Gregory himself had never been a scientist. Gregory was an immortal with a vague fascination for “money, investment, the complex realm of wealth and economic power in the modern world.” Yet there was no doubt that his genius had shaped the success of this enterprise. Specialists in myriad research fields appealed to him for policy decisions that were unfailingly efficient, and creative and smart.

Again, this wasn’t what interested Fareed, except tangentially. He wanted to survive amongst the Undead. So of course he took note that the great wise survivors of the millennia—Sevraine, Gregory, Marius, Teskhamen—never struggled as to questions of wealth. To them the vagabond pickpocket maverick vampires of the world were rabble too stupid to arouse pity. And though they took pains now, the elders, to teach the young ones coming to Court how to negotiate the human world with some efficiency, their patience was short.