“Oh, brave new world that hath such blood drinkers in it,” Gregory sighed, pondering whether he should make himself known right now to the refined and erudite vampires of the residence in the middle of the block before him or hold back.

Whenever he did reveal himself, the secretive existence he’d guarded for well over a thousand years would be inalterably influenced, and he was not in fact ready for the measures that would have to be taken when that occurred.

No, best for now to hang back, to listen, to try to learn.

That had always been his way.

Gregory was six thousand years old. He’d been made by Queen Akasha and was very likely only the fourth blood drinker to be created by her, after the defection of her blood drinker steward Khayman and the accursed twins, Mekare and Maharet, who became the rebels of the First Brood.

Gregory had been in the royal palace the night that the vampire race was born. He hadn’t been called Gregory then, but Nebamun, and that was the name he’d used in the world until the third century after Christ—when he took the name of Gregory and began a new and enduring life.

Nebamun had been a lover of Akasha, chosen from the special guard she’d brought with her from the city of Nineveh into Egypt, and as such, Nebamun had not expected to live very long. He was nineteen years old, robust and healthy, when the Queen selected him for the bedchamber and just twenty years old the night the Queen became a blood drinker and brought King Enkil over with her into the curse.

He’d been hiding helpless inside a huge gold-plated chest, the lid propped so that he might see the full horror of the conspirators stabbing the King and the Queen on that night—unable to protect his sovereign. Then with fearful and horrified eyes, he’d seen a swirling cloud of blood particles above the dying Queen, and seen that cloud drawn down into her, seemingly through her many obviously fatal wounds. He’d seen her rise, eyes like the painted orbs of a statue, her skin flashing white in the lamplight. He’d seen her sink her teeth into the neck of the dying Enkil.

Those memories were as vivid to him now as ever—he felt the desert heat, the cooling breeze off the Nile. He heard the cries and whispers of the murderous conspirators. He saw those gold-threaded curtains tied back to the blue-painted columns, and he saw even the distant indifferent and brilliant stars in the black desert sky.

Like a loathsome thing she’d been when she crawled atop her husband’s body. To see him jerked into life by the mysterious blood as he drank from her wrist had been a frightful sight.