“When Rhoshamandes was still … Oh, I don’t know. Hundreds of years ago before the Children of Satan destroyed his castle. Destroyed everything. That’s what happens when blood drinkers unite, band together, believe things. We’re evil. We’ve always been.”

The three looked at him calmly without making the slightest response. Nothing in their expressions or demeanor suggested agreement. Or evil.

“And you have no idea at all where Rhoshamandes might be, do you?” asked Raymond Gallant.

“None,” said Everard. And then he found himself confessing, “If I did, why, I’d go to him.” Such strange words coming from him, who had such complete disregard for other blood drinkers, who scorned covens, havens, vampire hostels, and gangs. But he knew he had confessed the truth, that he’d travel the Earth to find Rhoshamandes. Actually, he never traveled anywhere much. But it was good to think he’d travel the Earth to find his old master. “He’s long gone, dead, burned up, immolated, whatever!” he said sharply. “Has to be.”

“You think?” asked Raymond Gallant.

A sudden pain tugged at Everard’s heart. He has to be dead or he would have found me by now, gathered me to him, forgiven me.…

Rhoshamandes had abandoned the wild thick forests of France and Germany in the 1300s. Weary of battling the ever-increasing Children of Satan who had cannibalized his own fledglings to his eternal misery, he had simply left the ancient battlefield.

But Everard had never known the true story. The Children of Satan had had Everard by then, dragging him out nightly to scourge the innocent of Paris. They bragged that they’d driven the last great blasphemer from French land. Had they really? Magnus they had not feared as they had Rhoshamandes.

They told tales of Rhoshamandes’s castle and lands burnt in the daylight hours by rabid monks and nuns driven to do it by the nightly whispers of Children of Satan pretending to be angels. Ah, those times. Those superstitious times when vampires could speak to gullible religious minds and play infernal games with them.

“Well, I can tell you this,” Everard said, denying the pain. “If he’s slumbering underground somewhere under some Merovingian ruin, the Voice won’t get anywhere with him, no matter what state he’s in. He’s too wise for that, too powerful. He was … he was magnificent.”

Sharp grinding memory. Everard going out in filthy rags with the Children of Satan to harry the Parisian poor, slinking into filthy hovels to feed on the innocent, and somewhere near the voice of Rhoshamandes calling: “Everard, break free. Come back to me!”

“Goodbye, Everard,” said Teskhamen, and the three moved off together.

For a long moment, Everard watched them as they walked down the narrow street and disappeared around the corner.

Not a single human being would ever guess what they were. Their human poise was simply superb.