But one thing was certain. His gift for making fire was now stronger than ever. He had never actually ever used it against another blood drinker. But this had taught him what he could do if he had to do it.

Small consolation.

Then the Voice sighed. Ah, such a sigh. “That was my intention, Everard,” said the Voice. “I told you I wanted you to kill them, the riffraff. And now you have made a start.”

Everard made no reply.

He leaned on the handle of the spade and thought.

The Voice had gone.

Quiet the sleeping countryside. Not so much as a car moving on a country road. Only this clean breeze and the glistening leaves of the fruit trees around him, and the white calla lilies glowing against the walls of the villa, the walls of the garden. Fragrance of lilies. Miracle of lilies.

Across the sea, Benji Mahmoud was still talking.…

His voice suddenly drove a sword through Everard’s heart.

“Elders of the tribe,” Benji was appealing. “We need you. Come back to us. Come back to your lost children. Hear my cry on high, a mourning and a bitter weeping, I am Benji weeping for my lost brothers and sisters because they are no more.”

Chapter 11

Gremt Stryker Knollys

IT WAS an old colonial mansion, red with white trim, a sprawling building with deep verandas and peaked roofs, covered with soft fluttering green vines and invisible from the winding road on account of the massive bamboo and mango trees surrounding it. A lovely place with palms swaying ever so gracefully in the breeze. It appeared abandoned but it had never been. Mortal servants maintained it by day.

And this vampire Arjun had been sleeping beneath it for centuries.

Now he was weeping. He sat at the table, his face in his hands.

“In my time I was a prince,” he said. He wasn’t boasting. He was merely reflecting. “And among the Undead I was a prince for so long. I do not know how I came to this.”

“I know all this is true,” Gremt said.

The blood drinker was undeniably beautiful, with light golden-brown skin so flawless it appeared unreal now, and large fierce black eyes. He had a wealth of jet-black hair worthy of a lion. Made by the wandering blood drinker Pandora in the days of the Chola dynasty of southern India, he had indeed been a prince, and much darker of skin than he was now and just as comely. The Blood had lightened his skin, but not his hair, which was sometimes the case, though no one knew why.

“I have always known who you were,” said Gremt. “I knew you when you traveled Europe with Pandora. I beg you, for both of us, tell me simply in your own words what happened.”