And Pacaya, what if she took her twin with her, rose into the air, and sought out that inferno? Oh, what agony would descend on each and every member of the tribe throughout the world as unquenchable heat and flame sought to burn the host of the Sacred Core?

Benedict had fallen asleep on the bed. Barefoot in freshly laundered jeans and a white dress shirt open at collar and cuffs, he lay there dreaming.

There was something about the sight of him sleeping so trustingly that touched Rhoshamandes. Of all the blood drinkers Rhosh had ever made or known, this one’s body and face were a true reflection of his soul no matter how much time passed. This one knew how to love.

No wonder it had been Benedict who brought the memoirs of the Vampire Chronicles to Rhosh and insisted he read them. No wonder Benedict had so cherished Louis de Pointe du Lac’s suffering and Lestat’s wild rebellion. “They understand,” he’d told Rhosh. “We cannot live without love. Doesn’t matter how old, how strong, we are, what we possess. We cannot exist without love. It’s absolutely impossible. And they know it, young as they are, they know.”

Rhosh sat down gently beside him, and touched his back. The cotton shirt was soft, clean against his smooth skin. His neck and his soft curly brown hair were silky. Rhosh bent to kiss his cheek.

“Wake up now, Ganymede,” he said. “Your maker needs you.” He ran his hand over the boy’s hips, and his slender powerful thighs, feeling the iron muscles under the starched denim. Had there ever been a more nearly perfect body in the Blood? Well, perhaps, in Allesandra, before she’d become a crone of her own making, twisted, leering, mad, a ragged monster of the Children of Satan. But this was surely the next-best body, wasn’t it?

Benedict woke with a start staring blindly forward.

“The Voice,” he murmured against the pillow. “The Voice is saying come, isn’t it?”

“And we will, but you are to stay some twenty feet behind me. You come when I call to you.”

“Twenty feet against monsters like this.”

Rhosh stood and pulled Benedict to his feet.

“Well, fifty feet then. Stay out of sight, but near enough to hear my slightest command and come instantly.”

How many times had Rhosh instructed Benedict in how to use the Fire Gift, how to muster it and send it against any blood drinker who ever tried to use it against him, how to fight off the power of another older killer, how to slam back with full force against gifts that seemed on the surface to be overwhelming? How many times had he demonstrated how he might do things with his mind which he’d thought impossible, opening doors, shattering them, blowing them off their hinges?