Ah, there was that nagging voice, that being talking inside his head. Who was this arrogant blood drinker shogun who thought he could tell Cyril what to do?

He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. Human beings were staring at him. Well, let them stare. His brown hair was filthy, of course, and so were the rags he wore, but he accelerated his pace, skillfully, moving fast away from prying eyes. Then he looked down. He was barefoot. And who’s to say that I can’t be barefoot? He laughed under his breath. After he’d fed, he would bathe, wash himself properly, and make himself “blend in.”

However did he get here, to this country? he wondered. Sometimes he could remember and sometimes he could not.

And why was he seeking out this particular place—a narrow building that he kept seeing in his mind?

You know what I want of you.

“No, I don’t,” he said aloud, “and there’s no telling I’ll do it.”

“Oh, yes, you will,” came the answer very distinctly right inside his brain. “If you do not do what I wish I will punish you.”

He laughed. “You think you can?”

Other blood drinkers had been threatening to punish him ever since he could remember.

Long ago on the flank of Mount Fuji, an ancient blood drinker had said to him, “This is my land!” Well, guess what happened to him? He laughed when he thought of it.

But long before that, he’d been laughing at threats from those around him—those blood drinker priests of her temple, always threatening to punish him if he didn’t do her will. He had marveled at the timidity of the blood gods who submitted to her inane rules. And when he’d brought his fledglings right into the temple to drink her blood, those cowardly priests had backed off, not daring to challenge him.

The last time he’d brought that pretty girl, that Greek girl, Eudoxia, and told her to drink from the Mother. Those priests had been in a rage.

And what about the Mother? She’d been nothing more than a statue full of the Blood by that time. So much for stories of divinity and high calling and reasons to suffer and sacrifice and obey.