“Have you ever given any thought to what it means? Living forever?” He considers the smoke coiling up from his cigarette. “I was supposed to die at seventeen—I did die—but here I am anyway. I’ll be young for as long as I walk this Earth, and unless I do something truly unwise, there’s no known limit on how long I’ll be here.” His eyes shift to mine. “Isn’t that immortal enough?”

“Again,” I reiterate slowly, “this reverse psychology thing—”

“True immortality means I never check out. Ever.” He flicks ash from the cigarette. “Humans are destroying this planet just as fast as they can, because every generation figures it’ll be the next generation’s problem; what do I do when you all wipe yourselves out, and I carry on for eternity, starving in a parched, baking wasteland? What happens to me when the sun eventually goes supernova? I would endure an inferno, only to be blasted into the depths of space, where I’d just … float for eternity—alive, but frozen solid. Just me and my thoughts in airless silence, revolving in the dark, until the end of time.”

His eyes are vacant, fixed on the sky, and I just stare at him. What he’s describing is existential horror on a level I’ve never contemplated, and the hairs on the back of my neck are dancing like one of those wiggly armed noodle creatures outside of a car dealership.

“The prophecies say nothing about ‘imperviousness,’ by the way—just endless life,” he continues evenly. “Right now, almost any wound I sustain, no matter how severe, will usually heal within an hour, but if I’m decapitated, that’s the end. What if I had true immortality, and some Persean Knight managed to cut my head from my shoulders? Could I reattach it? Or would I be in two parts for the rest of my eternal life?” A grim smile plays on his lips. “If I got blown up by a grenade, would I just exist forever as severed limbs and meat and a pile of mutilated brain tissue that can’t die—”

“Okay!” I’m practically gargling bile, my back a Slip ’n Slide of icy sweat. “I get it: True immortality is not the rosy, daytime blood feast lots of vampires always imagine it to be. You can stop painting me the picture now, please!”

“But that’s the problem. Lots of my kind do see it that way—even some within the Syndicate.” Jude takes one more drag on the cigarette and then stomps it out before it’s even halfway spent. “Just as you said, I represent the most powerful organization of undead creatures on the planet. The majority of Earth’s vampires descend from the original Syndics, and our strength is such that we’re able to compel even those who fall outside our influence to comply with our directives.