“When I said I don’t eat humans, I meant it. From the night I was reborn, I was trained to control my hunger, and the only kills on my conscience were committed in self-defense.” He stops right in front of me, casting yet another half-finished cigarette to the pavement. “The vampires of the Mystic Order of the Northern Wolf might as well be feral. Their leader Turns humans on a whim and lets his progeny run wild, because he believes that for a vampire to kill a mortal is of no greater significance than for a mortal to pluck an apple from a tree.” He sets his jaw, his eyes cold. “They’re reckless and self-destructive, and when they die, their leader just Turns more humans and repopulates his crew. It’s nearly impossible to keep track of his membership, because he doesn’t care who becomes part of the Mystic Order; he just wants followers—easy to control and impressed by his cheap parlor tricks.”

The incident at Sugar Mama’s flashes through my mind again: a reckless attack on humans in a public place, a vampire who apparently just wanted to get close to me. Pulling my coat tighter, I ask, “What kind of parlor tricks?”

“Conjuring, localized teleportation, some minor defiance of gravity.” Jude rolls his shoulders, sounding bored. “It amounts to magical fireworks, but he was a mystic in life, and it flatters his ego to pretend he’s some kind of latter-day Merlin.”

“So you know who he is,” I observe, certain I don’t want to hear any more.

“Yes. He’s a newish vampire, Turned in the early part of the twentieth century, and his carelessness put him on the Syndicate’s radar almost immediately. In fact, you’ve probably heard of him, too.” The thick clouds overhead are quickly choking off what remains of the daylight, darkness coming on faster than scheduled, and the streetlamps blink on without warning. “Grigori Rasputin. The ‘Mad Monk’ of Russia.”

13

“Rasputin?” I repeat, goggling at him. “Rasputin as in … Rasputin?”

“The one and only.” Jude is unimpressed. “What do you know about him?”

“Not much, I guess.” Weeding through the dust of my school-related memories, I hazard, “We did a unit on the Russian Revolution in World History last year, and our teacher said he was supposed to be some kind of spiritualist and healer. And his influence on the tsar was one factor that turned public opinion against the Romanov dynasty.”