Paul hadn’t believed how smart and capable the vampire was, at least not at first. He hadn’t believed it when he first saw one staring back at him with dark, still eyes, looking small and helpless. There had been a slight smile on its face, a drifting little smile that communicated a sort of casual amusement. Jack Dodge said, “Hey,” and stepped toward it—and a knife shot out and sliced Jack’s head from his body like a blossom from a stem.

Paul could still hear the sounds: the rip of Jack’s skin, the crackle of his bones, then the shuss of the fountain of blood that pumped out of the stump.

Those sounds came to Paul in his sleep, in the whine of the jets he took through the night, in the whispering of the wind in the ancient cities where he worked.

The creatures drifted through the cracks and corners of their world, leading him on an infinitely careful chase. They played a kind of chess with him, appearing here and there, slipping away, only to reappear somewhere else.

His pursuit of them had taught him how brilliant they were. They always stayed ahead of him. His only useful weapons were surprise and technology. Brilliance and speed were their tools, but they had no technology. They had been neatly outclassed by a computer database and infrared sight.

The death of the vampire was appalling. It haunted Paul, and he knew it haunted his people. The vampire fought harder for its life than it was possible for a human being to imagine. They hid like rats, because their lives were just so damn precious to them. When you saw their death struggles, you could almost, at moments, sympathize. The vampire died hard. “Real hard,” he said aloud.

He sat staring at the map of the Thirteenth Arrondissement’s sewer system. There had been structural changes made as recently as a year ago. He tracked his finger along a tunnel that had been blocked up. Probably something to do with containing old waste from the tanneries and dye factories that used to be in the area.

No doubt that was why this map was so carefully kept up. The French had a problem with contaminated water and soils in the area, and they were cleaning it up.

The hotel phone rang. He grabbed it instantly.

“Two of your people were caught in the Department of Records of the Prefecture of Police at six-thirty this morning.” It was Sam Mazur at the embassy.

“Oh, Christ.”

“The French had them on video from the second they climbed down into the damn room, Paul! Come on, this is amateur night, here!”

“Are they being —”

“They’re being released under diplomatic immunity. But the frogs are gonna take ’em straight to the airport and put ’em on the first plane to Washington. They’re totally, completely, and thoroughly blown. I’ll tell you another thing—the reason that they got to stay so long in that very secure facility was so that the Sûreté could record every damn keystroke they made as they hacked their way into the database. They know how they did it, what they found—everything.”