"And so you did it."

"Yes. I should have asked her to be more specific about her intentions though. I should have known the only way out of that house was death. She freed me by making me what she was, a vampire. When Kali found out what Yasmeen had done she went insane.

I've not seen such jealousy before or since. They fought and she killed Yasmeen before my eyes. I don't think she meant to do it.

When she realized what she'd done her grief and rage knew no bounds. She slaughtered the rest of the men, slaughtered them and reveled in it. I have seen many battles over the years, bloodshed you could not even begin to comprehend, but nothing could compare to the horror of that night. I tell you she cannot be fought because I have seen what she is capable of."

He shuddered.

"What did she do to you?"

"She left me there. She locked me in with the dead. It took me a full day to break the door down. Twenty-four hours locked in a room with pieces of dead men everywhere I turned and Yasmeen's headless corpse, haunting me. It took me several more nights to bury all the bodies. I traveled back to my estate, slipped into my own house like a thief in the night, took everything of value that I could carry and fled the country."

"And that's why you do what you do? Protect the innocent, the ones like you were?" I asked.

"I don't think I was ever innocent," he said harshly, "but yes, that is one of the reasons why. When the Dark Council convened in Vienna, as it does in one place or another every three hundred years, they asked for volunteers to hunt the rogue vampires, those who broke the sacred law and killed humans. I offered my services."

"What is the Dark Council?"

"A council of ancients, only the oldest and wisest among us. They make the laws we must all abide by. Those who break the laws have to answer to me, or others like me."

I nodded silently."Dulcinea, I know the Destroyer. I lived under her tender mercies for years and I have seen her wrath. The demon inside her gives her power that a normal vampire wouldn't have. She has some magic but nothing like you can call up, I'm sure. When I tell you she can't be fought it's not because of that, it's because she's stronger and faster than any creature I've ever faced. She's simply better, Dulcinea, as much as it galls me to admit it. I have waged war in one form or another for nearly five hundred years. I am a soldier, a general, and I know that one of the virtues of a good general is to know when a battle is unwinable. If we had months to plan or to seek the protection of the Council, then maybe," he shook his head, "but I don't think we have that kind of time. Kali likes to play her games but she will grow impatient soon."

"So what do I do, Devlin? Tell me."

"I cannot advise you," he said, regretfully.

I threw up my hands. "Here we go again. Everyone says, 'Decide, Dulcie, live or die,' but no know can advise me."

He held up his hand. "I didn't say no one could advise you; I said I cannot. You have questions. Ask Justine."

"Justine? Why?"

He turned his back to me, pouring another brandy. "Trust me. She can help you as no one else can."

When he didn't turn back around I got the distinct impression his lordship had just dismissed me.

Chapter Sixteen

I was on my way up to the Dowager's room to see Justine when I heard the high coloratura trills of The Magic Flute's "Der Holle Rache" coming from my dining room. Her voice was incredible; each note coming so effortlessly, so clearly, and her pitch was perfection. Quietly peering inside I saw her, clad in her breeches and boots and another of my father's shirts, gracefully moving down the length of the dining room, slashing at the air with one of my father's fencing foils. Each move, each thrust of the sword, seemed ch.o.r.eographed to the aria she sung. The ma.s.sive table had been moved against one wall to give her room to maneuver. I didn't know how she'd done it; I'd seen six strong footmen struggle to move that table. She stopped in mid-thrust and turned to walk back to the far end of the room.

"Come or go," she called, "but do not hover in the doorway."

I flushed as if I were a child who'd been caught spying and slipped into the room, closing the door behind me.

"I would have thought you would prefer the role of Pamina," I said.

Justine smile, "Pamina may be the lead but The Queen of the Night is much more difficult to sing. Herr Mozart wrote it for me when I told him that I hadn't been given anything truly challenging in a hundred years."

"Have you ever performed it?"

"Not publicly," she said, and then effectively changed the subject. "So tell me, do you fence?"

"I know the rudiments," I said. Sebastian and I had played at being knights when we were children and my father had thought it a lark one summer to teach me a few of the basics.

Justine hooked her toe under a second foil lying on the floor and flipped it into the air. Catching it deftly in one hand she threw it to me.

I took off my jacket and folded it neatly across the back of one of the chairs. Gathering up my skirt in one hand and the foil in my other, I faced her. She tipped her sword to me and began.

She was toying with me, I knew. I was less than a novice and she'd had centuries of practice. She could have disarmed me in a stroke but she didn't. When she'd gently backed me against the far wall she stepped back and said, "Again."

Walking back to the end of the room she winced a bit and put a hand to her chest.

"You're still injured," I said. "You should be resting."

"We are women," she said, engaging me again, her voice rising to be heard over the clashing of steel. "Even with the strength of the vampire the men are still bigger and stronger."

The sharp staccato of metal against metal echoed in the room as we moved in a deadly ballet across the polished wood floor. She hooked my sword and drew up, pinning it to my body with the press of her own. "They have an advantage over us in brute strength so we must be quicker and smarter and better. Again."

As we circled each other, lunging and parrying, I asked, "What does it feel like? To be a vampire?"

"I can see as well as the hawk, can hear like the wolf. I can run fast as a deer for miles without tiring. To be a vampire is to know strength and power... and great sadness." She stopped in the middle of the room. "But that is not what you came to ask me."

"It's not?"

"You want to know how you could possibly make such a decision. You want to know if your soul will be d.a.m.ned for all eternity.

You want to know what will become of you if you give up your life."

My eyes widened. She was right. Those were the questions, even if I hadn't yet formed them in my own mind. Those were the things that had been swimming in my head as I was out riding. "How did you know?" I asked.

She laughed, sliding up to sit on the edge of the dining table, her long legs dangling. "Because I was once where you are now."

I stepped back in surprise. "You were a slayer. You hunted them. I just a.s.sumed-"

"That I was made as Devlin and Michael were, against my will? Non, the choice was mine to make." She looked at me for a long moment as if deciding whether or not I was worthy of the story, or possibly she was wondering if I could be trusted with it. "My parents died in the plague when I was thirteen. I had a younger sister to look after, Solange was only six, and we were all alone.

We nearly starved to death that first winter. I vowed we would not spend another month on the streets. One night I broke into the shop of the most fashionable modiste in Paris and stole a gown. The next morning I presented myself at court to audition for Jean- Baptiste Lully. He gave me a position with the Academie Royale de Musique and a room at the court of King Louis XIV.

"Soon I had gained the lead roles in Lully's operas and in the ballets and plays at court. I also gained the attentions of wealthy men.

At seventeen I was the mistress of the Sun King himself. At eighteen I was sent to the English court of Charles II to spy for Louis from the comforts of Charles's bed. To keep Solange from the debaucheries of court life, I enrolled her in the best convent school, keeping her far away from my less-than-proper lifestyle. I vowed that we would never be poor again. I sang and I danced and I collected a string of wealthy men who paid me handsomely for my favors. I loved my life. And then one night all of that changed."

"A vampire?"

"Yes, he caught me one night outside Versailles, as I was returning from de Louvois' bed. The vampire raped me and nearly killed me. I must have had twenty bite wounds from neck to knee. I spent every waking moment after that learning to fight. I learned swordplay from my wealthy protectors and then one night at a Cyprian's ball a duke introduced me to a Chinese antiquities merchant. We became friends and he knew fighting styles I'd never even seen. I paid him well to teach me. I would not be helpless again, not ever. In a year's time I went hunting the one who had attacked me." "Did you find him?"

"Oh oui. He died screaming, begging me to spare him," she said with a cold smile.

"But you didn't stop there." It was a statement, not a question.

"Non, why should I? I was young and strong. I knew which vampires I could take and which ones, the old ones, were better left alone. Within three years I was feared among the undead in Paris, so much so that a group of them hired an a.s.sa.s.sin to kill me,"

she laughed, twirling a lock of pale hair around one finger. "It did not turn out like they expected."

I was confused for a moment. "Devlin?" I asked, incredulously.

"Oui. He was not always as he is now. When I met him he was a woman-hating mercenary. The fights we had across the length and breadth of Paris were incredible," she said with a wistful sigh. "And despite what he said this morning, there was one mission that he failed to accomplish."

"So you became a vampire to be with him?"

"As much as I wanted him I could have given him up. Then. Non, it was his coming to kill me that made my decision for me. I was young and I had thought myself invincible. I did not consider that I may grow old, weak. That when I did the vampires would come for those I loved. Devlin's a.s.sa.s.sination attempt would only have been the first of many; I was too good at what I did. Maybe it was because I was a woman and the undead didn't expect me to be anything but a helpless victim," she shook her head and shrugged.

"I had a taste of my own mortality and it was like ashes in my mouth. What would become of my pet.i.te sister when I went out hunting one night and failed, as I'd come too late to realize that I must, eventually? I had thought to protect her and my city but I hadn't thought, not really. It was arrogant and foolish of me. I should have left well enough alone; I should have been grateful to have survived."

"You were afraid that when you died the vampires would take their vengeance out on your sister?"

"Oui. She was going to take the Holy Orders. Do you understand what it would have been like if they'd gotten her? The evil undead defiling a Bride of Christ?"

"Did you tell her? Did she know what you were?"

She shook her head and her hair spilled over one shoulder and obscured her face from my view. "I did not see Solange after her fourteenth birthday. The good sisters, they knew I was a courtesan and they were happy to take my money but they did not think the way I lived my life was a good influence on one so young. They turned her against me and I suppose that was as it should be.

Every immoral thing I had done had been so that she would never have to do it herself. When I came to visit her on her birthday she..." Justine looked down, swinging one long leg back and forth, "asked that I not come back. I suppose it was an embarra.s.sment for her sister the wh.o.r.e to set foot inside those sacred walls."

"Oh, Justine," I said, seeing the pain etched across her face.

She shrugged, as if she wished me to believe it was of little consequence, and pushed back her hair. "She was young. She did not yet understand. But even though she had turned her back on me I could not leave her alone in the world, defenseless against an evil she didn't even know was out there. When Devlin offered me eternity I took it, because I loved him and because it would make me young and strong forever. It is ironic isn't it," she laughed in a tone which held little humor, "that to protect my sister and my city I had to become the thing I had hunted for so many years?"

"That's what you meant when you said you'd been where I am now."

She looked at me, fire in her eyes. "Devlin and Michael are good men but they cannot possibly understand. They weren't given a choice. Devlin became a vampire because he walked into the wrong wh.o.r.ehouse, Michael because Devlin liked his way with the sword. The decision wasn't theirs to make. They can sympathize all day but they have no idea the strength and courage it takes to stand where you are now, where I have been."

I nodded. Devlin had been right when he'd said he couldn't advise me. He had understood that, at least.

"To become a vampire you must have strength, Dulcinea. You will know sorrow as the undead a thousand times more than you ever would as a human. It is tempting to be young and beautiful forever, to be strong and flush with power, but you must understand what you sacrifice."

"I am strong," I said, with more bravado than I felt.

"Yes, you are, but are you strong enough? Are you strong enough to watch all of those you love grow old and die, as I watched my sister, while you will never look a day older than you do now? You will see Mr. Pendergra.s.s, Mrs. Mackenzie, young Archie and pet.i.te Fiona grow old and wrinkled and they will die. You will live forever while their children and grandchildren and great- grandchildren's lives pa.s.s before you, so very quickly. You will grieve over deaths that would never have touched you if you were human. Remember that."

"And my soul?" I asked. "Do vampires have souls? Is your soul lost, Justine?"

"Can you feel a soul? I feel no different than I did when I was alive. The good sisters would have called me a suicide. They would say my soul was d.a.m.ned for eternity. I hope that G.o.d understands that I did what I did for the greater good. As a vampire I can save so many human lives. If I had stayed human I would be just one more body in the ground. Even so, we are not truly immortal.

One day, maybe soon, I will fall in battle. I hope that when G.o.d judges me he will weigh the lives I have saved against the decision I made."

"But the vampires you fight, the ones like Sebastian, how can they do what they do and still have a soul? Are you sure that the three of you aren't just different than all the others?"

She laughed, a high beautiful sound. "I have been on this earth for over one hundred fifty years. Trust me when I tell you that you don't have to be a vampire to be evil. I have seen evil in mankind the likes of which you cannot imagine. If evil is inside you, then becoming a vampire will only bring it out.

"Imaginez, if it is inside you to hurt others, to steal, to rape, to kill, and suddenly you are vampire, you are strong and no one can stop you. Those weak of character are especially vulnerable because any weakness will be magnified by the power they now wield. Non, vampires are not all like Sebastian but an evil human will make an evil vampire and those are the ones we fight."

"The vicar would say that no one is wholly evil. That there is some good in everyone."

She snorted. "Ignorance. The vicar has not lived as long as I have, or seen what I have seen." She raised a brow at me. "Are you a Christian, little witch? You worry that G.o.d will d.a.m.n your soul?"

"I was raised between two faiths, the Church of England and the Old Religion of my mother's people."

"But when you pray in your heart, to whom do you pray?"

I was quiet for a moment. That was not a question I would answer to most people. "The G.o.ddess, the Earth Mother. When I was a child I used to be scared of my father's G.o.d. The vicar would say that I'm a heretic because I'm a child of the Old Religion. It isn't a choice, though; it's how I was made. I was born a witch and I'm proud of what I am. As I've gotten older it no longer frightens me. I think I've come to believe that there can only be one Higher Power, one Creator. There can't be as many G.o.ds in heaven as there are religions of men. I think that we just find our own ways to worship, we find what speaks to our own souls."

She regarded me silently, and then nodded. "Very wise for one so young." She hopped down from the table in one liquid movement.

"Now," she said, picking up her foil and slashing the air with a deft flick of the wrist, "ask me your last question." I paused for a long moment. "If I do this, what will become of me?"

She smiled. "For the answer to that you must ask young Michael, no?"

Chapter Seventeen

I walked down the hall to my bedroom. I wasn't sure if I could face Michael yet. How do you say to someone you've just met: I'm attracted to you; how would you feel about being with me for a century or two? It was ridiculous. I just couldn't do it. I closed the door behind me and leaned against it, closing my eyes.

There was just the barest whisper of rustling fabric and a finger fell over my lips. I gave a little shriek.

"Shhh. I mean you no harm."

"Michael," I whispered, my heart pounding frantically in my chest. Was it from the fright he'd given me or simply from the closeness of his body?

"You've been talking to Devlin and Justine."

"Yes," I said, puzzled.