"Wow. All this is some heavy s.h.i.t." My head felt light, like I'd sucked myself stupid on wino blood. (I hate when that happens; it's a crummy way to get a hangover.) Travis had given me so much to think about, I didn 't know what to start with. Then one question rose to the top of my consciousness. "Do you think there'll ever be a-a cure?"

Travis looked astonished and chuckled. "Heavens, I can't imagine that happening. Why on earth would you ever want to be human again?"

I shrugged. "I miss it. The warmth, the sun. The life."

Travis puffed away for a few moments. "You'll get over that in time. When your memory of being human fades, you'll get over it."

d.a.m.n. I didn't want to get over it. His words sank into the place where my soul used to be and chilled me to my core. I tried to shake it off so I could ask him more about those slayers, but someone rang the big dinner bell, signaling that the meeting was about to start. It would have to wait.

Travis got to his feet. "Saved by the bell," he said.

William To my astonishment, everyone excluding myself, Iban, and Jack seemed to be in an almost festive mood on this second night of meetings. I had to a.s.sign the cause to Eleanor and her talent at providing pleasure. Coming in just before dawn, she'd crawled on top of me and ridden us both to o.r.g.a.s.m as she described in great detail every drop of blood shed, every twitch of pain felt. The swans had been required to wear hoods, she explained as she rocked back and forth. And of course-she picked up the pace, sliding up and down my length faster and faster-they had to mind how much blood got on the carpet, but other than those rules nearly anything went. She dug her fingernails into my shoulders, put back her head, and moaned as she went over the edge and found her own pleasure.

And a grand time was had by all.

Now, as I watched these sleek, well-fed, sophisticated vampires chat and laugh it was hard to imagine that we were discussing a war or at the very least a siege. I'd been visiting in Paris for the fall of Louis le Dernier and the parallels were striking-how the aristocrats had laughed and reveled in their superiority as their own servants planned ways to kill them. Dread settled in my chest.

Left to our own devices we might be immortal, but we were not invincible-especially to one another.

The Abductors had gotten back to me with word that Hugo's clan had all but emptied their central home, save for a few guards and spies left behind; the main family members were gone.

This was not particularly good news.

I cleared my throat and held up a hand to claim the room's attention. Enough socializing: time to get back to business.

"Shall we begin?"

"Yes, of course," Lucius said. "But first, William, I'd like to congratulate you on your excellent taste in-" He smiled a little too warmly at Eleanor "-mates.

"My dear," he continued, directly to her, "if you could arrange such an interesting evening in this backwater town with so little to work with, just think what you could do in a city like New York."

"Or San Francisco," Tobey added.

Offers barely veiled in compliments. I knew Eleanor was loyal-she'd saved herself for me the night before; she was most a.s.suredly mine-yet this evening was becoming an Eleanor-petting contest and everyone except Iban and Jack was partic.i.p.ating.

Jack and Eleanor were still standing figuratively on either side of me, each suspicious of the other. Iban hadn 't partic.i.p.ated in Eleanor's games; he'd spent the evening resting, although he didn't look better for it. In any case, I felt a twinge of conscience for interrupting their praise of Eleanor, but we had to move on.

"I a.s.sume that most of you took some rest," I said, letting my sarcasm show. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to resume where we left off last night. I've had some disturbing news."

The room fell silent.

"I have it from the Abductors that Hugo's clan has left their territory. We don't know if they're traveling as a group or if they've scattered to the winds, but I think it's safe to a.s.sume they have something planned. It could mean they're on their way here as Reedrek threatened. Their plots might also have something to do with Olivia's spies: three were sent to find any information. Two of those are believed killed, so Hugo must at least know that the European communities suspect him of dark plans. If nothing else, his kin are making themselves harder to find."

"And Hugo must figure Reedrek got his b.u.t.t kicked," Jack said. "Otherwise he'd have heard from dear old dad by now." A brief whisper emanated from Jack's mind: Diana. Then it was gone. I stopped and stared at him, waiting for the rest of the thought.

Why would he be thinking of Diana? I was about to demand an answer when I remembered my last conversation with Reedrek before he'd turned to stone. He'd taunted me with Diana's name and with Hugo.

Jack must've felt my surge of anger. "What?" he asked, looking directly at me again. His mind was filled with a parade of stock car wrecks, each more spectacular than the last...ending with the beloved number three car hitting the wall. He winced at the impact. I was too busy to ferret out Jack's race car logic. I went on. "Reedrek is definitely involved with whatever plans have been made to attack us. Although I still don't understand why my sire would come alone; in a sense, he warned us we'd been discovered."

"I guess he thought he could handle us alone," Tobey said. "And he d.a.m.ned near did. If it hadn't been for Jack and whatever the two of you did with that old blood, I figure we'd be ashes in the wind by now."

"Possibly," I agreed. "But now he's caught and we are-we will be ready for whatever this Hugo has in store for us."

"I still think we should put aside our scruples and make as many offspring as possible. We could begin here, in your town, then carry on when we reach our own territories," Lucius, ever single-minded, remarked.

"Lucius-what would be the point?" Gerard asked. "We'd have more to feed, more to protect, and the humans would be destroyed anyway."

"But they could give us an element of surprise. If the Euros think we are few and far between then a strong showing here would send them back to the drawing board-"

Jack's cell phone rang with a recorded voice, "Gentlemen, start your engines," followed by the sound of roaring race cars.

My annoyance with Lucius spilled over on Jack. "Jack, you know how annoying I find that sound-"

"Sorry." He shrugged and stared at the small metal contraption. "It's Melaphia." He raised the phone to his ear. "h.e.l.lo?"

I did my best not to tap my foot, only to realize I'd levitated slightly off the floor. After a few short weeks of equanimity, I felt the stirring of my former hair-trigger temper. "Jack!"

Jack lowered the phone with a sober expression on his face. "Mel says there's an emergency call." His gaze shifted to Iban.

"From L.A." He turned back to me. "She's having them call this number."

Within a few seconds the irritating voice sounded again. Jack put a stop to it after the first word. Then he handed the phone to Iban.

If I'd thought Iban looked paler than usual before, as he listened to the caller he looked positively sick. The hand holding the phone shook. "That's impossible. How could this happen?" He listened for several minutes, now and then firing off a question that made no sense to the rest of us, who were left to listen helplessly. Then he said, "No, I'm-" He gazed at me, pure misery in his eyes. "I don't know. Get to a safe place-call me again in one hour at this number." When he handed the phone to Jack, I saw tears in his eyes.

"They're all dead..."

"What!" three of us said at once.

Iban looked like he might collapse. "My clan, my servants...all but one."

"William, we've waited too long, the war is upon us!" Lucius declared.

"If they're in L.A., they could be headed for Seattle. How many were there? How are they traveling?" Tobey asked. Then he looked at me. "They could be here, too."

I crossed the room, closer to Iban. When I put out a hand, he flinched. "Don't touch me!" he said hoa.r.s.ely.

"Why, old friend? Tell us what has happened. Who killed your family?"

"No one."

"What do you mean? How can that be true?" "They got sick, they died. Some kind of plague."

There was a collective shocked silence in the room, then everyone began talking.

"All dead? Don't be ridiculous. What kind of plague can kill a vampire?"

"I've never heard of such a thing. Our sires lived through the black death."

"How did they contract it?" Gerard, always the scientist, claimed the floor. "Who was the first to die?"

By the time we got the story out of Iban, some of us remained unconvinced, but we were all shaken. What he described was not merely a plague but a rotting pestilence. First, the vampires sickened, then, more slowly, their human companions. One of the humans had written a short diary as one by one they died. The only remaining living member had been out of the area on our coast- watching business and had returned to the horrible scene.

"How do you know you can trust this last survivor?" Lucius asked. "Perhaps he's been enthralled or, worse, enlisted. It could be a ruse to get you, or all of us, to rush to the West Coast." He sniffed. "Personally, I refuse to believe in this story. Vampires do not get sick and die."

Gerard took over. "Right now I need time to sort it out. I want all of you to go back to your quarters," he said. "Stay inside, stay with your own family members. No feeding, no playing. " His gaze moved to Eleanor. "We must have all the humans who were present last night quarantined." He looked to me then. "Iban cannot stay with you. He must be isolated."

"And suffer his grief alone? I won't have it."

Gerard's expression softened, but he held his ground. His voice low, he said, "Can't you see he's already sick?"

After Gerard had taken blood samples from each of us and packed them in his medical kit, he sent us on our way.

"Eleanor, take a car to Houghton Square immediately," I ordered. When Eleanor demurred, saying she wished to stay with me, I had to make her understand her place in all of this.

"You must list and contact your employees and any swans who were present last evening. Tell them-" If they'd been infected it most likely would already be too late. "Tell them to go back to the suite and wait for us. Pay them double. We need to have them in one place, in case..." The look of horror on Eleanor's face stopped me. Then she pulled herself together.

"I understand. But shouldn't someone stay with them to watch for...?"

"Not you."

"But-"

"I won't risk you for a few mortals. Now please do as I ask."

After seeing Eleanor away, I called Tilly. I didn't know where else to turn. Short of abandoning Iban in one of the tombs of Bonaventure or locking him into the hold of one of my yachts, there were few options. He couldn't possibly go back to California.

And I hated the thought that he might die alone.

On hearing my story, Tilly insisted on having him with her and Gerard unexpectedly agreed. On Tilly 's part, she said a little plague couldn't be worse than the slow ravages time itself had visited on her body. But most of all, she wasn 't afraid to die, especially when her death might be a service to me. "Bring him here. I'll dismiss the staff and look after him myself," she said.

Gerard believed we needed to watch Iban's decline for clues as to how we might find a cure before all of us were taken down.

Iban stared out the window of the Mercedes the whole ride into town. When I finally couldn 't stand the silence any longer, I spoke. "I'm so sorry, Iban."

He remained silent for another long moment, then he turned toward me. "We must find Sullivan...make sure he's safe."

"I'll have Jack bring him to you."

"No. Not to me. I might infect him somehow. Keep an eye on him...unless he's already sick."

"I will."

Nine.

Jack I drove Gerard back to Savannah as if the devil himself was after us. Gerard was on the cell phone to his own people the whole time, barking orders in English and French, instructing them to look up this and that in medical and chemistry databases and report back to him. I didn't follow much of it, even the parts that were in English, except I did get the impression that Gerard thought the whole plague thing was a deliberate attack. h.e.l.l, I didn't even know vampires could get sick.

The only time I 'd ever been sick-since I turned, that is-was the time I got hold of some rotgut moonshine that was contaminated with lead, back in the 1940s I think it was. I felt sluggish for days, but that was better than my human buddies had fared. We'd all pa.s.sed out during a poker game and I was the only one who woke up. d.a.m.ned hard to explain to the county sheriff, I'll tell you.

Gerard finished his calls and closed the flip phone with a snap. "Jack, mon ami, as a race we are hard to kill, but if you don't slow this machine, we will surely wind up wrapped around one of those lovely live oaks, and both of us are too handsome to suffer such a fate."

"Oh, sorry, Gerry," I said, and took it down a notch. "So, I take it you think this was some sorta bioterror attack."

"Of course. In all my four hundred years I've never heard of a vampire dying from a virus or any other kind of ordinary illness.

Whatever pathogen killed the members of the California colony must have been engineered specifically to destroy us, and it can't have been easy."

Well, now, that info was enough to give a cold-blooded boy the heebie-jeebies. I'd been gearing up for a good fists-and-fangs fight if Reedrek's little helpers were to cross the pond, but how did you fight an enemy you couldn't see? Attacking somebody with microscopic bugs was just not sporting-not a man's way to fight, much less a vampire's.

I screeched to a halt against a yellow curb and we entered the hospital's emergency entrance so we wouldn't attract attention.

Visiting hours were long since over. Instead of bringing Gerard through the tunnels, I 'd taken the faster way. But in the car I'd explained how to make his way back to William's from the hospital through a tunnel entrance in a bas.e.m.e.nt supply closet, and I'd made sure he had William's phone number in his cell in case he got lost. All that was left was to lead him to the blood bank. Then he'd be on his own while I went in search of Sullivan.

Gerard followed as we walked through the ER waiting room and past the triage area. The smell of human blood was everywhere, not that the humans could tell. There must've been a fresh stabbing, shooting, or a particularly grisly car wreck. My fangs involuntarily lengthened at the aroma and my hunger for fresh human blood, never far below the surface, gripped my gut. Hey, I'm a vampire. Give me a break.

I looked back at Gerard, who carried our blood samples in an official-looking medical case. We reached a bank of elevators without anybody challenging us. I punched in the b.u.t.ton for the bas.e.m.e.nt just as a nasty thought hit me. "Hey, how'd you happen to have what you needed to get everybody's blood samples, anyway?"

Gerard eyed me warily. "I was hoping to get samples of blood from Melaphia and Renee on this trip. I plan to do experiments on the voodoo blood for our mutual protection. Don't let your imagination run away with you, Jack."

We got off in the bas.e.m.e.nt, where the blood bank was within spittin ' distance of the tunnels. Even if I hadn't been at the dedication party William had thrown for the staff, hospital administrators, and other contributors just a few days after we did away with Reedrek, I could have just followed my nose. Of course, none of those humans knew that as well as storing blood for humans'

medical needs, the blood bank also served as William's special stash. The problem was, William had forgotten-probably on purpose-to tell me how he got to the blood to liberate it for his own private use. I was going to have to wing it.

We came to a door plastered with all kinds of do-not-enter, medical-staff-only signs and biohazard symbols. A short, stout nurse looked up from her clipboard and saw us. "Just a minute. Who are you and where do you think you're going?"

I'd only used what we in the vampire trade called "enthrallment" on two people before-Connie and Werm-but it had worked like, well, a charm. I hoped that talent wouldn't fail me now. "Good evenin', ma'am." I gave her my brightest, broadest, least fangy smile. Now, how was it I'd done this again? I froze. The only thing I could think of was that line from Star Wars: These are not the droids you're looking for. I shook it off, and concentrated on making young Nurse Ratchet believe what I was about to say.

"This man is a scientist and he needs to use the lab." I said it quietly, holding her gaze with mine, willing her to believe and accept.

"Everything is as it should be. I think someone needs you at the nurses' station."

She stared into my eyes, motionless and silent, then blinked-once, twice. "All right, then," she said in a small voice. "I think someone needs me in the nurses' station." For a second she looked as if she might say something else, but instead, she turned and walked away.

"Impressive, Jack," Gerard said. "William said you had many talents. I can see it is true."

I shrugged. "Yeah. Next I'm gonna learn how to do the Vulcan mind meld."

Gerard's eyebrows lifted. "I'm not familiar with that process. Is it another form of enthrallment?"

"Something like that." Some of these really old vampires just didn't keep up with the times. "How long is this gonna take?" I asked.