"They never told you the significance of that cave?" Lucien was surprised.

"I'm a four-year-old vampire flunkie who was failing initiation.

Why would they tell me anything? Brigitte put me there to get me out of the way."

Julian eyed him curiously. "So you don't know anything about the bones?"

"I heard something about some bones, yeah. I don't know whose they were, though. Look, I've spent the past four years just trying to keep my ass out of trouble. I didn't ask questions, I didn't cause problems.

It kept me alive. They told me to go stand in front of the cave every night for a month, so I did. I'd be there right now if that little bitch hadn't conked me over the head." He paused. "That reminds me. Somebody might want to go check on her."

"Why?" said Lucien.

"I clocked her with a lamp."

Julian rolled his eyes. Lucien, stifling laughter, rose. "I'll go."

"We'll come with you. I want Rafael to see what was in that cave."

Rafael had to admit he was curious, but he wasn't prepared for what he saw.

Julian led him to a room in the hospital wing, not far from where he'd woken up. Inside the room was a large, cylindrical metal tube with small round windows. It reminded Rafael of a submarine.

"What the hell is that?"

"It's a hyperbaric chamber," Lucien answered. "It's full of pure, pressurized oxygen, to bathe the tissues of whoever's inside. Hospitals use it in burn wards, and to help speed up healing of other kinds of injuries. Also for people who've been exposed to carbon monoxide."

Julian quirked an eyebrow at him. Lucien shrugged. "I paid attention to Dr. Greene during that long lecture we got."

"You're a better man than I am," Julian said.

"So what's inside?" asked Rafael.

Lucien waved toward the chamber. "Take a look."

Hesitant, Rafael stepped up to the strange, steel cylinder. Still not sure he wasn't the butt of some practical joke, he peered back at the other two men before looking inside.

On a long, low, bench-like table within the chamber lay a human body. But not quite a body. There was no skin, no hair, and in many places only partial musculature. The long, flat, pink and red strands of muscle and connective tissue, with blue and red blood vessels threading in and out, both fascinated and repulsed him.

"I don't get it. What's going on here?"

"That was a bleached-white, four-thousand-year-old skeleton when we found it," said Lucien. "We took it out of the cave you were guarding as nothing but a bag of bones."

Rafael stared into the chamber, then looked at Lucien. "Samis."

"He went by Aanu when I knew him."

"When will he be . . . in one piece again?"

"We're not sure. I've never seen a regeneration with this kind of technology, or with the healing assistance Julian and I have been able to provide, though Aanu and I both went through a similar regeneration after the Great Flood."

"The Great Flood," Rafael repeated dully. This was nuts.

"The Black Sea flood. He disappeared not long after that. Now I know what happened to him." He smiled at Rafael's look of complete disbelief, then turned toward the door. "I'd better go check on Sasha.

My guess is she's probably pretty damned pissed right about now."

Rafael watched Lucien go. And felt him go. The big man's aura faded gradually as he walked away. Like Ialdaboth's, Rafael thought again, but not quite the same.

"What is he?" he said suddenly, without thinking.

Julian laughed a little. "Not an unfair question. They call them selves the First Demons."

"'They?'"

"Lucien and Ialdaboth." He gestured toward the bones on the table. "Aanu and Ruha. They're brothers. Half-brothers, really. All sired by a demon on different mothers."

Rafael nodded. "I've heard the stories. I thought it was all a load of crap."

Julian shrugged. "We all have to come from somewhere. Vampires came from them."

Rafael mulled that over. He'd spent most of his four years as a vampire wishing he could be mortal, not absorbing the vampiric back-story. He'd heard some of the tales, the folklore, but it hadn't made much of an impression on him. It hadn't mattered. Now, to discover it was true- "We've heard some odd stories, as well," Julian went on. "I was hoping you could confirm or deny them."

"If it's about Ialdaboth's enclave, I won't have much. Like I said, I just stayed low and tried to keep out of trouble."

"Lilith said you belonged to Brigitte."

Rafael tensed. Where the hell was this going? Had he escaped Brigitte just to end up a slave again, this time to Lilith? It didn't bear thinking of. He'd heard horrible stories about Lilith. He'd even met her once. She had been cold and pale and frightening.

"Lilith is here?" He couldn't keep a tremor of fear out of his voice.

Julian nodded soberly. "She's left Ialdaboth's enclave."

"She was-" He stopped.

"Tremendously evil," Julian finished for him. "She changed her mind."

Rafael decided not to ask how someone could just change her mind about being tremendously evil.

"Now. About Brigitte," Julian continued.

"What about her?" Rafael couldn't fathom what any of these people could possibly want to know about Brigitte.

"There was a litany. Something Ialdaboth knew and passed on to certain members of his inner circle. Lilith had not yet finished the initiation process, but Brigitte had. Am I right?"

Rafael eyed him narrowly. Things still weren't quite making sense.

"She was one of his inner circle, yes."

"Do you know the litany? Did you ever hear it?"

Rafael was silent for a long moment, thinking. Could he remember the litany? And if he could, should he tell it to Julian? Hell, never mind the litany. Should he tell Julian anything at all?

"Why do you want it?"

"I want to kill Ialdaboth. The litany is, I believe, part of what will tell me how."

He schooled his features carefully. He'd gotten good at hiding his emotions, at keeping Brigitte, in particular, from knowing what he was thinking. "Why do you want to kill him?"

"Can you think of any reason why I shouldn't?"

Okay, that was annoying, that answering a question with a question thing. Then again, it was a good question. Meaty. Worth a bit of consideration.

"If you want to take his place," Rafael answered slowly, "to take over his enclave, use your power for-" He broke off.

Julian grinned. "Use my powers for evil?"

"Something like that. I mean, doesn't everybody?"

Julian sobered. "Not everybody."

"I'm starting to get that."

"Will you help us, then?"

"I'll do what I can."

Sasha sat up and rubbed the bump on her head, unsure what had happened. A second later, she remembered-she just wasn't prepared to believe it. Surely Rafael wouldn't be stupid enough to whack her over the head with a lamp.

Or maybe he would be. He was too damned pretty to have any actual brains. She rubbed the bump a little harder, feeling it disappear, along with the pain, under her fingers. Regardless of the speedy healing time, Rafael was in deep shit. She was halfway to her feet when the door opened. She spun, ready to fly on the intruder if it happened to be Rafael. But it was Lucien.

"You okay?" he asked.

She straightened, adjusting her mussed blouse at the same time.

"Yeah."

"You deserved it, you know."

His smile should have infuriated her, but she found it hard to be angry with Lucien. Maybe it was those blue eyes. Her annoyance at Rafael evaporated, as well. "Yeah, I suppose I did. Where is he?"

"He's next door with Julian and Aanu."

"Aanu's awake?"

"No. Not even close."

A shadow passed through Lucien's eyes, and she wondered, not for the first time, what Aanu must be going through right now. Enough to warrant Lucien's concern, certainly. She hated to think what it must be like to come back from a pile of bones. She wasn't even sure she, as an ordinary, run-of-the-mill vampire, could do it. That kind of destruction would probably kill her permanently.

"Do you think he'll be okay?" she ventured.

"Eventually." He stepped into the hallway, holding the door open so she could follow. "Let's go. You can apologize to Rafael."

"I will not."

Lucien only smiled.

Rafael looked up as they entered the other hospital room, but the expression on his face held more fear than contrition. Good. He should be afraid of her.

"Hey," he said. "You okay?"

"For the most part."

"Sorry about the lamp."

She shrugged. "Sorry about the rock. And the kidnapping-you know, all that jazz."

His lopsided smile appealed to her. "Would you like to talk?"

"Sure." With a glance at Lucien, who was smiling, she backed toward the door. "Follow me. I know a place where we won't be interrupted by these ancient, all-powerful geeks."

She'd found the little cavern a few years ago, in a bend of a tunnel off a side-corridor that branched into a little-used area of the Underground. She had no doubt Julian knew about it-he seemed to know a great deal-but he'd never interrupted her when she was there.

Maybe he understood that she only went there when she needed to be alone. There were several such niches and crevices throughout the Underground, with various vampires laying claim to them as their private "thinking places."

She led Rafael toward her own secret alcove. He looked around at the corridors as they wound their way deeper into the complex.

Occasionally they passed other vampires. One, who had the appearance of a ten-year-old boy with odd, mud-colored skin and dark brown, curly hair, gave Sasha a smile as they went by. Rafael eyed him reflec tively.

"That's Daniel," said Sasha. "He's about five hundred years old."

"That's just not right."

"I know. Here, this way." They started along the first branch off the main corridor. It had a steepish downward slant. "Dr. Greene's working on some kind of procedure to make the Children mortal again."

She looked over her shoulder, judging Rafael's reaction. He was frowning. "We don't have kids," he said.

"No one ever Turns kids in Ialdaboth's enclave?"

"No, we-they-Turn them all the time. But as far as I know, none of them has ever lived through the initiation phases." He spoke in a near-monotone, as if dissociating himself from his own words.

"So they Turn the kids just so they can kill them?"

He shook his head. "It's bad over there. I hated it. You did me a favor, braining me with that rock."

She wasn't sure what to say to that, so she said nothing. Neither did Rafael. They continued in silence until, finally, they took the last bend of the last narrow corridor and Sasha led the way into her small cavern. It was big enough for them to sit comfortably, with a few feet between them, but they both had to duck under the low entryway.

"This is nice," Rafael said, looking around. The cavern had rough, unfinished walls, and some of the bumps sparkled with embedded quartz.