"How long has it been?" Aanu asked. His gaze slid from one to the other of his visitors as he tried with little success to hide his uneasiness, his fear.

Lucien spoke gently. "Do you really want to know?"

"I need to know. How long has it been?"

Silence dragged through the room as Lucien eyed his half-brother.

Finally, slowly, he said, "Four thousand years."

Aanu gaped. "Four . . ." He stopped, closed his eyes.

Again the silence came. Schooling himself to patience, Julian followed Lucien's lead and waited it out.

"Ialdaboth," Aanu finally said. "And Ruha. They did this to me."

"I thought as much." Lucien shifted forward in his chair, leaning his elbows against his knees. "Two pitted against one. Is there any other way to defeat one of us?"

"I was not defeated." Aanu's tone was mildly offended, but more amused. "If I had been defeated, I would not be speaking with you now."

"Fair enough." He started to say something else, but Julian broke in. A memory had floated to the surface of his mind.

"When did Ruha turn?"

Aanu frowned. "Turn? What do you mean?"

"I remember Ruha." The memory was fleeting and faded, one of the Senior's that Julian had no desire to pursue. "Ruha was not with the Dark Children."

"You cannot possibly remember Ruha," Aanu protested. "He has been gone for . . . since before you were Made, certainly."

But Lucien understood. "The Senior?"

Julian nodded. "Yes. Ruha Made him, I believe."

"Interesting. Did I know that? Maybe I didn't."

Aanu was staring at them in frustration now, as both Julian and Lucien had switched to English. Julian rummaged for the words in Sumerian. "Ruha was not always of the Dark Children."

"No," Aanu conceded, "but he chose that path a long time ago."

"When he was with the Senior . . ." Julian trailed off. "But no.

That was why the Senior left him."

"Ruha came to believe that we followed the wrong path." Aanu looked at Lucien as he spoke, as if seeking comfort in a more familiar face. "He partnered with Ialdaboth for a time, and then he disappeared.

I believe that he and Ialdaboth also had an ideological disagreement, though one different from the one he had with us."

"He's not dead?"

"There are stories. Someone told me once he'd been overcome somehow, and cut to pieces. But that might just be legend again, like the Osiris story."

Julian frowned. "If he were dead and we knew how he died, we might use that knowledge against Ialdaboth."

Lucien shook his head. "My guess is, he's been incapacitated in some way, much as Aanu was. Where, how, why, even when-no- body knows for certain." He turned again to Aanu. "Do you remember the Book? The one we dreamed when we were under the mud?"

Aanu nodded slowly. "Parts. I remember parts."

"Good. We need those parts. Maybe if we get enough of them, we can figure out what they mean."

"Let's hope it's soon," said Julian.

Lorelei was waiting for him. She sat at his computer, playing a card game. On the desk lay an opened package of corn chips and a bowl of guacamole. Julian made a face.

"What?" said Lorelei, moving a card into position with the mouse.

"That stuff's just way too green."

"It's delicious."

Julian eyed it skeptically. He could smell it, and even though he had become accustomed to eating a wider variety of foods of late, guacamole didn't smell like something he wanted to try.

With no such compunctions, Lorelei scooped another large helping onto a corn chip. "Did you guys make any progress?"

"A little. I think I know where to start."

"With Aanu, of course. Hell, I knew that much. Because you were supposed to question him, and he was supposed to pass on some information that would put you on the right track."

"And he did. I'm fairly certain at this point that each of the four original brothers held a piece of the puzzle. Some of what they knew came out in the Books, when Lucien and Aanu dreamed them under the mud. But there's another piece of knowledge that was either left or taken out of the Book at some point. That's where our answers are, I'm sure."

Lorelei had turned away from the computer and was listening with some interest. "Really? What makes you think that?"

"We got one piece from Lucien. Then there was the bit that Rafael remembered from Brigitte's nightly ritual-that's Ialdaboth's piece.

Aanu has a piece, I'm certain, and once he gets a little more lucid, he'll remember."

"So where's the fourth piece?"

"I have it." At her startled look, he went on. "It's there, somewhere, buried in the memories the Senior passed on to me. His memories of Ruha."

Two.

The power continued to flow into him, filling him again, making him strong. He had been weak long enough, and now the healing process was almost finished. Only a matter of time until he had the power, the focus, the strength, the magic, to confront the enemies of the Dark Children. They were deluded, broken people, searching for hope where there was none, dispatching love where love could touch nothing, grasping at the falling straws of repentance where repentance was impossible. They would bleed, and they would die, and he would devour the shredded fragments that remained Julian opened his eyes. Had he been asleep? Perhaps, though it seemed rather unlikely, given his state of mind. Perhaps he had only been dreaming, without the benefit of sleep.

Or perhaps, as he'd suspected for quite some time, he was actually tuned into Ialdaboth, his brain picking up signals on the Evil First Demon frequency.

He was sitting in front of the computer, as he had been for the last several hours. Lorelei, satiated on chips and guacamole, had gone to bed a long time ago.

He had typed the fragments from Lucien and Rafael into a file, where he could play with them. He'd looked at them frontward, backward, upside down, sidewise, next to each other, one above the other, superimposed on top of each other, and nothing had clicked. Not yet.

He had a feeling that wasn't the right approach, anyway. There seemed to be a narrative element in the fragments, which meant they needed the rest of the story. So he would have to wait until the last two bits came in. And hope they made sense.

Frankly, he was less worried about the piece they needed from Aanu than he was about the one he would have to extract from himself.

Aanu would remember, and he would pass on the information, and they could add it to the collection. Maybe that would be enough, but Julian doubted it. He was going to have to dive into his own brain, and dive deep.

No great surprise. He'd known since the day he'd realized the Senior's blood had brought memories with it that he would have to use those memories. So far, he'd dipped into them to arrange the trip to Romania, to protect Lorelei, and to perform a few other mundane tasks in maintaining the stability of the Underground. Surface stuff only, like wading ankle-deep in ocean surf. Getting to the memories he needed now would take a headlong plunge into the mental and emotional equivalent of the Marianas Trench.

He wasn't entirely certain he could do it. There were the headaches, for starters. Every time he tried to access the Senior's memories, his brain rebelled violently and painfully, and it seemed to get worse each time. After Lucien's party had left for Romania, he'd spent several days recuperating, and the painkillers the doctor had provided had done very little good. The truth was, he was afraid of what would happen next time.

But that wasn't the whole truth. In fact, it was probably just an excuse. Because it wasn't the memory retrieval itself that caused the pain. It was his own stubborn, full-fledged fight to limit the memories that caused it. When he accessed the Senior's legacy, he carefully looked for only the information he needed-the bits and pieces relevant to the specific situation, and no more. Because even in those limited incursions, he could feel the Senior as if he were still alive, lurking there in his head. And Julian knew that what really terrified him was the thought that, if he went too deep into that ocean of ancient memories, he would lose himself entirely, and no longer be Julian Cavanaugh.

The babies were afraid. Lorelei sensed it the moment she opened her eyes, realized it was, in fact, what had awakened her. The babies, too small even to be called babies yet, without fully developed brains, according to the developmental charts she'd been studying so diligently, were afraid. Terrified.

She sat up in bed, laying both hands on her slightly rounded abdomen.

She could feel the taut walls of her growing uterus, a little larger than a grapefruit but clenched hard on itself. Gently, soothingly, she rubbed the tight muscles, trying to communicate comfort through her touch. The babies moved as she eased her fingers over her belly. She could feel the movement inside her, but not against her palms. The babies were still too small to disturb the surface of her skin with their kicking and swimming.

"Shh," she said, her voice little more than a whisper. "Shh. It'll be all right. It'll be all right."

Next to her, Julian sat up. She jumped a little-she'd been so absorbed in the babies that she hadn't even noticed he was there.

"Is everything okay?" he asked.

"They're afraid," she whispered.

He frowned and reached toward her, laying his big hand over her belly, next to hers. "Afraid of what?"

"I don't know. Him, I think." She looked earnestly at Julian, suddenly afraid, herself. His frown hadn't budged. "Is he closer? Can you tell? Are we running out of time?" Suddenly she could think of nothing but her tiny children, helpless there, inside her, and of the threat Ialdaboth posed to them. To everyone.

His fingers tightened a little on her, strong, comforting. His words, though, were anything but. "Of course we're running out of time. We've been running out of time since the day you let me drink you."

"If I hadn't, we'd all be dead by now."

His lips twitched a little. "Don't confuse me with the facts." Leaning forward, he kissed her softly. She let his lips play against hers, let the taste and feel of him comfort her. Then he drew back, lay his face against her belly, and began to sing.

She smiled at the soft sound of his slightly off-key crooning. The music vibrated through her nightgown, against her skin, and the babies began to ease under its effects. Their movements slowed, becoming lazy and, finally, stopping. They were asleep. She knew it in the same way she had known they were afraid. Just a sense, clear but strange, disconnected in a way from her own emotions and senses. Their fear had dissolved, eased away by the sound of their father's voice.

"The babies can feel him," Julian told Lucien in the morning, when Lucien showed up at his door, as usual, just after sunrise. "So can I.

We're running out of time."

Lucien snorted. "Tell me something I didn't already know."

"You didn't know the babies could feel him."

"True," Lucien conceded with a shrug. "Anyway, I know we're running out of time. We need a solution before Ialdaboth comes blasting up through the floor or falls through the ceiling onto our heads or whatever crazy stunt he's likely to pull next."

"Do you know if Aanu has remembered anything?"

"Not sure." He stood and stretched, his spine popping rather alarmingly.

"I talked to him again last night, and he's still having some re trieval problems. Anyway, I sent William to spend some time with him, just for a change of pace."

"William?"

"Turns out William knows that Sumerian dialect. Not sure how he learned it, but he knows it about as well as I do. Certainly better than you."

Chagrined, Julian said, "It's not exactly easy sifting for vocabulary through what effectively amounts to someone else's brain."

Lucien sobered. "You need to make it your brain. We're not going to solve this thing if you don't."

"I know."

"And I know why you don't want to. Get over it."

Julian looked up sharply. "I don't think you have any idea." "I know a hell of a lot more than you want to give me credit for.

And unless you want everybody here to die, you're going to have to get over your little personal problem and start using the Senior's memo- ries-all of them."

"What if-" Julian started, then broke off, afraid to say the words.

"What if what?" Lucien's voice had gentled, almost as if he knew the words without them being spoken. Maybe he did. Lucien was that way.

Julian swallowed hard, and said it. "What if I get lost in there?

What if I can't get back?"

Lucien laid a hand on his shoulder. "You will," he said. "You have to."

"Do you really think it's that dangerous?" Lorelei asked him later.

They sat in bed together, Lorelei in soft, satin pajamas the color of a ripe peach. Unable to resist the urge, Julian reached out to cup his palm over the soft curve of her belly. She'd told him she could feel the babies moving, but he felt only her warmth, the tautness of her skin.

She laid a hand over his and went on. "Or are you just afraid?"

Startled, he looked up to meet her gaze. Her eyes were wide open and ready for him to tell her the absolute truth. And they had a look in them that made him think she already knew it.

"Both," he finally said, "but maybe more of the latter."

She nodded, her fingers tightening over his hand. "I thought that might be the case. What are you afraid of?"

"If I go deeply enough into those memories to find what we need, what's to guarantee I'll be able to come back?"