William's jaw clenched, but he didn't look away. "Do what you have to do. You should have done it already, instead of wasting time with me."

"If we live, I still have to be able to look you in the eye. That's important to me."

"You need to learn to be more ruthless. We're not going to get through this if you act like a pushover."

Julian smiled a little. "I know. I'll try."

William's eyes were flinty. "Don't try," he said. "Just get it done."

They'd reached an understanding, Julian realized, but forgiveness for the months of evasion and awkwardness between them-and for killing his lover, however necessary it may have been-would likely be a long time coming.

"William, I'm sorry," he said.

William's face softened, but only a little. "I know."

There was little left to do, then, but watch William leave. When the door closed behind him, Julian leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.

Four.

He was ready. He was sure of it. With Lorelei holding his hand, Julian leaned back in their bed, closed his eyes, and once again dove deep into the vast sea of inherited memories.

His first discovery surprised him. The Senior's relationship with William had spanned nearly a century. That pool of memories hadn't appeared that deep the last time he'd tried to get past them. But maybe that was because a hundred years was nothing in the great expanse the Senior's lifetime.

Just go.

Lorelei's voice echoed in his head. She sounded impatient. Lorelei often sounded impatient these days. He couldn't really blame her. She was concerned about the babies. If he didn't clear the way for their safe future, nothing would be safe for any of them again.

So he went. Went through the whispered conversations with William, private moments in the dark, things he had no right to see, skirting around them as best he could, because in spite of William's admonition to "just do it," it felt wrong to be here.

Soon he was back fifty years, seventy-five He heard Ruha's name drift by in a bubble and followed it.

You loved him, didn't you-Ruha? William's voice.

Until he changed, came the Senior's answer.

What changed him?

He changed himself. Chose a different path.

What happened to him?

I don't know. If you believe the legends, he's dead, or as close to dead as we can become, and has been for a long time.

He followed that thread, and it led him deeper. He fell all the way through, to a hundred and twelve years past, when the Senior found William feeding on drunks and criminals in Manhattan alleyways, and had taken him in. Somehow, that event was connected directly to Ruha, the memories of the earlier relationship being revisited and strengthened in the memories of William.

That explained the connection, then, and the reason he hadn't been able to find Ruha without dealing with William. The Senior's mind had set up the two relationships in a continuum, one blending a little into the other in spite of the space of several centuries between them.

Doesn't he have a name?

Lorelei again, though fainter than before.

A name?

It's the Senior. Always just the Senior. He must have had a name at some point. Probably several.

A strange question, he thought. It hadn't occurred to him to wonder.

She was right, but whatever names the Senior had carried over his ten thousand years were buried deep. There were more important things to look for at the moment.

As he gently pushed Lorelei's question aside, he felt her mild amusement. Just wondering.

I love you. He wasn't sure why he felt the need to tell her that, but it seemed necessary. He made sure she'd heard him.

Then he jumped. With faith and Lorelei's reassuring presence shadowing him, he plunged through millennia, all the way from the beginning of the Senior's relationship with William to the end of his relationship with Ruha.

I can't stay with you if you take this path, and I will not follow you. The last thing the Senior had said to Ruha, before Ruha had left to join Ialdaboth.

And Ruha's reply-You are a fool.

The pain in that moment was so intense he thought he would weep with it. He pulled himself away, pushed deeper-and found yet another barrier.

More pain. The agony of Ruha's leaving had colored every other moment of their centuries-long union. Even the pleasant memories hurt.

It wasn't you. This isn't your pain.

Floundering in the depths of that anguish, he'd nearly forgotten Lorelei was with him. But I can feel it. It's like knives, he told her.

I can help. Let me take some of it.

No . . . the babies . . .

He plunged in alone, sadness a murky shroud around him. It was like trudging through a bog, thick and noxious. It reminded him of Ialdaboth's black, swarming insect power. The dense wretchedness of the Senior's grief, the crackling, crawling, overwhelming miasma of Ialdaboth's power-they seemed complementary in some way. But he didn't know if that meant there was a connection between the ancient vampire and the Demon, or if his mind was taking things it didn't un derstand and constructing interpretations based on similar metaphors.

Either way, it hurt.

Hold on to me.

Lorelei. His anchor. But he wasn't sure she would be enough.

Of course I'm enough. Just find what you need and get the hell out.

Trust her to boil the situation down to the essentials. And she was right. He didn't have to go through every single memory. He just had to find what he needed, take it, and leave.

Centuries. Over a millennia, they had been together, and no sort of order to the memories of those years. Then, abruptly the earliest memories bobbed to the top, and a strong truth leaped out, vivid with sensation and emotion.

Ruha had made the Senior. Ten thousand years ago, perhaps before any other blood-child had ever been created, Ruha had made the Senior.

He was the first vampire? Lorelei's presence radiated perplexity.

He told me he was. The other brothers, though, they would have made Children, as well. No way to know who did it first.

What made them think of it?

She had drifted into irrelevance again, he realized.

I mean, when do you think, "Hey, if I sucked his blood and then he sucked mine, what would happen?"

It's an instinct. He passed the thought to her, then brushed the rest of that line of questioning aside. He needed to concentrate.

Is it there? Can you see it?

If you'd shut up a minute, maybe.

She subsided, unoffended. Mentally, he caressed her, assured himself once again of her presence. Oddly, he suddenly felt the babies, small bundles of random emotion, some of which was fear, as Lorelei had told him. That more than anything else made him gather himself for another dive.

The end of Ruha's presence in the Senior's life was tied to the beginning, like the snake that ate its own tail, and all the bits in the middle seemed to be strung randomly along that continuum. He found moments of William there, as well, as if the two relationships had become inextricably linked.

So how was he to find what he needed? The language here was old, older even than the one he'd used to communicate with Aanu, and that made it even more difficult to find his way. Panic rushed through him. Surely, he would lose himself here, in the net of language and memory, lost in grammar as thoroughly as he was lost in this alien I'm still here. Get yourself together.

The blast of English and irritation grounded him again.

Just look harder, find what you need, and get out. I have to pee.

And there it was. All at once, written in bright letters like fire across his interior vision. Then in words, whispered in the darkness of a tent or some small house that smelled of goat-leather.

There were visions. I think all of us had them, all of the four brothers. Belial and Aanu have gone missing, but wherever they are, they must have felt this, too.

That's it! Lorelei broke in.

I know. Just a minute. Let me get it all.

She subsided apologetically, and he continued to pick his way carefully through the gaps of personality, language, and sheer time.

I saw things. Heard words. Most of it made no sense, but somehow I knew it was important. It woke me out of sleep, then forced me into it again, over and over, night after night.

He felt the Senior's concern, his curiosity. He felt male skin under his fingers, a soft caress to Ruha's arm. Ruha's face looked into his, pained. Craggy features, blue eyes, like Lucien. Like Aanu and Ialdaboth.

Tell me. Was that the Senior, speaking to Ruha all those centuries before, or was it him, demanding what he needed from the memories inside his own skull?

There is power in the light, but also in the dark. Either power may shatter the other. The light, however, is more willing to die.

The light, then is the stronger. The power of light, layered and joined, melded in the willingness to lose itself, can conquer anything.

There was more, but he knew the rest was irrelevant. He'd read the other bits before, in the reconstruction of the Book the Senior had worked on before he himself had taken over. That piece, though, those few lines, those he had never seen before. It fit into the puzzle started by Lucien.

We have it.

Lorelei spoke softly, the impatience mostly gone. That's it. We're almost there. We've nearly won.

Not quite. There will be tears before it's over. Slowly, he swam upward, through the ocean of alien memories, until he crossed the border into his own and he was, once again, himself.

And Julian opened his eyes and looked at Lorelei, sitting next to him, and he saw in her face that she understood.

He slept for a time, exhausted from his efforts. Some hours later, though, he woke abruptly to find Lorelei asleep next to him and Lucien bent over his bed.

"Wake up," Lucien murmured. Julian swung out of the bed and followed Lucien into the living room. "What is it?" he asked, then realized they weren't alone. Aanu sat hunched in a chair, looking nearly as worn out as he had felt awhile ago, when he'd come up from the depths of the Senior's memories.

"You found it," he stated flatly in the language Aanu understood.

Aanu gave a single nod. "As did you."

"Yes."

"Let's share," said Lucien dryly.

Aanu shook his head slowly. "The dreams. They were so broken- You and I both had them, Lucien, you remember."

"I remember."

Julian was tempted to tell him to get on with it, but he cautioned himself to patience and let Aanu work through the story. Like his own search for answers, it had to be a process.

Aanu went on, haltingly. "The Black Sea flood-it was massive, deadly. It's no surprise they still write about it. Lucien and I were there. We tried to save some of the people, but it was too late. And the mud took us. Layers and layers of it, thick and black, and it killed us.

And we dreamed."

"You dreamed the Book."

"Yes. And we wrote down what we could remember, what we could make sense of. The dreams were-"

When he broke off, Lucien said, in English. "Freaky. Weirdest thing I've ever experienced." Then to Aanu, "Strange. Disturbing."

"Yes," Aanu agreed. "Some of it was lost simply in the writing of it. More was lost when the Dark Children destroyed what we had done. But I found the piece I was looking for."

Julian's impatience spiked again, but he kept his voice level. "What is it?"

"The power . . ." Aanu trailed off, then gathered the words again.

"The power in the life. The power in the life can defeat any power forged in death. The one who takes his life without diminishing the lives of others may channel the life of those who drink life from the air. The giving of the life that cannot end can end the life that feeds from death."

Lucien frowned. Julian nodded. "It fits."

"Does it?" said Lucien.