of her underclothes.

“Madame.” Theroen’s breath had vanished. His heart pounded staccato in his chest.

“Hello, my good Mr. Anders. How are you this fine night?”

“The better for seeing you, milady.” Theroen had regained his composure. He did not want another display of helplessness.

“You’re seeing a bit too much of me at the moment, if the blood in your cheeks is any indication,” She laughed, and in one easy movement dropped to the pavement, standing in front of him. Her eyes caught the moonlight like bits of jade.

“You seek to fluster me, lady,” He said.

“I seek nothing at all, Theroen, except to be in your presence. You are not like most of the others. You burn with goodness. It... warms me.”

Theroen felt anger. How could this woman see in him anything of value? He sought to shock her. “Lady, this night I watched as a woman writhed naked in a pool of her own blood, too caught up in sinful ecstasy even to notice.”

Lisette raised an eyebrow, smiled, her expression amused. She touched his arm, and Theroen felt the warmth of the touch through his jacket. His anger, his fear, melted. He felt again a throb of desire for the creature standing before him.

“You could at least have invited me along.”

Theroen felt his jaw drop, astonished at this suggestion. He tried to stop it from doing so, but could not. Lisette laughed. “Would you like to walk with me, Theroen?”

Theroen was not at all sure he had a choice, but it wouldn’t have mattered. He took her arm, and they proceeded out of the alley, into the late evening crowds. Lisette chattered at his side, happy to be out and on the arm of a young man.

“It’s a lovely evening, don’t you think? So many beautiful ladies. So many debonair gentlemen.” She paused, as if waiting for acknowledgement.

“And yet, what are they to us, lady? They are cattle.”

“That is your master speaking.” Lisette glanced up at him. “Or your father, perhaps. I am not yet sure that one such as yourself might ever have a master.”

“Abraham commands me.”

“You defy him. You maintain your own dwellings. You do not join in his politics. His black magic. His evil.”

“Milady, I do not understand how you differentiate his evil from my own.”

“Your evil is a fabrication, brought about by too many years taking the word of priests as the only truth. You have been trained to see yourself as evil, even as a mortal. When you become a hunter of mortals, can that be anything but worse?

“Is the tiger evil, Theroen? The shark that swims in the oceans? They take mortal life as a force of nature. They take mortal life as it suits them. Their souls are clean.”

“My church... would have me believe those creatures have no soul, lady.”

“Your church would also have you believe that a man and a priest tempted into making advances upon his student also has no soul, would it not? Or at least, no soul worthy of salvation.”

Theroen grimaced. “That it would.”

“You see the world, the church, Abraham and Father Leopold in black and white, Theroen. There are so very many shades you do not see. You have been trained to look past them. Did Leopold not do good in his life?”

Theroen considered this. After some time, he nodded. The man had, indeed, performed more good deeds than Theroen could possibly count.

“Is that good invalidated by his carnal desires?”

“Yes. No, I... Madam, I do not know.”

“You may call me Lisette, Theroen.”

“We’ve only just met...”

Lisette laughed again, held more tightly to his arm, looked at him with her green eyes. “My young priest, I have been watching you for two years.”

Theroen’s mind arced back over the things he had done, or made mortals do for him, in the past few years. He tried to push these thoughts away. Lisette’s lips brushed his ear. “Why fight? Accept. Understand. My dear, you’re a very creative vampire! You’ve exposed many young ladies to the true pleasures of the flesh... something this horribly repressed society might never have allowed them. More amazing, you’ve done it without knowing those pleasures yourself. Is it so wrong that you’ve shown them these things?”

“I did it out of hate.”

“Hate for them?”

“No, not for them.”

“Then for whom?”

“For myself. For what I am, what I allowed myself to become.”

“There is no reason to hate yourself, Theroen. You must understand that.”

Theroen shook his head, bewildered. “Lady... Lisette... everything you say flies in the face of what I have known my entire