to his chest, she wept.

* * *

Thereon paused for a moment, took a deep breath. Two glanced over at him.

“This is hard for you. I’m sorry, Theroen. You don’t have to tell it.”

Theroen shook his head. “No, it is best that I do. I have kept this story to myself for hundreds of years, and I think perhaps this is why it is still so painful. If I could have brought myself to talk about it, I might have been able to heal. Modern psychology seems to bear that theory out.”

“Could Lisette really tell the future?”

“She was certainly right in this instance. All there was for us, in the end, was darkness.”

“What happened next?”

“Next? It’s funny, in a way. What happened next was done to protect me. Ah, Two, I was young. I was so very young. I had lived for over sixty mortal years, yes, but forty of those were vampire years. They pass in a blur, and contain fewer lessons. There was no death to deal with, aside from the victims. No sickness. No worrying about occupation or supporting a family. There was nothing to make me into a man.

“Lisette knew this, I imagine; she knew how naive I was. Perhaps that is what made her love me. Lisette’s strain is prone to depression, particularly after long stretches of immortality. She was more than eight hundred years old when I met her. I believe that Naomi and I became her anchors. Her reasons for living. She was terrified of what might happen to us, but equally terrified of pushing us away and being alone.”

“What did she do?”

“She told me to forget about it. I was confused. Upset. To be honest, I was frightened quite severely by this sudden change. I had never seen Lisette weep. In truth, I had never seen her give in to a weakness of any sort. To see her clearly frightened was disturbing, though I did my best to comfort her. I held her, and she clung to me in a panic for a time. I whispered in her ear that I would make things right, that all would be well. Eventually she regained her composure.”

“Did she explain?”

Theroen shook his head. His voice betrayed more frustration than sorrow. “No. I attempted to learn more from her, but she would say nothing. She dismissed it as the emotional ramblings of a woman, and like a fool I accepted it. The calm, collected, unperturbed Lisette I knew was returning, and I was glad for it. Relieved. I took her at her word. This was a momentary emotional outburst.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“No. And looking back on it now, it is obvious. Her entire demeanor changed after that night. She knew that the end was coming, and she hid that knowledge to protect me. Ah, Two, I loved her. I loved her as I love you, but I am so angry with her, to this very day. Furious. Why did she not explain? Combined, prepared, we might have prevented it. There might have been some other alternative.”

“Sometimes people, even people who have been alive for hundreds of years, make mistakes Theroen.”

Theroen nodded. “Indeed. It is not the mistake that frustrates me. I have only grief for that. It is the knowledge that, if she were here right now and presented the same choices, she would come to the same decisions. She would make the same mistake.”

“But she’s not here, now. Something happened, Theroen.”

“Isaac happened.”

“Isaac?”

“There were other vampires in London during the seventeenth century. Naomi and I did not know, because Lisette had never explained it to us, but there are rules among vampires. Laws. Lisette was breaking them, and by extension, so were we.”

“Normally, fledglings are in great danger if separated from their masters for any extended period of time. Even now, this is sometimes a problem. Rival vampires are likely to attempt to make an example of them. I was tolerated in my separation from Abraham in part because his power was so immense even then that there was concern as to what his reaction might be, and in part because of the tradition of my blood. Eresh-chen, first child in a line of first children, dating back to she who was the source of all vampires.

“Traipsing around with Lisette and Naomi, two vampires not of my bloodline who had, it seemed, stolen me from my sire ... this was not acceptable. Eventually, disapproval became dislike, and dislike became hate. Isaac used this hate in an attempt to