her. Two couldn’t tell. Finally, she moved out of Two’s way.

“Thank you, Tori. Sam, come on!” Two took Sam’s hand again, and the two began running once more down the path. After a moment, Tori caught up to them, overtook them, turned and met Two’s eyes, and then shot away on a diagonal, down a different path. Two relied on blind instinct, as she had so many times before, and followed Tori’s route.

* * *

Theroen stood facing his father, trying hard to keep the rage from flooding him completely and drowning his thoughts.

Abraham’s eyes glittered at him, mocking, as he spoke. “So. After almost four hundred years, things finally get interesting."

Theroen’s voice was low. Strained. “You murdered her.”

“I did. I did indeed. She took what was mine.”

“I was never yours, Abraham.”

“No, not in your mind, but it matters not. Lisette learned her lesson, and I gained my fledgling back. As is always the case, Theroen, I won. And now we stand here, father and son. Soon you will attack me, and not just because I took one bride from you, but because now I threaten a second.”

“You cannot have her, Abraham.”

“I don’t want her. I never did. I thought she was a terrible choice for you, my son. Drugs? Prostitution? She is unclean, Theroen. However did you find her?”

“I saw her working, and the strength I sensed in her caught my attention.”

“Ah. Strength. Much like Lisette, is she not? Young Two does not like to be owned by anyone. As I said: a terrible choice for a fledgling.”

“I do not look for slaves, Abraham. I look for equals.”

“I grow tired of this nonsense, Theroen. It will lead nowhere. Your child, and the half-vampire, and now yet another of my daughters, are all making their escape as we speak.”

“Good.”

“We shall see how ‘good’ it is when she feels you die, Theroen.”

“That is how it is to be then? My life for theirs?”

“That is the bargain, Theroen. You know me, and you know that I honor my bargains... though I certainly stack the odds in my favor before making them. If she flees tonight and does not return, she will not suffer at my hands. This... this will be worth the price my daughter paid.”

“I will not make it easy on you, Abraham.”

“My son, you never have.”

They were quiet for a moment, father and son, bitter enemies. Theroen knew he faced death, but his love for Two, his rage over Lisette, left him numb. There was no fear. Abraham, sensing this, broke into a malicious grin.

A single thought came to Theroen in that moment. Whether from his mind, or Abraham’s, he could not say. Get it over with.

Theroen charged.

* * *

Abraham, alive long before the birth of Christ, had met many challenges in his day. Some were human, some vampires, all had sought only to bring about his destruction. None had achieved that goal, and few had even come close.

Now his son charged across the wet grass, roaring, eyes dark with hatred. Abraham’s mind, enhanced to levels beyond human conception, processed each instant like a still picture floating gently in time’s pool. He had ages to react. Eons. Theroen, powerful as he was, held no threat.

Abraham stood and waiting for his son. He waited to free himself from the chains of his progeny. Melissa, dead. Theroen, dead. Tori would likely turn on Two as soon as Theroen’s death stole the whore’s vampirism away. Perhaps then Tori would become a rogue hunter, at least until she was hunted down and destroyed by other vampires, an aberration too dangerous to let live. Abraham no longer cared. He stood at the dawning of a new millennium, and at the edge of the next phase of his life, a phase where he doled out the gifts of his vampirism slowly, to supplicants who would appreciate the power he delivered to them.

Abraham had time to smile as Theroen charged. Ah, it was going to be glorious.

Hitting Abraham was like hitting a wall of solid concrete. Theroen collided with his father, fingers hooked into claws, seeking to rend and rear. The force of the initial blow alone would have shattered mortal bones. Abraham took only a small step backward.

Hands like manacles around Theroen’s wrists, forcing his claws away from Abraham’s face. Theroen snarled, lunged forward anyway, oblivious to the pain as his shoulders dislocated, snapping his teeth at Abraham’s neck. He tried to bite, to drink. Perhaps if he could cut Abraham, he might weaken his father.

Abraham twisted,