touched the screen. When I drew my finger away, a thin green thread was attached to the tip.
The thread snapped.
“Can she hear us?” I asked Matthew.
“No,” Matthew said grimly. “I don’t believe so. Benjamin wants me to listen to him.”
“No talking to our guests.” There was no sign of Matthew’s son, but I knew that cold voice. The woman instantly subsided, hugging her arms around her body.
Benjamin approached the camera until his face filled most of the screen. The woman was still visible over his shoulder. He’d staged this performance carefully.
“Another visitor has joined us—Matthew, no doubt. How clever of you to mask your location. And dear Miriam is still with us, I see.” Benjamin smiled again. No wonder Miriam was shaken. It was a horrifying sight: those curved lips and the dead eyes I remembered from Prague. Even after more than four centuries, Benjamin was recognizable as the man whom Rabbi Loew had called Herr Fuchs.
“How do you like my laboratory?” Benjamin’s arm swept the room. “Not as well equipped as yours, Matthew, but I don’t need much. Experience is really the best teacher. All I require is a cooperative research subject. And warmbloods are so much more revealing than animals.”
“Christ,” Matthew murmured. “I’d hoped the next time we talked it would be to discuss my latest successful experiment. But things haven’t worked out quite as planned.” Benjamin turned his head, and his voice became menacing.
“Have they?”
The music grew louder, and the woman on the floor moaned and tried to block her ears.
“She used to love Bach,” Benjamin reported with mock sadness. “The St. Matthew Passion in particular. I’m careful to play it whenever I take her. Now the witch becomes unaccountably distressed as soon as she hears the first strains.” He hummed along with the next bars of music.
“Does he mean what I think he means?” Sarah asked uneasily.
“Benjamin is repeatedly raping that woman,” Fernando said with barely controlled fury. It was the first time I’d seen the vampire beneath his easygoing façade.
“Why?” Chris asked. Before anyone could answer, Benjamin resumed.
“As soon as she shows signs of being pregnant, the music stops. It’s the witch’s reward for doing her job and pleasing me. Sometimes nature has other ideas, though.”
The implications of Benjamin’s words sank in. As in long-ago Jerusalem, this witch had to be a weaver. I covered my mouth as the bile rose.
The glint in Benjamin’s eye intensified. He adjusted the angle of the camera and zoomed in on the blood that stained the woman’s legs and the floor.
“Unfortunately, the witch miscarried.” Benjamin’s voice had the detachment of any scientist reporting his research findings. “It was the fourth month—the longest she’s been able to sustain a pregnancy. So far. My son impregnated her last December, but that time she miscarried in the eighth week.”
Matthew and I had conceived our first child in December, too. I’d miscarried early in that pregnancy, around the same time as Benjamin’s witch. I started to shake at this new connection between me and the woman on the floor. Matthew’s arm hooked around my hips, steadying me.
“I was so sure my ability to father a child was linked to the blood rage you gave me—a gift that I’ve shared with many of my own children. After the witch miscarried the first time, my sons and I tried impregnating daemons and humans without success. I concluded there must be some special reproductive affinity between vampires with blood rage and witches. But these failures mean I’ll have to reexamine my hypothesis.” Benjamin pulled a stool up to the camera and sat, oblivious to the growing agitation of the woman behind him. In the background the Bach continued to play.
“And there is another piece of information that I’ll also have to factor into my deliberations: your marriage. Has your new wife replaced Eleanor in your affections? Mad Juliette? Poor Celia? That fascinating witch I met in Prague?” Benjamin snapped his fingers as if trying to remember something.
“What was her name? Diana?”
Fernando hissed. Chris’s skin broke out in raised bumps. He stared at Fernando and stepped away.
“I’m told your new wife is a witch, too. Why don’t you ever share your ideas with me? You must know I’d understand.” Benjamin leaned closer as if sharing a confidence. “We’re both driven by the same things, after all: a lust for power, an unquenchable thirst for blood, a desire for revenge.”
The music reached a crescendo, and the woman began to rock back and forth in an attempt to soothe