the others, but nothing changed in the leader's face.
"I won't stand here for any judgment of Satan!" I said, glancing around the circle. "Unless you bring Satan here."
"Yes, tell them, child! Make them answer to you!" the old woman said triumphantly.
The boy was on his feet again.
"You know the crimes," he roared as he reentered the circle. He was furious now, and he exuded power, and I realized how impossible it was to judge any of them by the mortal form they retained. He might well have been an elder, the tiny old woman a fledgling, the boyish leader the eldest of them all.
"Behold," he said, stepping closer, his gray eyes gleaming as he felt the attention of the others. "This fiend was no novice here or anywhere; he did not beg to be received. He made no vows to Satan. He did not on his deathbed give up his soul, and in fact, he did not die!" His voice went higher, grew louder.
"He was not buried! He has not risen from the grave as a Child of Darkness! Rather he dares to roam the world in the guise of a living being! And in the very midst of Paris conducts business as a mortal man!"
Shrieks answered him from the walls. But the vampires of the circle were silent as he gazed at them. His jaw trembled.
He threw up his arms and wailed. One or two of the others answered. His face was disfigured with rage.
The old queen vampire gave a shiver of laughter and looked at me with the most maniacal smile.
But the boy wasn't giving up.
"He seeks the comforts of the hearth, strictly forbidden," he screamed, stamping his foot and shaking his garments. "He goes into the very palaces of carnal pleasure, and mingles there with mortals as they play music! As they dance!"
"Stop your raving!" I said. But in truth, I wanted to hear him out.
He plunged forward, sticking his finger in my face.
"No rituals can purify him!" he shouted. "Too late for the Dark Vows, the Dark Blessings..."
"Dark Vows? Dark Blessings?" I turned to the old queen. "What do you say to all this? You're as old as Magnus was when he went into the fire .... Why do you suffer this to go on?"
Her eyes moved in her head suddenly as if they alone possessed life, and there came that racing laughter out of her again.
"I shall never harm you, young one," she said. "Either of you." She looked lovingly at Gabrielle. "You are on the Devil's Road to a great adventure. What right have I to intervene in what the centuries have in store for you?"
The Devil's Road. It was the first phrase from any of them that had rung a clarion in my soul. An exhilaration took hold of me merely looking at her. In her own way, she was Magnus's twin.
"Oh yes, I am as old as your progenitor!" She smiled, her white fangs just touching her lower lip, then vanishing. She glanced at the leader, who watched her without the slightest interest or spirit. "I was here," she said, "within this coven when Magnus stole our secrets from us, that crafty one, the alchemist, Magnus ... when he drank the blood that would give him life everlasting in a manner which the World of Darkness had never witnessed before. And now three centuries have passed and he has given his pure and undiluted Dark Gift to you, beautiful child!"
Her face became again that leering, grinning mask of comedy, so much like Magnus's face.
"Show it to me, child," she said, "the strength he gave you. Do you know what it means to be made a vampire by one that powerful, who has never given the Gift before? It's forbidden here, child, no one of such age conveys his power! For if he should, the fledgling born of him should easily overcome this gracious leader and his coven here."
"Stop this ill-conceived lunacy!" the boy interrupted.
But everyone was listening. The pretty dark-eyed woman had come nearer to us, the better to see the old queen, and completely forgetting to fear or hate us now.
"One hundred years ago you'd said enough," the boy roared at the old queen, with his hand up to command her silence. "You're mad as all the old ones are mad. It's the death you suffer. I tell you all this outlaw must be punished. Order shall be restored when he and the woman he made are destroyed before us all."