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She’d been talking about the goddamned American Revolutionary War.

Brick had been a patriot?

Whatever the hell he was wearing, it wasn’t a British uniform.

“Soldiers could come here.” Brick continued to fume at her, his voice a hard combination of fury and helplessness. “What will you do, if they decide to garrison here, mother? Like they have with so many of the fine houses along the river? Will you simply tell father to kill them all? Will you take the scythe to them, too? Bury them in the basement with the rest?”

He didn’t wait for her answer.

“This cannot stand, mother! There is talk! How can you not realize there is talk?”

She rose gracefully to her feet.

Her bloodstained garment twisted around her, showing off parts of her naked body as the wet blood stuck to her hip, breast, belly, thigh. She walked over to him, pulling the fabric casually away from her skin as though it was nothing but wind that held it there.

Brick… “Armel”… grimaced.

Revulsion came over his face as he avoided her attempts to greet him.

Clearly he didn’t want any embrace from those arms.

Nick could hardly blame him.

There was something obscene about all of it: the blood, the nakedness, the scythe, the total indifference on her face, even her bare feet.

There was no maternal love in any of it.

Armel stepped back, his jaw set, his blue eyes angry.

Everything about him was so disturbingly full of emotion.

Nick stared as his sire turned, aiming his feet for the door of the all-black room. The young human left without a backwards glance. He walked purposefully down the corridor in the same direction from which they’d first seen the woman come.

Nick, Kiko, and Dex all looked at one another.

Then they began to follow him.

* * *

Armel walked down the rug-covered landing without slowing his steps.

He didn’t go into the bedroom where all of them had been when they first saw the woman, Virginie, Armel’s mother.

He continued past that door towards the two beyond it.

Nick remembered the baby’s crib they found in one of those bedrooms.

But Armel walked right past that door, as well.

He focused on the very last door, the one at the end of the hall.

He tried the handle, only to find it locked.

He felt over the top of the doorframe, apparently looking for a key. He found none. Going down on one breeched knee, he lifted the rug, looking there, too, but there was no key there, either. Brick gazed around the hallway, lifted a few vases on tables, but there was nothing in any of those places, either.

Nick saw the blue eyes train behind him, on the room he’d just left.

Fury rose there, right before Armel once more faced the door.