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She narrowed her eyes as if she could not quite imagine what the Talamasca was and I understood her.

I sat down beside her, folded her close and wrapped the fur cloak around us both.

"You smell of the cold, good wind," she said. "Perhaps we are meant to be creatures of the shrine only, creatures of the cold sky and the inhospitable mountains. "

I said nothing, but in my mind I thought of only one thing: the far-off city of Dresden. Pandora sooner or later always returned to Dresden.

Chapter 31

31

A HUNDRED YEARS would pass before I found Pandora. During that time my powers increased enormously. That night after my return from the Talamasca in England, I tested all of them and made certain that, never again would I be at the mercy of Santino's miscreants. For many nights I left Bianca to herself as I made certain of my advantages.

And once I was utterly sure of my swiftness, of the Fire Gift, and of an immeasurable power to destroy with invisible force, I went to Paris with no other thought but to spy upon Amadeo's coven.

Before I left for this little venture, I confessed my goals to Bianca and she had at once beseeched me not to court such danger.

"No, let me go," I responded. "I could hear his voice now over the miles perhaps if I chose to do it. But I must be certain of what I hear and what I see. And I shall tell you something else. I have no desire to reclaim him. "

She was saddened by this, but she seemed to understand it. She kept her usual place in the corner of the shrine, merely nodding to me and exacting the promise from me that I would be most careful.

As soon as I reached Paris, I fed from one of several murderers, luring him by the powerful Spell Gift from his place in a comfortable inn, and then I sought refuge in a high bell tower of Notre Dame de Paris itself to listen to the miscreants.

Indeed, it was a huge nest of the most despicable and hateful beings, and they had sought out a catacomb for their existence in Paris just as they had in ancient Rome centuries ago.

This catacomb was under the cemetery called Les Innocents, and those words seemed tragically apt when I caught their addle-brained vows and chants before they poured out into the night to bring cruelty as well as death to the people of Paris.

"All for Satan, all for the Beast, all to serve God, and then return to our penitential existence. "

It was not difficult for me to find, through many different minds, the location of my Amadeo, and within an hour or so of my arrival in Paris, I had him fixed as he walked through a narrow medieval street, never dreaming that I watched him from above in bitter silence.

He was dressed in rags, his hair caked with filth, and when he found his first victim, he visited upon her a painful death which appalled me.

For an hour or more my eyes followed him as he proceeded on, feeding on another hapless creature, and then circling back to walk his way to the enormous cemetery.

Leaning against the cold stone of the tower room, I heard him deep in his underground cell drawing together his "coven" as he himself now called it and demanding of each how he or she had harried, for the love of God, the local population.

"Children of Darkness, it is almost dawn. Each of you shall now open his or her soul to me. "

How firm, how clear was his voice. How certain he was of what he said. How quick he was to correct any Child of Satan who had not slain mortals ruthlessly. It was a man's voice I heard coming from the lips of the boy I once knew. It was chilling to me.

"Why were you given the Dark Gift?" he demanded of a laggard. "Tomorrow night you must strike twice. And if all of you do not give me greater devotion, I shall punish you for your sins, and see that others are brought into the coven. "

At last I couldn't listen anymore. I was repelled.

I dreamt of going down into his underground world, of pulling him out of it as I burnt his followers, and forcing him into the light, of taking him with me to the shrine of Those Who Must Be Kept, and pleading with him to renounce his vocation.

But I didn't do it. I couldn't do it.

For years and years, he had been one of them. His mind, his soul, his body belonged to those he ruled; and nothing that I had taught him had given him the strength to fight them.

He was not my Amadeo anymore. That is what I had come to Paris to learn and now I knew the truth of it.

I felt sadness. I felt despair. But maybe it was anger and revulsion which caused me to leave Paris that night, saying to myself in essence that he must free himself from the dark mentality of the coven on his own. I could not do it for him.

I had labored long and hard in Venice to erase his memory of the Monastery of the Caves. And now he had found another place of rigid ritual and denial. And his years with me had not protected him from it. Indeed, a circle had long ago closed for him. He was the priest once more. He was the Fool for Satan, as he had once been the Fool for God in far-away Russia. And his brief time with me in Venice had been nothing.

When I told these things to Bianca, when I explained them as best I could, she was sad but she didn't press me.