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The smile turned brittle on Dominique’s lips. “Kambyses.”

No reaction from Isao. Or perhaps shock.

“You know the name?”

Isao nodded. “I have seen him in my sire’s mind. The Lord of Night.” The reverence in his voice bordered on fear.

Dominique said nothing as he let Isao absorb the implications.

“You’re not here just to avenge a friend, are you?”

“No.” His back pocket vibrated again. Damn that man. “Aubrey traveled the world on my behalf. He spread the word about me and the new way of things.”

“Indeed. And what might this new way be?”

Dominique let his vampire rise and his pupils dilate. “No more feeding on terror. No more killing. We feed with compassion and in love.”

Again, Isao seemed taken aback, this time by the glow in Dominique’s eyes. Then he chuckled, a warm rumbling sound emanating from his barrel chest. “If that is what he told Adilla, I can see why he ended as he did. Adilla tolerates no authority but his own.” He sobered before continuing, “He feeds on the worship of his followers. By the time they discover the deadly nature of his mercurial temper, it’s too late. Any who leave, or even waver in their loyalties, are hunted down and destroyed.”

“Except you?”

“I know him too well, I’m too old, and I have my swords. He can’t harm me or those I protect. Though his pet, Esteban, continues to delude himself into believing he can. I have killed a dozen of his soldiers this past year alone.” He paused. “Make no mistake. No one deserves my sword more than Adilla. But as my sire, he is safe from my wrath. He knows that when it comes to it, I will fight to protect his miserable hide.” An unmistakable warning slid beneath the words.

Dominique’s mouth twisted into a wry line as he thought of his own, far more volatile battles with Kambyses. “I have no intention of destroying one so old. I do not kill without good reason.” Never mind that only days ago, Aubrey’s horrific death qualified as such a reason. Things had become complicated since then and were getting more so by the moment.

“Oh, he will give you that. It’s his way.”

“Then I must seduce him first.” He paused, lowering his voice. “I will find him, Isao, with or without your help. But I would prefer you as my ally.”

Isao’s shoulders squared. “Do you intend to seduce me as well, then?”

“I already have.” As the words left his tongue, he cast an illusion over the proud samurai. The sky over their heads appeared to brighten. Within seconds, it turned from hazy black to velvet violet to resonant blue. The rain dissipated, replaced by a warm wind. Isao whirled around, face upturned, gaping. In the east, the molten edge of the sun crested the mountains in an explosion of light and warmth.

It was the sunrise Dominique imagined he would see here if he used one of the suppressant doses, assuming he could remember enough to cherish it. To Isao, however, the illusion was real—the first sunrise in centuries of darkness. Stunned, the samurai fell to his knees.

Dominique crouched before him and let the fantasy fade. As the night thickened again, the other blood-drinker looked at him, unguarded wonder in his face. “You would give me back the sun?”

“That I cannot do,” Dominique said with genuine regret. “What I can do is free you from the lonely terror of our kind that was Kambyses’s essence. I can give you peace. And I can give you love.”

As he explained the re-siring process, Isao, still seated on his folded legs in the wet grass, listened intently and then thought with care when Dominique asked, “Will you allow this?”

The samurai was bright enough to understand that the question was one of courtesy only. His nod of agreement couldn’t be described as enthusiastic, but at least it didn’t feel resigned either.

Isao formally submitted by exposing his jugular. The Lord of Night accepted without hesitation.

Over eight hundred years of memories met him in the blood, rich with experience, tradition, and passion. Dominique dove into the centuries as though diving into an ocean, seeking Adilla. Adilla who had stolen Isao’s life. Adilla who brooked no competition…

The flash of agony made Dominique jerk back. It came with the memory of a woman. Her smile was sweet, and her obsidian eyes glistened with gut-wrenching emotion in her blood-drinker pale face. Then her face tumbled away along with her head, disappearing in the tangled cloud of her long, black hair. Adilla stood over her body, her blood dripping from his sword. “You are mine, Isao,” he said. “Mine alone.”

“It was then that I left him,” Isao whispered.I made her. I loved her. She was everything to me, which was intolerable to him.

Dominique’s hand shook as he wiped his mouth. Would that have been his tale as well if he had turned Cassidy the way Kambyses almost forced him to do? How long would she have survived around the ancient madman? His heart broke for his new friend.

Isao’s contempt for Adilla was boundless, and he held little hope for Dominique’s plans to “seduce” Adilla into changing anything. Mostly he feared not for his own life should his sire perish, but for the lives of his younglings, his eternal companions. For their sake, he wasn’t eager to show Dominique where to find Adilla. But given a choice between helping the new Lord of Night persuade Adilla to his cause and maybe dying, or refusing him right now and certainly dying, the former was the better bet. The more honorable way.

The doubt and anguish lay heavy on Dominique. He wanted to give Isao more than just his blood, more than just an abating of the lust for terror. He wanted to give him certainty.

Which is why, instead of cutting his palm to draw the blood that would complete Isao’s re-siring, he embraced him and offered him his vein—and his mind.