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"That's because I'm his son," said Viktor.

"Uncle Lestan's son?" she said. She was so drowsy. "Did you say you were his son?" She sat up, staring at him. "My God in Heaven! You are his son. I had no idea that he had a son!"

"He doesn't have any idea either, Rose," said Viktor. He bent over her and kissed her forehead. She put her arms around him, the wires streaming from their needles. "I've been waiting such a long time," he said, "to tell him myself."

6

Cyril

HE SLEPT FOR MONTHS at a time. Sometimes years. Why not? In a cave on Mount Fuji, he had slept for centuries. There were years when he slept in Kyoto. Now he was in Tokyo. He didn't care.

He was thirsty and crazed. He'd been having bad dreams, dreams of fire.

He crawled from his hiding place and went out into the teeming nighttime streets. Rain, yes, cooling rain. Didn't matter to him much who the victim was, as long as it was young and strong enough to survive that first bite. He wanted hearts that would pump the blood into him. He wanted that blood being pumped by another heart through his heart.

As he walked deeper and deeper into the Ginza district of the city, the neon lights delighted him and made him happy. Lights flickering, dancing, racing up and down and across on the borders of great moving pictures. Lights! He decided to take his time.

Strange it was that when he emerged from his hiding places, he always knew the languages and the ways of the people who were nearest to them. He was never surprised so much as delighted by their goings-on. Rain couldn't stop the crush of people here, the beautiful, fresh-faced, scrubbed, and scented children of this century, so rich, so innocent, so willing to provide him with draught after draught of their blood.

Drink because I want you. I have much for you to do.

Ah, there was that nagging voice, that being talking inside his head. Who was this arrogant blood drinker shogun who thought he could tell Cyril what to do?

He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. Human beings were staring at him. Well, let them stare. His brown hair was filthy, of course, and so were the rags he wore, but he accelerated his pace, skillfully, moving fast away from prying eyes. Then he looked down. He was barefoot. And who's to say that I can't be barefoot? He laughed under his breath. After he'd fed, he would bathe, wash himself properly, and make himself "blend in."

However did he get here, to this country? he wondered. Sometimes he could remember and sometimes he could not.

And why was he seeking out this particular place--a narrow building that he kept seeing in his mind?

You know what I want of you.

"No, I don't," he said aloud, "and there's no telling I'll do it."

"Oh, yes, you will," came the answer very distinctly right inside his brain. "If you do not do what I wish I will punish you."

He laughed. "You think you can?"

Other blood drinkers had been threatening to punish him ever since he could remember.

Long ago on the flank of Mount Fuji, an ancient blood drinker had said to him, "This is my land!" Well, guess what happened to him? He laughed when he thought of it.

But long before that, he'd been laughing at threats from those around him--those blood drinker priests of her temple, always threatening to punish him if he didn't do her will. He had marveled at the timidity of the blood gods who submitted to her inane rules. And when he'd brought his fledglings right into the temple to drink her blood, those cowardly priests had backed off, not daring to challenge him.

The last time he'd brought that pretty girl, that Greek girl, Eudoxia, and told her to drink from the Mother. Those priests had been in a rage.

And what about the Mother? She'd been nothing more than a statue full of the Blood by that time. So much for stories of divinity and high calling and reasons to suffer and sacrifice and obey.

Even if he went way back, as far as he could recall, to the very first time he'd been in her presence, brought there by the elder to drink from her and become a blood god, he'd thought it was foolishness, lies. He'd been sly enough to do what they told him. Ah, that blood had felt so good. And what had life been for him before that, backbreaking labor, hunger, his father's constant bullying. All right, I'll die and be reborn. And then I'll smash in your faces with my new godly fists! He knew a blood god was infinitely stronger than a human being. You want to give me that power? I'll bend the knee. But you'll regret it, my sanctimonious friends.

"Drink," said the being talking in his head. "Now. Choose one of the victims the world offers you."

"You don't have to tell me how to do it, you fool," he said, spitting the words into the rain. He'd stopped and they were staring at him and then he did this feint he had perfected, falling down on his knees, then rising, head bowed, as he staggered into a deep but small shop in a narrow building, where only one serving girl waited for a customer, and came towards him with arms out, asking if he were ill.

It was so simple to force her into the storage room behind the little emporium and hold her tight in one arm as he sank his fangs into her neck. She shuddered and shivered like a bird in his grasp, words strangled in her throat. The blood was sweet with innocence, with deep convictions of harmony amongst all the creatures of the planet, with some exalted sense that this encounter now which clouded her mind and ultimately paralyzed her must have meaning. Else how could such a thing happen to her?

She lay on the floor at his feet.

He was reflecting on the quality of the blood. So rich, so healthy, so filled with exotic flavors, so different from blood in the time he'd been made. Ah, these robust and powerful modern humans, what a world of food and drink they enjoyed. The blood was sharpening his vision as it always did, and calming something in him for which he had no name.