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"They didn't seem like devils to me," said Everard testily.

"They and their laughable Talamasca!" said the Voice. "Be damned!"

"Talamasca," whispered Everard in amazement. "Of course. Talamasca! That's where I heard that name Raymond Gallant before. Why, that man was known to Marius. That man ..." Died about five hundred years ago.

It was amusing to him suddenly, very amusing. He'd always known about the Talamasca, the old Order of scholars of the supernatural. Rhoshamandes had warned him about them, and their old monastery in southern France. Yet his maker had urged him to respect them and leave them alone. He'd loved them the way he'd loved Magnus.

"For they are gentle scholars," he'd said in that deep seductive voice of his, "and they mean us no harm. Ah, but it is astonishing. They know as much of us as the Church of Rome, but they do not condemn us and they mean us no harm. They want to learn about us. Imagine it. They study us, and when have we ever studied ourselves? I rather like them for that. I do. You must never hurt them."

And so their membership included humans and ghosts, did it? And blood drinkers. Raymond Gallant, Teskhamen, and Magnus.

Hmmm. Did all of their human members become ghosts when they died? Well, that would never have worked, surely. There'd be thousands of spectral members floating around by now. That was absurd.

No. It was fairly easy to figure that it was a rare occurrence to recruit a dying member from their ranks to remain with them "in spirit" simply because it was so very rare for any dying person's spirit to remain behind. Oh, the planet had lots of ghosts, but they were an infinitesimal remnant of all those poor slobs who'd been born and died since the dawn of creation. But how blessed must be the ghosts inducted into the Talamasca with book-educated sorcerers to help them learn to materialize? That's what Magnus had been driving at. No wonder they'd been so good at it, those two, with their warm ruddy complexions and their shining moist lips.

But the vampire, Teskhamen. How in the world did he become part of them?

Everard ran a quick scan in his mind of what he'd learned about the Talamasca--from Lestat's writings, and Marius's memoir. Dedicated, honorable, committed to truth without religious suspicion, censure, or judgment, yes. If their ranks included vampires, the vast majority of the rank and file certainly had never guessed it.

Then there was the great mystery of who had founded the Talamasca. If it turned out to be a vampire, a mere blood drinker, such as Teskhamen, old as he was, well, that would be a crushing disappointment to the others, wouldn't it?

Hmmm. That was their problem.

He studied the little white card, and put it safely in his jacket.

"Contemptible," said the Voice. "In the end, I will burn them all as well. I will burn their libraries, their little museums, their retreat houses, their--."

"I get it!" said Everard angrily.

"You will rue the night you mocked me."

"Oh, yeah?" Everard said in a low American drawl. "If you're all that strong, Voice, why don't you give it a try? They've been around since the Dark Ages. And they don't appear to be afraid of you at all."

"You infuriating stupid disrespectful and foolish monster!" said the Voice. "Your time will come."

Everard was suddenly startled. A waiter stood beside him with a mug of coffee, the steam rising in the cool air.

"Talking to yourself again, Signore de Landen?" he said cheerfully.

Everard smiled, shook his head, and took out a couple of bills of big, pretty Italian currency and gave them to the young man.

Then he sat back and held the warm cup in both hands. Lestat did get that right in the Vampire Chronicles, he thought. It was nice to hold a hot mug of coffee in your two hands and let the steam rise into your face.

The only sounds around him were the predictable voices of the town. A motor scooter firing up somewhere far off and then belching as it went away into the country, and the low hum of conversations blossoming behind closed doors.

He was thirsting.

Suddenly he was thirsting,

really thirsting, but he hadn't the energy to go far enough away from his home to satisfy his thirst. He left the coffee, and got up and made his way through the streets to the city gates.

Within moments he'd passed out of the illumination of the high-walled town and he was walking uphill fast in cool darkness and he felt like weeping and he didn't quite know why.

Was it conceivable that we are a tribe? Was it conceivable that we were beings who could love one another, be gentle with one another the way that Teskhamen had been with his spectral companions, the way Rhoshamandes had been with him so very long ago?

What if there had never been any Children of Satan in his existence, starving and torturing him and teaching him that he was a child of the Devil, that he had to be miserable and create misery for others, that he was a damned and loathsome thing?

What if there had only been mad Rhoshamandes in his crumbling old castle speaking of poetry and power and "splendor in the Blood"?