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Where was my beloved Gabrielle? And how long would it be before this thing attacked the house of Armand and Louis in New York? I wondered: whoever and whatever it was, did it like listening to Benji's broadcasts, did it like hearing of all the misery it was creating?

"What do you think, Voice?" I asked.

No answer.

The Voice had long ago left me, hadn't it? The Voice was behind this. Everyone knew that now, didn't they? The Voice was rousing engines of murder from long slumber, urging them to use powers perhaps they'd never known they had.

"These old ones are being roused by this Voice," David said. "There's no doubt of this now. Witnesses have seen these old ones at the site of the massacres. So often it's a ragged figure, sometimes a hideous wraith. Surely it is the Voice waking these people. Are not many of us hearing this Voice?"

"Who is the Voice?" Benji demanded over and over again. "Which of you out there has heard the Voice? Call us, talk to us."

David rang off. The surviving fledglings were taking over the airwaves.

Benji had twenty phone lines now to receive those who were calling. Who staffed these lines? I didn't know enough about radio stations, phones, monitors, etcetera to understand how it worked. But no mortal voice had ever been broadcast by Benji, not for any reason, and sometimes one mournful and miserable blood drinker calling in would take an hour to unfold a tale of desperation. Did the other calls pile up?

Whatever the case, I had to get to Avignon. David wanted me to meet him in Avignon, in the old ruined Palace of the Popes, that was plain enough.

Benji was now addressing the Voice. "Call us here, Voice," he was saying in that chipper, confident manner of his. "Tell us what you want. Why are you trying to destroy us?"

I looked around my glorious digs here on the mountain. How I'd worked to reclaim this land of my father, how I'd worked to restore this chateau completely--and lately with my own hands, I'd dug out secret rooms beneath it. How I loved these old stone-walled chambers where I'd grown up, now transformed with every sweet amenity, and the view from these windows over the mountains and fields where I'd hunted as a boy. Why, why did I have to be drawn away from all this and into a battle I didn't want?

Well, I wasn't going to reveal this place to David or anybody else for that matter. If they didn't have the sense to look for me at Chateau de Lioncourt in the Auvergne, that was their misfortune! After all, the place had been on all the maps.

I put on my favorite red velvet jacket, slipped on my black boots and my usual sunglasses, and went to Avignon immediately.

Lovely little city, Avignon, with winding cobblestone streets and countless cafes and those old broken-down ruins where once the Roman Catholic pontiffs had reigned in splendor.

And David was waiting for me, sure enough, along with Jesse, haunting the old ruin. Not a single other blood drinker in the city.

I came right down into the dark grassy high-walled courtyard. No mortal eyes to witness this. Just the dark empty broken archways in the stone cloister gazing on like so many black eyes.

"Brat Prince." David rose from his seat on the grass and threw his arms around me. "I see you're in fine form."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," I mumbled. But it was so good to see him again, to see both of them. Jesse hovered against the old crumbling stone wall, wrapped in a heavy gray muffler.

"Do we have to stand out here in this desolate place, under the shadow of all this history?" I said testily, but I didn't mean it. It was fine with me, this chilly September night with deep winter already in the air. I was embarrassingly glad that they'd forced me to this meeting.

"Of course not, Your Royal Highness," said David. "There's a fine little hotel in Lyon, the Villa Florentine, not far away at all"--he's telling me? I was born here!--"and we have comfortable rooms there." That sounded good enough.

Within fifteen minutes we'd made the little journey, and we entered the red-carpeted suite by the patio doors and were comfortably settled in the parlor. The hotel was above the town, on a hilltop with a pretty view, and I liked it just fine.

Jesse looked worn and miserably unhappy, dressed in a creased and cracked brown leather jacket and pants, her gray wool sweater high under her chin, muffler covering her mouth, hair the usual shimmering veil of copper waves. David was in his gray worsted wool with a nappy suede vest and flashing silk tie--all bespoke most likely. He was a good deal brighter in tone and expression than Jesse, but I knew the gravity of the situation.

"Benji doesn't guess the half of it," Jesse said, the words just pouring out of her. "And I don't know what I can tell him or anyone else." She sat on the foot of the bed, hands cla

sped between her knees. "Maharet's banished me and Thorne forever. Forever." She began to cry, but didn't stop talking.

She explained that Thorne had been going and coming since the time Fareed had restored his eyes to him, and he, the great Viking warrior, wanted to stand with Maharet against any force that threatened her.

He'd heard the Voice. He'd heard it in Sweden and Norway, prompting him to clean out the riffraff, speaking of a great purpose. He'd found it easy to shut out.

"And you?" I asked, looking from Jesse to David. "Have either of you heard the Voice?"

Jesse shook her head no, but David nodded. "About a year ago, I started hearing it. About the most interesting words it ever uttered were in fact a question. It asked me whether or not we'd all been weakened by the proliferation of the power."

"Remarkable," I said under my breath. "What was your response?"

"I told it no. I said I was as powerful as I'd ever been, perhaps a little more powerful of late."