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"They've promised to bring you over, haven't they?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "They're honorable. That's more than I can say for my colleagues in American medicine." She turned to me, drawing close enough to kiss me quickly one more time on the cheek. I didn't stop her. Her fingers went up to my face and she touched my eyelids.

"Thank you," she said. "Thank you for these priceless moments. Oh, I know you didn't do this for me. You did it for them. But thank you."

I nodded and I smiled. I held her face in my hands as I kissed her now with a fervor that came from the Blood. I could feel her body warming, opening like a flower, but the moment was gone, and I took my leave.

Later, Fareed and Seth told me they meant to keep that promise. She wasn't the only crazy vampire-obsessed doctor or scientist they'd invited in. As a matter of fact, they went out of their way to recruit these poor "loonies" whom the world had ostracized. It was easier after all to invite into our miracle those whose human lives were already ruined.

Well before dawn, the three of us hunted together. Sunset Boulevard was a mob scene, as they say, and the Little Drink was everywhere to be had, and so were a couple of despicable rogues whom I fed on with cruel abandon in the backstreets.

I think the medical experiments had left me desperately thirsting. I was letting the blood fill my mouth and holding it like that for a long time before swallowing, before feeling that great wash of warmth through my limbs.

Seth was a ruthless killer. The ancient ones almost always are. I watched him drain a young male victim, watched the body shrivel as Seth drew quart after quart of the vital fluid. He held the dead boy's head against his chest. I knew he wanted to crush the skull, and then he did, tearing open the hairy wrapping around it and sucking the blood from the brain. Then he'd composed the corpse almost lovingly on piles of refuse in the alley, folding the arms across the chest, closing the eyes. He'd even reshaped the skull and smoothed the torn scalp over it, and stepped back from it as if he were a priest inspecting a sacrifice, murmuring something under his breath.

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sp; Seth and I sat in the roof garden as the morning was coming. The birds had begun to sing, and I could feel the sun, smell the trees welcoming the sun, smell the jacaranda blossoms opening far below.

"But what will you do, my friend," I said, "if the twins come? If the twins don't want this grand experiment to continue?"

"I am as old as they are," Seth answered quietly. He raised his eyebrows. He looked elegant in the long white thawb with its neat collar, rather priestly in it in fact. "And I can protect Fareed from them."

He seemed completely sure of it.

"Long centuries ago," he said, "there were two warring camps, as the Queen told you. The twins and their friend Khayman, they were known as the First Brood, and they fought the cult of the Mother. But I was made by her to fight the First Brood, and I have more of her blood in me than they ever had. Queens Blood, that is what we were aptly called, and she brought me for one very important reason: I was her son, born to her when she was human."

A dark chill ran through me. For a long time I couldn't speak, couldn't think.

"Her son?" I finally whispered.

"I do not hate them," he said. "I never wanted even in those times to fight them, really. I was a healer. I did not ask for the Blood. Indeed I begged my mother to spare me, but you know what she was. You know how she would be obeyed. You know as well as anyone from those times knows those things. And she brought me into the Blood. And as I said, I do not fear those who fought against her. I am as strong as they are."

I remained in awe. I could see in him now a resemblance to her, see it in the symmetry of his features, the special curve of his lips. But I couldn't sense her in him at all.

"As a healer, I traveled the world in my human life," he said, responding to me, to my thoughts. His eyes were gentle. "I sought to learn all I could in the cities of the two rivers; I went far into the northern forests. I wanted to learn, to understand, to know, to bring back with me great healers to Egypt. My mother had no use for such things. She was convinced of her own divinity and blind to the miracles of the natural world."

How well I understood.

It was time for me to be taking my leave. How long he could withstand the coming dawn, I didn't know. But I was about spent, and it was time to seek shelter.

"I thank you for welcoming me here," I said.

"You come to us anytime that you wish," he said. He gave me his hand. I stared into his eyes, and I felt strongly again that I did see his resemblance to Akasha, though she had been far more delicate, far more conventionally beautiful. He had a fierce and cold light in his eyes.

He smiled.

"I wish I had something to give you," I said. "I wish I had something to offer you in return."

"Oh, but you gave us much."

"What? Those samples?" I scoffed. "I meant hospitality, warmth, something. I am passing through. I've been passing through for the longest time."

"You did give us both something else," he said. "Though you do not know it."

"What?"

"From your mind we learned that what you wrote of the Queen of the Damned was true. We had to know if you described truthfully what you saw when my mother died. You see, we could not entirely fathom it. It is not so easy to decapitate one so powerful. We are so strong. Surely you know this."