Blood And Gold (The Vampire Chronicles 8)

Without explaining myself to my quiet Bianca¡ªwho was more and more hunting on her own¡ªI went off to explore the Holy City myself, coming upon it for the first time in two hundred years.

I was wary, in fact, a good deal more wary, than I should want to admit to anyone. Indeed, the fear of fire gripped me so dreadfully that when I arrived I could do nothing but keep to the very top of St. Peter's Basilica and look out over Rome with cold, shame-filled eyes; unable for long moments to hear with my blood drinker's ears no matter how I struggled to gain control of myself.

But I soon satisfied myself, through the Mind Gift, that there were only a few blood drinkers to be found in Rome, and these were lone hunters without the

consolation of companions. They were also weak. And as I raped their minds, I realized they knew little of Santino!

How had this come about? How had this one who had destroyed so much of my life freed himself from his own miserable existence?

Full of rage, I drew close to one of these lone blood drinkers, and soon accosted him, terrifying him and with reason.

"What of Santino and the Roman coven?" I demanded. "Gone, all gone," he said, "years ago. Who are you that you know of such things?"

"Santino!" I said. "Where did he go! Tell me. " "But no one knows the answer," he said. "I never laid eyes on him. " "But someone made you," I said. "Tell me. "

"My maker lives in the catacombs still where the coven used to gather. He's mad. He can't help you. "

"Prepare to meet God or the Devil," I said. And just that quick I put an end to him. I did it as mercifully as I could. And then he was no more but a spot of grease in the dirt and in this I rubbed my foot before I moved towards the catacombs. He had spoken the truth.

There was but one blood drinker in this place, but I found it full of skulls just as it had been over a thousand years ago.

The blood drinker was a babbling fool, and when he saw me in my fine gentleman's clothes, he stared at me and pointed his finger. "The Devil comes in style," he said.

"No, death has come," I said. "Why did you make that other one whom I've destroyed this night?"

My confession made no impression on him.

"I make others to be my companions. But what good does it do? They turn on me. "

"Where is Santino?" I demanded.

"Long gone," he said. "And who would have ever thought?" I tried to read his mind, but he was too crazed and full of distracted thoughts. It was like chasing scattered mice. "Look at me, when did you last see him!"

"Oh, decades ago," he said. "I don't know the year. What do years mean here?"

I could get nothing further from him. I looked about the miserable place with its few candles dripping wax upon yellowed skulls, and then turning on this creature I destroyed him with the Fire Gift as mercifully as I had destroyed the other. And I do think that it was truly a mercy.

There was but one left, and this one led a far better existence than the other two. I found him in handsome lodgings an hour before sunrise. With little difficulty I learnt that he kept a hiding place beneath the house, but that he spent his idle hours reading in his few well-appointed rooms, and that he dressed tolerably well.

I also learnt that he couldn't detect my presence. He cut the figure of a man of some thirty mortal years, and he had been in the Blood for some three hundred.

At last I opened his door, breaking the lock, and stepped before him as he stood up, in horror, from his writing desk.

"Santino," I said, "what became of him?"

Though he had fed like a glutton, he was gaunt with huge bones, and long black hair, and though he was very finely dressed in the style of the i6oos, his lace was soiled and dusty.

"In the name of Hell," he whispered, "who are you? Where do you come from?"

Again there came that terrific confusion of mind which defeated my ability to subtract thoughts or knowledge from it.

"I'll satisfy you on those points," I said, "but you must answer me first. Santino. What happened to him. "

I took several deliberate steps towards him which put him into a paroxysm of terror.

"Be quiet now," I said. Again I tried to read his mind, but I failed. "Don't try to flee," I said. "You won't succeed with it. Answer my questions. "

"I'll tell you what I know," he said, fearfully.