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"Oh, but you must understand Maharet took me to these places where she keeps her treasures You have to knohat it means to hold in your hands a tablet covered in syht have lived howher "

Maharet was really the only one he had ever had to fear I suppose we both knew it My memories of Maharet held nobeing so ancient that each gesture seemed marble made liquid, and her soft voice had become the distillation of all human eloquence

"If she gave you her blessing, nothing else h I wondered if I ain I had not hoped for it nor wanted it

"I've also seen my beloved Jesse," said David

"Ah, I should have thought of that, of course "

"I went searching forout from place to place, just the way you sent out the wordless cry for me "

Jesse Pale, bird-boned, red-haired Twentieth-century bornHighly educated and psychic as a human Jesse he had known as a human; Jesse he kne as an immortal Jesse had been his human pupil in the order called the Talamasca Noas the equal of Jesse in beauty and vampiric power, or very near to it I really did not know

Jesse had been brought over by Maharet of t

he First Brood, born as a huun to write their history at all or barely knew that they had one The Elder now, if there was one, the Queen of the Damned was Maharet and her mute sister, Mekare, of whom no one spoke anymore much at all

I had never seen a fledgling brought over by one as old as Maharet

Jesse had seeth when last I saw her Jesse must have had her own tales to tell now, her own chronicles and adventures

I had passed onto David e blood mixed with a strain even older than Maharet's Yes, blood from Akasha, and blood froth was in th, as we all kneas quite beyond measure

So he and Jesse rand coedhuman male?

I was immediately envious and suddenly full of despair I'd drawn David away from those hite creatures who had drawn him into their sanctuary somewhere far across the sea, deep in a land where their treasures enerations Exotic names came to one, the two red-haired ones, the one ancient, the one young And to their hearth, they had admitted David

A little sound startled me and I looked over my shoulder I settled back, embarrassed to have appeared so anxious, and I focused silently for a moment on my victim