* * *

The first prisoner brought forward was a vampire named Bartholomew, and he was definitely Saxom's turn. I touched my hair when Wlodek turned his eyes toward me. I got the idea that Wlodek already knew Bartholomew was Saxom's turn, but was testing me and my ability. Well, he knew now that I wasn't under Merrill's compulsion, so he had to make sure of things. Lovely. Regardless, Wlodek questioned Bartholomew accordingly. "Why are you listed as Jeremiah's child when Saxom sired you?" Compulsion was heavy in Wlodek's voice.

"My sire told me long ago that the Council would never discover the truth," Bartholomew insisted. Gavin, Merrill and I, along with Tony and René, were all in our usual spot along the cave wall to Wlodek's right, watching as Bartholomew was questioned.

"He held us in contempt, did he not?" Wlodek asked.

"Of course he did," Bartholomew snapped. "He finds you weak and ineffective." Well, that's something I wouldn't have bothered to tell Wlodek to his face, especially if I stood where Bartholomew did—facing that same ineffective Council.

"Why did he send you after Lissa's records in the U.S.?" Wlodek went on. This was news to me; I hadn't been informed of this.

"He wanted to discover if she had sisters, brothers or any living relatives." I only had cousins and they weren't close. Then it hit me. They were looking for others with my talents. I drew in a shaky breath. Gavin must have known, somehow; he moved his hand slightly, attempting to calm me down.

"And what did you determine from these records?" Wlodek was relentless.

"That Howard Graham was not Lissa's father. The DNA tests proved it. Xenides was quite upset when he discovered this and became infuriated when we could not find information on her real father."

I was numb. Completely numb. I had no feeling in my legs or my hands and would have given anything at that moment to slide down the cave wall and curl up in a ball on the stone floor.

Lissy, don't let him hurt you, baby. That was from Tony of course, who never moved a muscle as he sent mindspeech. All those meetings with the president and heads of state were paying off for him big time. He already had the vampire non-expression thing and didn't need to learn it as I did.

"What did Xenides intend to do with this information?" Wlodek asked.

"He wanted Lissa's talents. Needed her talents, he said. He was very impressed with what he observed in Washington."

"And when he failed to find any sisters or brothers?" Wlodek continued.

"He wants to capture her and use her," Bartholomew replied.

"And how does he propose to do this?"

"He says he only has to find someone she cares for and take them. She will come and he will place compulsion and have her for himself." Xenides had already tried that tactic once—and succeeded—when he bombed Tony's hotel. If Jovana had been the stronger one when I found her, I'd have been placed in Xenides' clutches. The question was; could he keep me there if he succeeded?

It was bad enough, learning the truth about my parentage. Now Xenides was threatening those I cared for. Whom would he go after? Gavin? Franklin or Greg? Charles? Winkler or Weldon? The list was longer than that. I felt cold and shivered.

Wlodek questioned Bartholomew for a very long time, asking him about the murder of the legal secretary in Oklahoma—I'd seen her inside the courtroom years ago; she'd been helping the attorney defending Howard Graham. Now I knew for sure he wasn't my father; he'd been right about that all along. Howard Graham hadn't handled the truth very well and had taken his hate and anger out on my mother and me. I still wanted to curl up in a ball and whimper.

A few Council members were now casting speculative glances my way. I couldn't flinch or allow them to see any weakness. Who knew what they'd do to me if they saw that? And Xenides? I wanted to kill him. Just go out immediately and track him down. Take the head off this snake, to see if the body would die with it. He was threatening me and everyone else I knew. Fucker.

The vote was taken eventually, with all Council members turning in guilty verdicts. Gavin did the beheading and I didn't have any argument with that. Then another vampire was led forward. His name was Llewellyn and he wasn't Saxom's get. I did know who made him, however. Wlodek saw that I didn't touch my hair and looked away. I did my best to send mindspeech to him, just so he'd know.

Nyles Abernathy made him, I sent as strongly as I could. Wlodek fumbled the gold pen he was toying with but recovered quickly. I think he heard me. Gavin and I had faced off against Nyles in Florida shortly after I'd been brought before the Council myself. Nyles had been Edward Desmarais' sire—the vampire who'd made the bet with my own vampire sire, Sergio Velenci. That's how I'd been turned. Nyles had taught his children everything he knew about playing with humans.

"So," Wlodek turned the pen in his hands for a moment, his dark eyes narrow and unrevealing, "I have been informed that Nyles Abernathy was your sire." As bombshells go, that one dropped pretty well. I even heard a gasp or two around the cave.

"Who gave you that information?" Llewellyn demanded. "Only my sire and I knew of this!"

"I have sources you cannot imagine," Wlodek answered calmly. "Did Nyles teach you to play with humans, just as he taught your sibling Edward Desmarais?"

"We enjoyed our games, father and I," Llewellyn snorted. "What should it matter if a few humans die? They are nothing but cattle to us. We are superior to those weaklings."

"Yet you were once of that race, were you not?" Wlodek's eyes were hooded as he watched Llewellyn.

"Only for twenty-two years. I have been vampire for fifteen hundred, now."

"Explain your dealings with Xenides."

"Xenides wishes to take the planet away from you and the humans and allow select vampires to rule." I was still trying to calm down a little, still shivering a little after learning that Howard Graham wasn't my father. Even so, it wasn't hard to find Llewellyn contemptible.

"So, you intended to assist Xenides in his takeover?"

"Obviously. I want humans to serve us. This is the only way it should be."

"Do you know where Xenides is, or plans to go?" Wlodek was hammering away at this guy, but Jovana had already said Xenides might be heading for the U.S. That worried me. He could be after Winkler, Weldon or Thomas Williams and his family; I was a member of the Sacramento Pack, after all.

"He talked of traveling to the United States, but worried that he might not be able to pass the borders again," Llewellyn stated. "Many are actively searching for him, and he has learned that his image has been recorded and handed to the authorities."

"Whom will he target and what are his plans should he go to the U.S.?" Wlodek asked.

"He would not tell me this," Llewellyn grumped. "Although I asked many times."

The guilty verdict was unanimous on Llewellyn and Gavin, as the only Assassin present, performed the execution. I wondered if he ever got tired of doing that. Things wrapped up quickly afterward; Thaddeus and Lorenzo had gotten an eyeful, I think; they'd watched the entire meeting in amazement. They were blindfolded and led from the cave as protocol dictated; they weren't allowed to see again until we'd arrived at Merrill's manor.

Merrill placed the usual compulsion not to harm anyone inside the house or give its location away, before finding them a bedroom on the third floor opposite Paul and Deryn's rooms. I was still shaky, to be honest, and as soon as Lorenzo and Thaddeus were dealt with (Merrill promised we'd consider their dilemma later), Merrill, Gavin, Wlodek, Charles, René and Tony all crowded into Merrill's study with me. Gavin held me on his lap, his arms wrapped tightly around me while Charles read back the notes he'd taken from Llewellyn regarding Xenides' plans.

"Lissa, I am sorry this information came at such a time; we were unsure how to present the knowledge to you concerning Howard Graham. We realized it would upset you when you were given the truth." Wlodek did have a bit of sympathy in his dark eyes.

"Honored One, it did upset me, but what upsets me more is that Xenides is planning to take someone I care for in an effort to trap me."

"That is an old ploy," Merrill interrupted, his piercing blue eyes scanning my face. He saw the fear there and attempted to defuse it. "Xenides likely realizes that we will not allow you to search for him if he manages to do this. He still believes you susceptible to compulsion, and understands that we would place compulsion not to go seeking him or your revenge. I can only imagine he was toying with Llewellyn, convincing him that he had a legitimate way of taking you from us." I wasn't about to point out to Merrill that Xenides had already achieved his goal once; he'd just failed to capture me through Jovana.

"Then what is he going to do?" My voice shook. "Merrill, Weldon has a new grandchild. Winkler's wife is six months pregnant. He could hit any member of Thomas Williams' family in Sacramento."

"Does talent run in families? I heard that Xenides was looking for Lissa's sisters and brothers, if she had any," Tony said.

"It does," Wlodek picked up Merrill's letter opener—it was the replica of a Roman sword that I'd given him. Wlodek found it fascinating. "Lissa, please do not be offended when I tell you that we went looking for the same thing. We found nothing, just as Xenides did."

"I'm not surprised," I muttered, staring at my hands. Gavin gave me a squeeze.

"So, if Lissa's real father had other children," Tony wasn't allowed to finish his statement, René hushed him. Tony shrugged.

"Do you think that's possible?" I drew in a shaky breath. "That my real father might have had another family? I'm assuming he's dead now, since I'm as old as I am."

"Your father could be quite old now, but still alive," Wlodek said quietly.

"You think he could be a target?" That opened up new and horrible possibilities for me. I wondered who he was and why my mother had her fling with him. I assumed that's what it was; a chance meeting, followed by a brief affair. Had my father even known he'd fathered a child? I'd read a short story once, about a child who imagined he'd been fathered by someone more important than his own father. I couldn't imagine that my mother had any aspirations in that area. She was mostly realistic; dealing with what she had and not what might have been. Perhaps Howard Graham had been sterile, too, and that's why I never had any sisters or brothers.

"I would hope that Xenides never learns who your father is," Merrill snorted. "I find it unlikely, actually. I feel he would need greater resources than he now has to obtain this information." Merrill turned away from me as he made the statement.

"I hope so," I mumbled. "I don't think I'd like to lose another parent to violence, although I don't know who he is or anything about him. My mother never said a word; she just let me believe I belonged to Howard Graham, though he claimed to the last I wasn't his. Turns out he was right."

"That did not give him the right to murder your mother and to nearly kill you, too," Gavin pulled me against him. "No man has that right and no vampire has that right. It is a death sentence if a vampire kills his mate or companion."

"A stroke killed Howard Graham. He's buried in the prison cemetery; nobody went to see him before he died, either." I said. "He had a brother who walked away from him when he killed my mom. Travis lived in Ohio at the time. I don't know if he's still alive."

"Travis Graham's safety should not be an issue since we know his brother was not your natural father," Wlodek said. "What about aunts and uncles on your mother's side?" He was still toying with Merrill's letter opener, focusing on it and not looking at me.

"Mom had an older brother who died in World War II; he died of peritonitis on the battlefield—they couldn't get treatment for him fast enough," I said. Merrill nodded; I'd told him this when Franklin had appendicitis. "He's buried in France, at Colleville-Sur-Mer, I think."

"His name?" Wlodek picked up a pen to write.

"Cecil Hart," I replied.

"Very well, we will investigate this." The pen scratched across paper on Merrill's desk. "Do you know if he was married or had any children?"

"Mom never said anything." Had he? I never thought to ask. Mom always cried when she talked about him, so I didn't ask any questions. There wasn't much information on him either, when I cleaned out the house before Don and the lawyer helped me sell it. It held too many awful memories for me to keep it and I'd used the money from that plus the life insurance policy to buy the house that Don and I lived in for twenty-three years.

"Charles," Wlodek said, handing over the scrap of paper.

"I'll search the records right away," Charles was already tapping on his computer. That man—or vampire—could do six things at once.

"How close were you with your husband's relatives?" Wlodek asked next. Uh-oh. I hadn't even thought about them; I'd been too concerned about my side of the family. I was going to have to push my brain in all directions.

"We weren't; Don and I only had holiday dinners and birthdays with his brother and his wife, though they lived about twenty miles away from us. David and Sara were at social functions more often than they were at home, sometimes. They had one son, but Danny got killed in Desert Storm."

"What about the son—was he married or did he have children?"

"None as far as I know. He was twenty-two when he died."

"Human wars have not been kind to your family," René murmured.

"They were doing their best to weed out the Workmans and the Harts," I agreed. "Don's father was a Korean war casualty. David went to Viet Nam. He was proud when Danny signed up with the Marines right out of high school. Don had heart disease, so he couldn't serve."

"Anyone else in your family?"

"Not on my mother's side, or my husband's, except for two cousins of Don's and David's; their parents are gone. They both live in Kansas; anyway, that's where they were when Don passed."

"We know about those," Wlodek nodded. He was still playing with Merrill's letter opener; he seemed to like it. I wondered what kind of sword the Greeks carried and what Wlodek's profession had been before he became vampire. It also made me wonder about his sire. I was probably not destined to find out about that.

"Now, Lissa," Wlodek went on, "while I realize that you can do as you like, I hope you understand that it will be a mistake for you to go anywhere alone. If Gavin is not available, then someone else will be assigned to accompany you, should you leave Merrill's estate. I beg you not to ignore me on this." Dark eyes bored into mine, compelling me to listen.

"That's fine, I guess," I grumbled. I could probably take care of myself, but backup was always a good idea.

"I am working out a deal with Paul and Deryn; I am tripling their salary to stay and watch over Franklin and Greg if they venture out during the day. They also will go with Giff and Roff should they need to leave the grounds," Merrill said. "The vampires will not be awake to attack while the sun is up, but they may have human servants. The Werewolves will work out nicely as day guards." We really were going to have a full house, especially if René and Tony stayed.

The meeting was finally over and Gavin herded me toward my bed. He had a few things on his mind besides sleeping, and that's why we were going early.