“I’m the eldest.”

“Not for the last nine hundred years and counting. In any case, when you’re young you think you’ll live forever, so you take all manner of foolish risks. But when you’ve lived as long as I, you’re more careful. Because existence is imperative. I’m driven to survive, Hoyt. Humans and vampires have that in common.”

“You survive sitting alone in the dark in this little house?”

“It’s not a house,” Cian said absently. “It’s an office. A place of business. I have many houses, as it happens. That, too, is survival. There are taxes and records and all manner of things to be gotten around. Like most of my kind I rarely stay in one place for long. We’re nomadic from nature and necessity.”

He leaned forward now, resting his elbows on his knees. There were so few he could speak to about what he was. That was his choice, that was the life he’d made. “Hoyt, I’ve seen wars, countless wars, such as you could never imagine. No one wins them. If you do this thing, you’ll die. Or become. It would be a feather in Lilith’s cap to turn a sorcerer of your power.”

“Do you think there is a choice here?”

“Oh yes.” He sat back again. “There always is. I’ve made many in my lifetimes.” He closed his eyes now, lazily swirling his wine. “Something’s coming. There have been rumblings in the world under this one. In the dark places. If it’s what you say, it’s bigger than I assumed. I should’ve paid more attention. I don’t socialize with vampires as a rule.”

Baffled, as Cian had always been sociable, Hoyt frowned. “Why not?”

“Because as a rule they’re liars and killers and bring too much attention to themselves. And those humans who socialize with them are usually mad or doomed. I pay my taxes, file my reports and keep a low profile. And every decade or so, I move, change my name and keep off the radar.”

“I don’t understand half of what you say.”

“Imagine not,” Cian replied. “She’ll f**k this up for everyone. Bloodbaths always do, and those demons who go about thinking they want to destroy the world are ridiculously shortsighted. We have to live in it, don’t we?”

He sat in silence. He could focus and hear each beat of his brother’s heart, hear the faint electrical hum of the room’s climate controls, the buzz of the lamp on his desk across the room. Or he could block them out, as he most often did with background noises.

He’d learned to do, and not do, a great deal over time.

A choice, he thought again. Well, why not?

“It comes down to blood,” Cian said, and his eyes stayed closed. “First and last, it comes to blood. We both need it to live, your kind and mine. It’s what we sacrifice, for the gods you worship, for countries, for women. And what we spill for the same reasons. My kind doesn’t quibble about reasons.”

He opened his eyes now, and showed Hoyt how they could burn red. “We just take it. We hunger for it, crave it. Without it, we cease to be. It’s our nature to hunt, kill, feed. Some of us enjoy it more than others, just as humans do. Some of us enjoy causing pain, inciting fear, tormenting and torturing our prey. Just as humans do. We’re not all of the same cloth, Hoyt.”

“You murder.”

“When you hunt the buck in the forest and take its life, is it murder? You’re no more than that, less, often less, to us.”

“I saw your death.”

“The tumble off the cliffs wasn’t—”

“No. I saw her kill you. I thought it a dream at first. I watched you come out of the tavern, go with her in her carriage. And couple with her as it drove out of the village. And I saw her eyes change, and how the fangs glinted in the dark before she sank them into your throat. I saw your face. The pain, the shock and... ”

“Arousal,” Cian finished. “Ecstasy. It’s a moment of some intensity.”

“You tried to fight, but she was an animal on you, and I thought you were dead, but you weren’t. Not quite.”

“No, to feed you simply take, drain the prey dry if you choose. But to change a human, he must drink from the blood of his maker.”

“She sliced her own breast, and pressed your mouth to her, and still you tried to fight until you began to suckle on her like a babe.”

“The allure is powerful, as is the drive to survive. It was drink or die.”

“When she was done, she threw you out into the road, left you there. It was there I found you.” Hoyt drank deeply as his belly quivered. “There I found you, covered with blood and mud. And this is what you do to survive? The buck is given more respect.”

“Do you want to lecture me?” Cian began as he rose to get the bottle again. “Or do you want to know?”

“I need to know.”

“Some hunt in packs, some alone. At wakening we’re most vulnerable—from the first when we wake in the grave, to every evening if we’ve slept through the day. We are night creatures. The sun is death.”

“You burn in it.”

“I see you know some things.”

“I saw. They hunted me when I journeyed home. In the form of wolves.”

“Only vampires of some age and power, or those under the protection of another powerful sire can shape shift. Most have to content themselves with the form in which they died. Still, we don’t age, physically. A nice bonus feature.”

“You look as you did,” Hoyt replied. “Yet not. It’s more than the garb you wear, or the hair. You move differently.”

“I’m not what I was, and that you should remember. Our senses are heightened, and become more so the longer we survive. Fire, like the sun, will destroy us. Holy water, if it’s been faithfully blessed, will burn us, as will the symbol of the cross, if held in faith. We are repelled by the symbol.”

Crosses, Hoyt thought. Morrigan had given him crosses. Part of the weight eased from his shoulders.

“Metal is fairly useless,” Cian continued, “unless you manage to cut off our heads. That would do the trick. But otherwise... ”

He rose again, walked over and picked up Hoyt’s dagger. He flipped it in the air, caught the hilt neatly, then plunged the blade into his chest.

Blood seeped out on the white of Cian’s shirt even as Hoyt lunged to his feet.