None of us mentioned that Eli now fell into that vamp-blood-drinking category, his life having been preserved until he could get to a hospital, after he’d been nearly drained by enemy vamps. I couldn’t resist the glance to his neck where he sported new scars—pale and irregular, above the older scars from his time in active military duty. He narrowed his eyes at me in warning and I went back to the steak, the tablet, and the info contained in the e-mail.

Alex pointed to another line and said, “‘In case of ingestion, normal, healthy humans should break down the substance within hours.’ But it doesn’t say what effect it might have on vamps.”

I scanned the rest of the report as the possibilities of the reactions of humans and vamps went on, but it was all guesswork on the part of the researchers. I had seen the results in person. Eli had read the reports. “Oh goody,” I said. “The arcenciel is a living, breathing, dream-inducing, drug-pushing, see-through dragon. Like one of those frogs people lick in the Amazon, but bigger. And can fly.” I half chewed and swallowed the last of the steak, got up, and went to the bedroom where my thigh rig hung on the back of the bedroom door. I removed the scale and brought it back to the kitchen, feeling the tingles on my fingertips and residual tingles on my chest. I got a roll of paper towels and tore off a stack, setting the scale on top. I sniffed my fingers and felt a change inside my nose and head, like a sudden change of air pressure. “It’s a drug, or maybe a drug and magic, working together.” I washed my hands, scrubbing the fingertips that had touched the scale. “While we’re sharing information,” Alex said, “we got something from George.” He set another tablet in front of me, and stretched his fingers apart while touching the screen, making the text larger. In his formal way of writing e-mails, Bruiser said:

Jane and Youngers,

From the book I am reading and interpreting I have deduced several things that might be of interest. The writer claims to be using oral tradition and ancient writings from before the time of the Sumerians, none of which survive today, so far as I am able to deduce.

After the flood, the remaining humans were in great disarray, having lost everything of a cultural nature, and being thrust into stone-age starvation and subsistence level standard of living. In the people of the west (this could be interpreted as the Americas), this destruction and re-creation of the entire landscape created a power vacuum which was filled by the tribal magic-users (witches) who had gifts that gave them greater chances of survival. They bounced back in the form of warriors, shapeshifters (skinwalkers?), wise men, war women, shamans, and healers, most with no mention of the immune problems suffered by preadolescent and adolescent witches of today, though that may mean nothing except that it was lost to time.

They survived in this manner until the Europeans came and many of them changed, growing sick and mentally unstable. My presumption is that of the majority of scholars: The white man’s bacteria and viruses killed them off, their scriptures and priests demonized them, and the white man systematically destroyed the tribal Americans in genocide.

In a place that I am deducing is the African states, the witches were feared and were often sold into slavery by their own tribal chiefs as a way of preserving their own power bases. Both Christian and Muslim proselytizers and missionaries later demonized them.

In Europe, which has a better-preserved oral history and tradition, the witches went underground, hiding what they were, except for the tribal Celts, who accepted the magic-users as the ancient gift of the gods and of God. Among the Celts, magic-users remained well respected, though carefully hidden from the Church, which proved a successful methodology from the other tribal peoples of time.

When vampires were created through dark magic and black arts (the original three were witches, if you recall) they increased their numbers by turning witches into vampires. Prior to the vampire wars and prior to the creation of the Vampira Carta, the Mithrans began to destroy the witches instead of turning them.

I have been searching the archives for information relating to the causative factor for their enmity. I suggest that you ask Leo or Grégoire for more information. I will send more as I am able.

Best,

George Dumas

Some of this info was new, and some was old stuff, and some was a new way of looking at it all. I remembered that Gee DiMercy had once told me about the Cursed of Artemis, the original name of the were-creatures. He had even proposed that my kind were part of the old story, goddess-born, whatever that meant. He wasn’t willing to share more, but he had suggested that I ask some of the older vamps. I had asked the priestess Sabina, who had told me about Lolandes, whose legend became confused with, and merged into, the earth goddess, who was common to all ancient tribal peoples. Lolandes had been a witch of sorts.

The first three vampires—the Sons of Darkness and their father, Judas Iscariot—had been witches too, made from the crosses of Calvary, also known as Golgotha, the place of the skull. The spikes of Golgotha were part of that event. Sooo . . . did the instigating event of today’s dangers go back that far? To the creation event of the vamps themselves? Was the spike of Golgotha that important?

Or did all of our current problems—the dragon, Satan’s Three, the attacks on my house—go back to Lolandes? There was something here, something lost among all the info we had already gathered, something important, but just out of reach, taunting me. Dang it.

I pulled up the old memory of the witch and told the guys, “Long before the Greeks named her Artemis, there was this powerful, long-lived mortal, a witch, though different from today’s witches in ways that I haven’t been able to determine. Anyway, Lolandes was the most powerful witch of her time, in a time when women were revered, when political and religious power was passed through the matriarchal line. She helped humans in childbirth and cared for wild animals.”

“So maybe preflood,” Alex said.

I gave an eyebrow shrug that said, Who knows? “Lolandes could have been a witch among The People of the Straight Ways. She could have come before, or after, the flood. Myth and oral tradition is sketchy at best. Anyway, Lolandes had a hunting bird, like a falcon, that loved her and came back to her after each hunt, bringing her the kills. She loved the bird.

“One night on the full moon, a wolf killed the bird, fighting over a doe they both had targeted. Lolandes cursed the wolf with disease, something similar to rabies, that affected mind and brain. It was the were-taint. The wolf ran into the woods and started biting anything it came across. The humans and the creatures it bit became were-creatures, but all were insane. Lolandes regretted the disease and found a partial cure, which she gave to all of them except the werewolves. They stayed insane as punishment for the death of her bird.”