Description: Chapter 1 France, 1720 The abandoned farmhouse stood in a clearing fifteen miles outside Marseilles. Inside, Caris and Tiberius waited for word from Richard, the hours passing so slowly that Caris feared she would pull her hair out in frustration. "Something has happened to him," she said to her lover''s back. "We were wrong about him. The sickness has taken him." The thought ripped through her. It had been her suggestion to send one of Tiberius''s most trusted men into the port city where the plague was cutting through the population like wildfire. They''d believed that Richard was immune to the Black Death, as he''d already survived the plague twice, though many friends had died at his side. Vampires who''d become ill and then faded into dust as if they''d been staked. Her worry kept her in motion, and she paced the small structure, moving in and out of the shafts of moonlight streaming down through the dilapidated roof. At the window, Tiberius turned to face her. As always, she was struck by the unchanging beauty of his face. Not feminine, but rugged and strong, with dark eyes that saw everything and broad shoulders onto which he''d invited the weight of the world. Tonight, that weight was heavy indeed. "He''ll be here," Tiberius said. He held out his hand to her, and she went to him, letting his arms engulf her, pressing her cheek against his chest. Even after more than two hundred years, it was his touch that calmed her best. His lips soothed her fears, and his body made her feel alive, even though life had slipped from her veins so long ago. "And what if he couldn''t find it? We have to kill it." The world had been tormented long enough by the vile creatures. The shadowers believed this to be the last surviving hybrid, and it needed to die. The horror had to end. "We will find it. And I will kill it. That is not in question." He tilted her chin up and looked into her eyes. "The only question for tonight is where that happy occasion will occur. Richard will bring us news of our destination." She nodded, grim. Humans might not understand the horrible illness that befell them century after century, but the shadowers did. Vampires like her and Tiberius. Werewolves. Jinns and para-daemons and all the other creatures that humans feared and prayed were only myths and nightmares. They weren''t. They were real. And the hybrids? Though rare, a mix of vampire and werewolf was truly a creature plucked from nightmares. Feared and reviled even among the shadow creatures themselves, a hybrid brought destruction with its touch and desolation with its breath. The Black Death. The plague. Whatever you called it, it always ended the same. Festering wounds. A hacking cough. And slow, torturous death that filled entire towns with doors marked in bold red X''s, silent reminders that the plague had come to those within. Caris pressed her hand to Tiberius''s back. "Do you think this one changed form on purpose?" she asked. "Do you think it wanted to destroy Marseilles?" Tiberius stroked her hair. "I don''t know. But I fear the answer is yes." "This time, I will fight at your side." Whenever he stepped out in battle, she felt as if the birds ceased chirping and the tides stopped their eternal pull. "No." "Am I not strong? Am I not capable? Even when I was human, you said that I had uncommon strength for a woman." They''d met after she''d set out to rescue her brother Antonio from the clutches of a particularly vile werewolf, not realizing that Tiberius had already sworn allegiance to her family and had set out to do the same. He''d found her disguised as a boy, battling a singularly nasty clutch of humans. His lips curved into a proud smile. "Whether human or vampire, you are exceptional." "Then why do you refuse me? Did you not train me as a warrior? Have I not already fought at your side many times?" "We''ve spoken of this before, Caris. I made a mistake. You are my heart and my soul. You understand me more than any woman ever has or ever could. And I cannot lose you." He clutched her hands tightly on these last words, his eyes boring so deeply into hers that she couldn''t help but see the fear--and the regret. Less than fifty years prior they''d fought side by side in an abandoned palazzo. She''d been unaware that a moldering tapestry at her back hid a secret passage, and when a werewolf burst through with a stake, it was almost the end of her. Fortunately, he missed her heart, but she''d fallen, blood gushing from her, her strength leaving her. For the first time, she''d seen Tiberius''s daemon, the depraved creature that every vampire fought to keep buried lest he be compelled to do little more than rend and kill. She saw it--and it was a terrifying thing indeed. He moved with speed born of millennia, and he was on the werewolf in a second, his fist breaking through the weren''s rib cage, his hand thrusting the still-beating heart high. She could remember the scent of him as he knelt over her, covered in the werewolf''s blood. A harsh, angry scent mixed with a terror she''d never before experienced, nor ever again. His terror. Not of the wolf, but of losing her. He''d ripped his own flesh open and she''d drunk, and only once he was sure she was healed did his daemon fade into the background and his eyes clear, so it was only Tiberius she saw, and not the daemon within. After that, she no longer fought at his side. The odd battle, yes, if they were taken by surprise. But she did not set out on missions. He had his kyne for that. Men. Brothers, in loyalty if not in blood. She was his woman, his lover, his friend, and his confidant. She was his political advisor and strategist. His right hand in everything except that one part of his life. It should have been enough for her. She should have willingly accepted it. But she couldn''t. Her own daemon cried out for a fight, and it was the battles that kept it down, easily subdued. Without that, it paced and gnawed and begged for release. Without that, she was missing a huge part of their life together. She would stand for it no more. He might not yet have accepted it, but this time, Caris would fight at his side. As if to punctuate her resolve, the door behind her blew open with a gust of wind. She whipped around, sword drawn, and saw a black cat leap through the doorway and then transform into Richard, who stood before them with a bloody wound at his shoulder. "Speak," Tiberius said as she moved to his side. "Did you see the hybrid?" "I did not, but I met many weren in town. They are well, but they flee anyway. The hybrid''s power comes from a curse and they believe their survival is tainted." Not much was understood about how a hybrid was created, and what little was known was a mixture of fact and myth. It was said to have started with a feud between two warring brothers who murdered a third brother to steal his power. Having done so, the two became the founders of the shadow world--the first vampire and the first werewolf. But the blood of the third seeped into the ground, and from within the earth he cursed them never to find peace. As a physical manifestation of that curse, any creature that was a weren-vampire mix had blood that burned through flesh. Moreover, upon changing into a wolf, the hybrid sent an illness out into the world from which only either vampires or werewolves were spared--but which species survived depended entirely on the underlying nature of the hybrid in question. It was that peculiar immunity that was the truly dastardly part of the curse. Vampires were immune to the sickness wrought by an original werewolf bitten and turned by a vampire. And werewolves were immune to the sickness wrought by an original vampire bitten and changed by a weren. But how either was changed in the first place was a mystery. Because as far as the shadowers knew, the vampiric transition was fatal to a werewolf, and no vampire could survive the transition forced upon it by the bite of a werewolf. "So no news of the hybrid?" Caris asked. "On that account, fate smiled," Richard said. "I met a weren who stayed hidden as the hybrid passed by. He overheard the beast muttering. The hybrid travels this night to Cluny." Tiberius nodded, taking in the information. "Your shoulder?" "Courtesy of Faro Lihter," Richard said. "Apparently he was offended that I wasn''t already dead." "And the vampires?" Caris asked. "All dead. Except for me. I know not why, but if there is a God, I thank him." He shifted, focusing hard on Tiberius. "Lihter was praising the beast that did it, saying it was clear now which of the ancient brothers had true strength. He said he couldn''t wait for the day when all vampires were dust and the order of the world could be restored." He glanced ruefully at his shoulder. "That''s when I got distracted from my mission. I''m happy to say he looks worse." "Good man," Tiberius said. "There''s more," Richard said. "After Cluny, the hybrid intends to continue to London. And, Tiberius, I believe it is mad. It didn''t wait for a full moon at Marseilles. It will not wait in London." Beside Caris, Tiberius tensed, his hand going automatically to his blade. London was the center of the vampire community, and had been since the founding of Lon- dinium by the Romans. The vampire population there was the highest in all of Europe, and every vampiric representative to the Alliance table made his home there. Caris squeezed Tiberius''s hand. "T

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