Chapter 29

December Twentieth

Jean ambled slowly along Fifth Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh. He had no idea what Arthur could possibly expect him to accomplish here. He had checked the house that had been taken by the fledglings who had been sent here and found it abandoned. He had scanned the thoughts of a number of policemen and found nothing. Not that the last was surprising: he could only look back a week or so into a person's memories, and the fledglings had vanished long before that.

Briefly, he considered running away, but the knot of emotion that represented Kelly ended that train of thought. Even putting emotional concerns aside, he had given her the Gift. She was his responsibility now, and he could not leave her to Arthur's not so tender mercies.

On a sudden whim, he decided to go to the place where Arthur had almost been killed. He hadn't dared try to probe the elder vampire's thoughts or memories, but no such concerns applied to Susan. Jean had learned enough from her to have a decent idea of where to find it. Perhaps he would toss a coin into the temporary grave with a wish that Arthur's next one would prove to be far more permanent.

With this plan in mind, he returned to the parking garage and retrieved his scooter, drawing odd looks as he steered the small motorbike through the cold, slush covered streets. He had to make the last half mile of his journey on foot; no one bothered to maintain the roads leading to the abandoned steel town any longer, and the thick ice and snow rendered the way impassable to his bike.

Once inside the town, it only took him a few minutes to locate the place that should have been Arthur's final resting place.

"Bonne chance," he said cheerfully as he flipped a quarter into the large hole in the ground.

Suddenly his arms and legs went rigid, and he rose several inches into the air. His body twisted violently through a one hundred and eighty degree spin, and he found himself facing a small, thin man who stood, impassive and motionless, about twenty meters away. Jean floated rapidly in the man's direction, the toes of his shoes digging furrows in the snow.

When less than a meter separated them, Jean came to an abrupt stop. The man stared up at him with glittering black eyes that were devoid of anything resembling pity or mercy. Jean tried to probe the man's thoughts, but there seemed to be nothing to read. With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Jean realized who it was that he was facing.

"I know you," he whispered fearfully. "You're the Roman. Marcus."

"Indeed," Marcus answered quietly, "And who might you be?"

"Je... ," Jean started before his jaw went rigid.

Starting with memories of his earliest childhood, his life began to pass before his eyes. Seconds later, he again had to relive his time with Amunet. Here, the flow of memories slowed.

"I met your Mistress once," Marcus said softly. "A hedonistic creature of gluttonous appetites. To answer the question that has always troubled you: even by the Renaissance she had begun to lose her grip on reality, unable to cope with the changes in the world around her. The rapid advancements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would have been especially hard on her. I imagine that, by the time she gave you the Gift, she would have fully retreated into a fantasy world of her own making."