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privilege, but he
also hadn’t requested to be treated like the other vamp recruits. Sooner or
later, Bergsen would need to cave in and make the blood donations a mandatory
part of the war effort.
    Only after finishing his first glass of warmed blood
did Wilhelm go and pick up the sheets of paper someone had pushed beneath his
door. Returning to the small kitchenette, he warmed a second glass of blood in
the instant-oven and sat down to look at the numbers. On good days, the first
line, the line for human deaths attributed to vampire activity in the last twenty-four
hours, would be zero. This was not a good day.
    “Damn it. I knew I should have looked for that lair
last night.”
    His mutter seemed louder than it truly was in the
silent apartment. When he put down his glass, some blood sloshed over the side
and stained the table red.
    The second line showed how many new vampires had
arrived in town in the same twenty-four hours. Today’s report showed none, but
the reports from the previous two nights had showed four and seven
respectively. Wilhelm was ready to bet that there was a new clan in town, one
that either did not care about the rules or had unruly fledglings amongst its
members. The city could use more vampire recruits in the Guard, but it had no
room for vampires that killed to feed.
    Picking up the phone on the wall, Wilhelm dialed the
headquarters’ number.
    “What are your orders, sir?”
    He didn’t bother with civilities. The soldier who had
answered knew who was on the line, just as he knew Wilhelm wouldn’t have
bothered calling if he did not need something.
    “Prepare a map with the locations where the bodies
were found. See if you can pinpoint where they were last seen alive, too. And
send MPs to question people near those points, see if anyone noticed new
neighbors.”
    The request was a routine one, and the soldier did not
ask for clarifications. Wilhelm hung up the phone and returned to his study of
the bleak numbers.
    The next lines identified the vampires that had been
killed during the skirmishes with demons the previous night. These numbers were
never as high as the ones on the second sheet of paper, which were human
members of the Guard killed or seriously injured, but added together they
always weakened the town’s defenses too much for comfort.
    Already thinking about where he would start his search
that night, he abandoned the grim reports and his half finished glass in the
kitchen and went to lie on the battered sofa. Books were piled up just within
arm’s reach and he picked one up at random. He had read each book in these
untidy piles dozens of times and could recite parts of each from memory. This
familiarity was exactly what he needed at that moment. With his mind filled
with numbers and death, the flow of words would stop him from thinking for a
little while, and maybe even stop him from wondering if the fight was hopeless.
    He couldn’t have said how much time had passed when a
sharp knock on the door startled him out of his reading. No one ever visited
him, not even Bergsen, and if they needed him to go to the headquarters because
of an emergency, they always called him.
    His surprise only increased when he opened the door to
find a glowering Ariadne behind it.
    “You had no right to do that!” she began without
warning. “I’ve wanted to fight with the Guard for six years, and with just a
few words you robbed me of that!”
    Her eyes were blazing with the same fire they had held
when she had come to ask for his support almost two years earlier. The
difference was that now she was tall enough to look straight into his eyes.
Every time he saw her, it became more difficult to remember the young girl he
had once found alone in a graveyard.
    “I don’t know what—” he started, but a snort
interrupted him.
    “Don’t insult me on top of it.”
    The anger in her gaze only strengthened, and Wilhelm
gave a small nod, acknowledging it.
    “See,” she started again, “the