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of Protectors had been in the way to spoil a nasty accident.
    Teal clapped his hands together. "I think I heard the dinner bell! Ladies and gentlemen, let's barbecue!"
    Blade moved forward then, thoughts clicking. He paired with Lady. "Nice work," he said.
    "You, too. I didn't know you could stop a full grown wolfrat in his tracks like that."
    "Neither did I." He patted her waistband. "I hope you washed your hands."
    She gave him a smile. "I'll let you lick my fingers clean."
    "I knew it," he bantered. "You're still mad at me about the nester.''
    The joy left her face. "Yes," she said quietly. She did not speak another word as they shared a warm, damp towel and were seated together at the long dining table.
    Mosquito nets had been hung, big black spidery webbed nets to protect the diners. There were four massive tables and a scattering of small ones on the side lawn. The smoke from the pit barbecue hugged the ground like evening fog and even Lady's ire could not shake Thomas' appetite. It had been too long since breakfast.
    Thomas looked up to see Art Bartholomew's warty face beaming across the table at him. "Sir Thomas! It's been a while."
    "Not long enough," Blade responded.
    Governor Irlene had accompanied Art to the table. She leaned forward on one elegant elbow awaiting the platter of meats which was being passed down and now looked in astonishment at Thomas. "You can't mean that."
    The expression in the man's gray eyes flickered. "No doubt he does. We'd all like to put the massacre far behind us. I believe that unfortunate wedding is the last time Thomas and I met."
    "You believe correctly."
    If Art had taken offense, he did not show it. He had other interests he wished to pursue. "That trail led you to the College Vaults."
    He knew well that it did. The discovery of the fabled underground society had been the talk of the Seven Counties for months. Thomas retrieved the meat platter as it was passed to him and held it for both Irlene and Lady to make their selections.
    "The man who ran it, the dean, I think he called himself—do you think he was human?"
    "Human," Art said, but what he meant was human, old human, pure human. Thomas watched as Lady picked out several choice cuts for him and then passed the platter down the table. Art Bartholomew's intense gaze had never left his face.
    "I think," Thomas answered slowly, "he might have been. They kept their society closed. Even the eleven year plague seemed to affect them little."
    "And he took the whole community with him," Art said. "All those people, out of spite."
    "Yes." Blade did not elaborate. After the explosion, there had been a few prisoners, people Denethan's troops had absorbed quickly. The Mojave mutant community needed fresh blood more than the Seven Counties. Blade had let them go. His whole definition of humanity had been redefined by example of the dean, anyway. He saw in Art's face now an echo of past feelings.
    Boyd, an elbow down from Lady, busy buttering an ear from the last of the corn harvest, said, "The eleven year plague passed us by entirely. What luck did you have down here?"
    "Well enough," Lady said, smoothing her napkin over her lap. "We only had one unwanted pregnancy. We're letting that one run its course. Some mutations are favorable."
    Her voice and unspoken accusation fell into Art Bartholomew's silence. The genetic engineering that scarred all their bloodlines was especially prey to the wild virus that cycled through their communities approximately every eleven years. It altered their aberrant DNA even more—wildly unpredictable and unwanted. Men and women affected chose sterility rather than pass on those aberrations. Plague babies were commonly abominations and were killed rather than suffer life. Lady had always been against that. "Life was life," she said. Who were they to judge its quality?
    Again, Art chose to reinterpret the obvious. "Your county is indeed fortunate. We, too, got off lightly. Perhaps the virus is losing strength