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made the vampires, who defied them like willful children or had somehow discovered their secrets from studying this most potent form of undead.
     
    Rugan turns his gaze from the garden to the small mirror besides him. Granted most Crusaders would have trouble differentiating the withered creature that looked back at him from the glass, from the twisted Elders of the vampire sects, the methods that kept him alive for so long could hardly be called natural. They would call the clown he’s set on the Pilgrim’s trail equally evil. Rugan sighs and with an effort of will puffs out the desiccated flesh into the rosy, vital jowls that he always presented to the court. It was foolish prejudice like this which forced him to seek out agents like Samuel. Sending living men against vampires, except in the numbers they had gathered during the Crusade would simply swell their ranks. Agents of bone and dust stood more chance but they brought with them all sorts of other problems. No, Samuel Blake was something unique,   even allowing for the inherent danger, he just might be the tool to finally penetrate to the heart of the enemy.
     
    A knock on the door, forces his mind back to the here and now.
    “Father Abbott? His Excellency General Leedon, demands to speak with you, in haste if you can accommodate him.”
    “Give me a moment, Jacob.” Rugan answers, quickly replacing a small doll, adorned in a jester’s outfit, in his drawer. “Tell His Excellency I shall attend him in the chapel, as soon as may be.”
    “As you wish, Father.” The young monk agrees, scurrying off.
     
    So the child had escaped already. Even though he had encouraged her and provided some of the where with all, he had not expected her to run so soon. It was typical of the spoiled girl that she had acted on her own wishes so soon, before Rugan could be absolutely sure what part she played in his enemies’ plans and before he had even managed to manipulate Captain Blake into position. She would have to be watched over by other means until Blake arrived. Perhaps it was for the best, he’d intended to use her to draw the Pilgrim but it would be safer if he kept events at a distance, the last thing he needed was a fanatical hunter in the city! As his colleague had pointed out, Blake would be pretty much indiscriminate in his persecution of what he perceived to be evil. Not that a mercenary like Blake would ever be allowed near the palace but why take the risk? Rugan could manipulate things just as well through his agents.
    “No doubt you would think me evil too?” Rugan murmurs, quietly addressing the monk even now retreating down the hallway, “I have done evil things, it is true,” he tells the ruddy mask that looks back sympathetically from the mirror, “but I am still alive, my soul is my own to answer for and my appetites are not those of Hell.”
     
    Am I innocent in this, though? He asks himself. Blake is an evil thing, an abomination fueled by corruption, no matter what misguided religious dogma he may espouse.   The dead were pure tools, neither good nor evil, simply mannequins in the hands of their master. The same could not be said of the living, when one engaged them one was responsible for unpredictable and possibly appalling consequences. The last time he had seen Blake the man had been stained head to toe with blood and there was no telling how many innocents he had cut down in his frenzied efforts to reach the heart of the Citadel. No one could have seen him gorge himself in the chaos of battle, in the dark corners of that old fortress or the man would have been burned then, along with the foulness in the ancient fortress but Rugan had suspected what Captain Blake was since the very first time he had seen him.
     
    The man had something of the drawn look about the eyes that Rugan had seen in many of his brothers; even if the body has the strength, the average human mind is not designed to watch the passing of more than one century. Madness