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unbreakable circle. She had always feared being trapped, hated being helpless, but in dream, and in daylight, what could she do? Olympias’s body did not belong to her in daylight. Dreamwalking she could control, but never true dreaming. Priestess she had been, but never a true seer, not in mortal life. Sorceress she had been called, seductress, and far worse. She had always been hungry, for power, for love, for all the world and everything in it. Her appetite had been her Gift, and she had wielded it with no great wisdom.
    Dreams had significance, any fool knew that, but repetitive nightmares were a nuisance. You’d think that after a few thousand years the traumas of mortal life would recede into vague memory and leave a person alone when she had more important things to think about. But the subconscious was a primitive bitch with blood-soaked hands and too much passion, and it would have its way with her when it willed.
    But it was damned inconvenient.
    She had work to do, and while even vampires needed a certain amount of sleep, Olympias’s plans for lolling around in bed today had not included falling into a dream that belonged to the woman she’d been more than two thousand years before. Why dream of past failures now? She’d seen the man who’d tormented her mortal life catch fire on his funeral pyre and placed his charred bones and ashes in the gold funeral chest herself. She had even grieved, if not for the death, at least for the passing of the youth and passion they’d shared. Her life had taken many a complicated twist and turn since the day his tomb was sealed.
    She should have died herself long ago, but the assassin Cassander sent had been a creature with an appetite for more than killing. He had meant to kill her, to Hunt her. He had heard a great many evil stories about her and thought it a good thing for her to die under his fangs andclaws. She remembered to this day how it felt to wake up to the prick of the vampire’s claws on her breast. She was an old woman, a long, skinny bag of bones, her black curls long gone gray, her passion burned down mostly to embers, but for the hot coal of grief where her heart had once been. Her son was dead in a distant land, she knew his son would be put to death by a usurper soon enough. She could do nothing more to protect her family. Battles for power were being fought throughout the lands her son had won by sword and force of will. Her death was inevitable, but no more than an afterthought, a tidying up by whoever it; was who won the kingdom. It had always been that way; when a king died it was likely his family and followers died with him. She understood this, and waited, not even bothering to place guards outside her quarters in the palace where she’d taken refuge as an exile at Pydna.
    She did not think she would be surprised when the killer came, but she was. She expected a knife, or poison at the very least, even though they were not a subtle people. What she got were claws, and hungry eyes shining out of the dark. Something raced in her blood when she saw him, but it wasn’t fear. Truth was, it had been so long since she had known desire that she didn’t recognize it when it beat in her veins. She had felt as one already dead, until her killer made her feel alive again.
    He took her from her bed and out into the moonlight on the mountainside. He left her in a clearing and folded the shadows around himself. Out of the night he listed her supposed crimes and told her to run for her life. He called himself her Nemesis, said he was one of the gods’ own furies.
    The legends of the Furies came from ancient vampire custom to take the most wicked and sacrilegious of mortals as lawful prey for sins against gods and humankind. Even now it was Lawful for a strigoi to accept that sort of contract, though the Strigoi Council discouraged anyone knowing about this ancient custom. The Councilstrove for neutrality in all mortal affairs and would force Enforcers to