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the details of his old life as a warrior for the Order of St. Michael the Archangel. But even they had never succeeded in making him forget the reason why he fought.
    Because of Emily, and everything she stood for to him.
    When he thought of home, he did not think of the mansion, or his parents, or the lordly stables that were the envy of the shire. He thought of the woodsman's daughter, roaming the hunting grounds of Westwood Park, wild and free, innocent as some ethereal woodland nymph, untouched by the corruption of the world.
    That was how Drake had wanted, needed her to stay, always. But it was too late. Her blind devotion to him had drawn her there. And after the way the Prometheans' evil had infected him, he had a terrible cold feeling in his gut that he would be her downfall.
    She had to go. Soon. He could not be distracted by her. He despised and feared how deeply he was drawn to her. It could get him killed in this place.
    He might, by some miracle, still be able to save her life--he had to, or his whole existence would have been in vain. But he already knew that when it came to the crystalline innocence of her heart, it was only a matter of time before it shattered. She would look into the face of evil here, and she would never be the same.
    God knew, he was not.
    He suppressed a shudder and hurried down the stairs, jogging down the white marble spiral. With a grim set to his jaw, he walked toward the dining room where the Council was in session, still utterly refusing to think of the last time he had been a guest at Waldfort Castle.
    He had not stayed on the fourth floor then but in the dark place, far down below. He swept its memory out of his mind once again and kept his face coldly expressionless but for the trace of suffering that never quite left his eyes.
    Approaching the dining room where James had called the meeting, he knew full well that behind that door was a roomful of murderers, every one of them. If he had not penetrated their organization so deeply, perhaps he never would have believed it. Like the rest of the world, he'd have been deceived by their facade of quiet banality.
    How polite the gentlemen could be, taking tea in aristocratic drawing rooms, playing chess at White's or other clubs for the well-connected, strolling on a Sunday afternoon with their already-tainted grandchildren. But there was another side to them, a terrible secret at the core of who they were.
    Their elegant friends and royal connections would have been horrified to witness their warped ceremonies, like the one in which Drake had forced himself to participate recently. The black candles, the hooded robes, the weird ancient chants full of blasphemies, the blood that ran from the slit throats of sacrificed animals and dripped from the places where they pierced themselves to glorify the cruel images they worshipped.
    Their strange system of belief was based on occult scrolls of the Magi found by Crusader knights in a desert cave hundreds of years ago. They had blended it over the centuries with many other sources of hidden ancient knowledge, but essentially, their creed placed them at the center of the universe and rejected all authority in life and on earth except their own.
    To them, Prometheus, the Titan of Greek myth who had given fire to humanity, and Lucifer, the light-bearer, had become one and the same. But in their view, Satan was not the monstrous enemy of God and man but a rebel prince, wronged, powerful, and heroic.
    The Prometheans' willingness to pursue their goals in a manner worthy of the Father of Lies made it difficult for the Order, constrained by the knight's code of conduct, to defeat them.
    But Drake was no longer, technically, a knight of the Order. His hands were no longer tied by these noble ideals.
    The time had come to fight fire with fire.
    He had come to destroy the destroyers, deceive the deceivers, to infiltrate the infiltrators, and to murder the murderers. To fight evil with pure, black evil. He