two moves: techniques of balletic precision that brought down his adversaries in fewer than twenty seconds.
At every step of his career, Quintus felt the persecution of the Master, who had long since abandoned the fifteen-year-old slave Thrax’s body as its host. There were thwarted ambushes, slave vampire attacks, and, only rarely, direct assaults by the Master in various guises. At first Quintus was confused by the nature of these attacks, but over time, he became curious about his progenitor. His Roman military training taught him to go on the offensive when threatened, and so he began tracking the Master, in a search for answers.
At the same time, the Born’s exploits and his growing legend brought him to the attention of the Ancients, who approached him one night in the middle of battle. Through his contact with them, the Born learned the truth about his lineage and the background of the wayward Ancient they referred to as “the Young One.” They showed him many things under the assumption that, once their secrets were revealed to him, the Born would naturally join them.
But Quintus refused. He turned his back on the dark order of vampire lords born of the same cataclysmic force as the Master. Quintus had spent all his life among humans, and he wanted to try to adapt to their kind. He wanted to explore that half of him. And, despite the threat the Master posed to him, he wished to live as an immortal among mortals, rather than—as he thought of himself then—a half-breed among purebreds.
Having been born out of omission rather than action, Quintus was unable to procreate in any way. He was unable to reproduce and could never truly claim a woman as his very own. Quintus lacked the pathogen that would have allowed him to spread the infection or subjugate any humans to his will.
At the end of his campaign days, Quintus found himself a legate and was given a fertile plot of land and even a family: a young Berber widow with olive skin, dark eyes, and a daughter of her own. In her, he found affection and intimacy and eventually love. The dark woman sang for him sweet songs in her native tongue and lulled him to sleep in the deep cellars of his home. During a time of relative peace, they kept house on the shore of southern Italy. Until one night when he was away, and the Master visited her.
Quintus came back to find his family turned and lying in wait, attacking him along with the Master. Quintus had to fight them all at once, releasing his savage wife and then her child. He barely survived the Master’s onslaught. At the time, the vehicle chosen by the Master was the body of a fellow legionnaire, an ambitious, ruthless tribune named Tacitus. The short but sturdy and muscular body gave the Master ample margin in the fight. There were almost no legionnaires under five foot ten, but Tacitus had been admitted because he was strong as an ox. His arms and neck were thick and short and made of bulging strands of muscle. His mountainous shoulders and back gave him a slightly hunched aspect but now, as he towered over a beaten Quintus, Tacitus was as straight as a marble column. Quintus had, however, prepared for this occasion—both fearing it and hoping it would one day come. In a hidden fold of his belt, he hid a narrow silver blade—sheathed away from his skin but with a carved sandalwood handle that allowed him to retrieve it fast. He pulled it out and slashed Tacitus across the face, bisecting his eye and snapping his right cheekbone in two. The Master howled and covered its injured eye, out of which blood and vitreous humor poured forth. In a single bound, it jumped out of the house and into the darkened garden beyond.
When he recovered, Quintus felt a loneliness that would never leave him again. He swore revenge upon the creature that created him—even though such an act would mean his own demise as well.
Many years later, upon the advent of the Christian faith, Quintus returned to the Ancients, acknowledging who and what he was. He offered them his wealth, his influence, and his strength, and they welcomed him as one of their own. Quintus warned them of the Master’s perfidy, and they acknowledged the threat but never lost confidence in their numerical advantage and the wisdom of their years.
Through the ensuing centuries Quintus continued his quest for vengeance.
But for the next seven centuries, Quintus—later Quinlan—never got closer to the Master than he did one night in Tortosa, in what is now known as Syria, when the Master called him “son.”
The Master and Quintus were standing at the edge of a rocky cliff overlooking a vast Roman necropolis. Quinlan knew that the Master had no escape. The nascent rays of daylight were already causing him to smoke and burn. The Master’s words were unexpected and his voice, in Quinlan’s head, an intrusion. Quinlan felt an intimacy that scared him. And for a moment—which he would live to regret for the rest of his life—he felt true belonging. This thing—having taken refuge in the tall, pale body of an ironworker—was his father. His true father. Quinlan lowered his weapon for an instant, and the Master rapidly crawled down the rocky cliff face, disappearing into a system of crypts and tunnels below.
Centuries later, a ship sailed from Plymouth, England, to Cape Cod in the newly discovered territory of America. The ship was carrying 130 passengers according to the official manifest, but within the cargo compartments several boxes containing earth could be found. The items listed within were earth and tulip bulbs; presumably their owner wanted to take advantage of the coastal climate. The reality was far darker. Three of the Ancients and their loyal ally Quinlan established themselves rather rapidly in the New World, under the auspices of a rich merchant: Kiliaen Van Zanden. The settlements in the New World were in fact little more than a collective banana republic whose mercantile ways were grown into the preeminent economic and military power on the planet in fewer than two centuries’ time—all of which was essentially a front for the real business being conducted belowground and behind closed doors. All efforts were focused on the acquisition of the
How could they destroy the Master?
Camp Liberty
DR. NORA MARTINEZ awoke to the shrill camp whistle. She lay in a canvas stretcher hanging from the ceiling, enveloping her like a sling. The only way out was to shimmy under her blanket, escaping through the end, feet first.
Standing, she sensed immediately that something wasn’t right. She turned her head this way and that. It felt too light. Her free hand went immediately to her scalp.
Bare. Completely bald. This shocked her. Nora didn’t have many vanities, but she’d been blessed with gorgeous hair, keeping it long even though—as an epidemiologist—it was an impractical choice for a professional. She gripped her scalp now as though fighting a searing migraine, feeling bare flesh where she never had before. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she suddenly felt smaller and—somehow, but truly—weakened. In shaving off her hair, they had also cut away a bit of her strength.
But her unsteadiness wasn’t just the result of her bare scalp. She felt groggy, swaying for balance. After the confusing admittance process, and her attendant anxiety, Nora was amazed she had been able to sleep at all. In fact, she now remembered that she had been determined to remain awake, in order to learn as much as she could about the quarantine area before proceeding into the general population of the absurdly named Camp Liberty.
But this taste in her mouth now—as though she had been gagged with a fresh cotton sock—told Nora that she had been drugged. That bottle of drinking water she had been issued—they had doped it.
Anger rose inside her, some of it aimed at Eph. Unproductive. Instead, she focused on Fet, yearning for him. She was almost certain never to see either of those two men again. Not unless she could find some way out of this place.
The vampires who ran the camp—or perhaps their human co-conspirators, contract members of the Stoneheart Group—wisely enforced a quarantine for new entries. This type of encampment was tinder for an infectious disease event, one that had the potential to wipe out the camp population, their precious blood providers.
A woman entered the room through the canvas flaps that hung over the doorway. She wore a slate-gray jumpsuit, the same color and bland style as Nora’s. Nora recognized her face, remembering her from yesterday. Terrifically thin, her skin a pale parchment wrinkled at the corners of her eyes and her mouth. Her dark hair was close-cropped, her scalp due for a shave. Yet the woman appeared upbeat, for some reason Nora could not fathom. Her function here was apparently that of a camp mother of sorts. Her name was Sally.
