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scent of their shaggy bodies while they strained toward him, sinewy limbs and sharp fangs pulling forward in an attempt to rip him apart.
    At first, he thought the wolves symbolized his own lust and fear paralyzed him, an unreasoning fear that made him groan aloud. He struggled against the racing of his heart, the shortness of his breath, reminding himself this must be the work of the psychic vampire demons, those forces of the damned made him doubt himself even as they fed on that fear and doubt.
    Insufferable arrogance had put him in this position of always trying to control his world through his own strength, and he had been paying for it for over eight hundred years. Even now, he remembered the day when his father had delivered him to the monastery in the woods near the Rhone River in France. He recalled the bare trees, iced-over and looking like skeletal hands reaching out to grasp him.
    He’d never forget the humiliation he’d felt when his father had told him he’d never live up to the strength and prowess of his three older warrior brothers, and how his father had personally taken him to the monastery. He’d been eight years old and still couldn’t forget those endless prayers he’d made on the cold, hard chapel floor, praying he’d be rescued some day.
    That memory passed, and suddenly, an image of the Byzantine-like castle at Aachen crossed his mind. An image of soaking in the hot thermal springs with his ancient heroic king blotted out the lingering visions of the wolves and monasteries. He felt the hot water and the strong sulfurous smell of the springs while Charlemagne laughed at some story he’d been told. Darius then drifted off into a dream of hot, dusty battles for useless past glories.
    He’d been alone until Elizabeth had come seeking asylum in London. He would not go on for another eight hundred years—he couldn’t exist without Elizabeth by his side. She had allowed him to drink of her vampire blood, and in his mind, uniting them forever.
    He opened his eyes when the sun went down. He felt the change in the very pores of his skin, his breathing felt deeper, cleaner. Sitting up, he tore open the thick curtains surrounding his bed, allowing the bruising shadows of dusk to enter the bedchamber.
    An image of Elizabeth entered his mind, and he felt the hot pulsing of her blood trickling down his throat, her pale full lips pressing against his, her nipples hardening at the touch of his palms. All these images created a desire in him and he felt a heat in his loins. This desire for her tormented his nonexistent soul.
    He needed to feed, and with a call to her, she’d permit him to draw the blood from her white, milky-smooth skin. But drinking her blood would leave her needs unmet and make her more vulnerable. Last time he drank from her, she’d been drawn to St. Paul’s where demons had threatened to suck her into the bowels of hell. Since she had no soul, they couldn’t pull her completely into the abyss, yet that threat must have been terrifying enough. She seemed to have a soul, a very old soul, richer and deeper than any living person he’d ever known.
    A scratching sound on the diamond pane glass window made him leap from the bed and reach for his sword on the oak chest. He grabbed a candelabrum on a side table, while keeping the sword by his side. He could see in the dark, but preferred to see his enemies by light.
    Hands raked against the window, hands made of old leather, frantically clawing at the pane. Disembodied faces appeared and disappeared in the glass. Realizing how impossible it was to ignore the psychic vampire demons, he unlatched the window and allowed the demons entrance.
    He maintained his composure while three of them slithered inside. He drew in a breath, refusing to allow them to suck up any of his energy. The largest of the demons reached out an elongated, leathery hand to touch him. His voice rasped when he spoke. “We have come to bargain with you, Darius.”
    He