She'd told him to go away, and he had. Her word was law to him. But that didn't mean he couldn't have her guarded. She need never realize that there were Night People around her, watching and waiting in the shadows-and ready to fight to the death if any danger appeared.
Lupe had been right. He couldn't deal with this alone. And now he was going to have to rely on other people to keep Hannah safe.
Thierry looked at his watch again. It was nine o'clock at night, and he was almost tempted to give up on Circe. But only a witch of her power could set up the kind of heavy-duty wards that would protect Hannah wherever she went in Amador County.
He kept waiting. As he did, he stared at a gun rack on the wall and tried to keep his brain turned off. It didn't work.
Ever since he'd awoken Hannah from her hypnotic trance, he'd been trying very hard not to think about the old days. But now, he found himself being irresistibly drawn back-not only thinking about them, but reliving them. Traveling back in his mind to the stupid young man he had been....
He hadn't been the first vampire. He didn't have that distinction.
He had only been the second.
He'd grown up in the tribe of Maya and Hellewise. The Maya and Hellewise, the twin daughters of Hecate Witch Queen. The Maya and Hellewise who would go down as the two greatest figures in Night World history; Hellewise Hearth-Woman as the ancestress of the Harman family, the most famous of the living witches, and Maya as the ancestress of both the lamia and the made vampires.
But of course he knew nothing about that at the time.
All he knew was that they were both pretty girls. Beautiful. Hellewise had long yellow hair and deep brown eyes. Maya had long black hair and eyes that glittered in different colors like the changing lights in a glacier. He liked both sisters very much.
Maybe that was his downfall.
He'd been a very ordinary fellow, with a good throwing arm, a delicate touch in carving ivory, and a vague longing to see the world. He'd taken it for granted that his tribe was special, that they could influence the weather and summon animals from the forest. They were the witch people, they'd been granted special powers, and that was all. It wasn't anything to worry about.
And, like everyone else, he knew that Maya was doing experiments in the forest, using her powers to try and become immortal. But that didn't worry him particularly either....
I was very young and very, very stupid, Thierry thought.
That had been the real downfall of the tribe. Maya's desire to become immortal. Because she'd been willing to pay any price for it, even to the point of becoming a monster and leaving a curse on all her descendants. Maybe if Thierry and the other witch people had realized that, they could have stopped her before it happened.
Because Maya had finally found the right spell to achieve immortality. The problem was that to do it, she had to steal the babies of the tribe. All four of them. She took them out to the forest, did the spell, and drank their blood. Thierry and the rest of the tribe found the four little bled-out bodies later.
Hellewise had cried all night. Thierry, who couldn't understand how the pretty girl he liked could have done something so awful, cried, too. Maya herself had disappeared completely.
But a few nights later she came to Thierry. He was keeping watch outside the cave when she appeared silently beside him.
She had changed.
She wasn't the pretty girl he knew anymore. She was stunningly, dazzlingly beautiful. But she was different. She moved with the grace of a nighttime predator, and her eyes reflected the firelight.
She was very pale, but that only made her more lovely. Her mouth, which had always been soft and inviting, seemed red as blood. And when she smiled at him, he saw her long pointed teeth.
"Hello, Theory," she said-that was his name back then. "I want to make you immortal."
Thierry was scared out of his mind.
He had no idea what she'd become-some weird creature with unnatural teeth. But he knew he had no desire at all to be like her.
"I really think it's unfair, the way you go back and forth between me and Hellewise," she said casually, sitting down on the bare earth. "So I've decided to resolve the question. You're going to be mine, now and forever."
She reached out and took his hand. Her fingers were very slender and very cold-and unbelievably strong. Thierry couldn't pull away. He stared at his hand with his mouth open like the idiot he was.
This was the time he should have started yelling, thrashing, doing anything to attract attention and get away. But Maya seemed to hold him with her eyes like a snake holding a bird. She was unnatural and evil... but she was so beautiful.
It was the first and the last time that Thierry would be fascinated by the beauty of pure evil-but it was enough. He was doomed from that moment. He'd doomed himself.
An instant of hesitation. He would pay for it for unimaginable years in the future.
"It's not so bad," Maya was saying, still fixing him with her terrible and lovely eyes. "There are a few things I had to figure out-a few things I didn't expect. I thought drinking the blood of the babies would be the end of it, but no."
Thierry felt sick.
"I've got these teeth for a reason, apparently. It seems I have to drink the blood of a mortal creature every day, or I die. It's inconvenient, but I can live with it."
Thierry whispered something beginning with, "Oh, Hecate, Dark Mother-"
"Now, stop that!" Maya made a sharp gesture. "No praying, please, and especially not to that old harridan. I'm not a witch anymore. I'm something completely new-I suppose I should think of a name for myself. Night-hunter... blood-drinker ... I don't know, the possibilities are endless. I'm going to start a new race, Theorn. We'll be better than the witches, stronger, faster-and we'll live forever. We'll never die, so we'll rule everyone. And you're going to be my first convert."