The very idea. He had laughed!

“And why don’t you want to slaughter them?” demanded the Voice. “Have they not driven you out of Rome?”

“No, they haven’t. And I do wish you’d go away.”

Everard knew from bad experience that it was not in the vampire nature to collect in groups except for evil, and that fighting other blood drinkers was a foolish enterprise that ended only in ruin for all involved. He had long chosen to survive alone. In the hills of Tuscany not far from Siena, he kept a small refurbished villa staffed by mortals, and in the evenings the rooms were his alone. He was coldly hospitable to the immortals who now and then called on him. But this Voice wanted it to begin all over again, and he would not listen. He went into Rome or Florence to hunt because they provided the only really safe and rich hunting grounds, but he would not go into Rome to burn.

Seven hundred years ago he’d been made in France by a great vampire named Rhoshamandes who had created a line of de Landen vampires, as he called them—Benedict, Allesandra, Eleni, Eugénie, Notker, and Everard—most of which had no doubt perished over the centuries, but Everard had survived. True he’d been captured by the coven of the Children of Satan, those infamous superstitious vampires who made of their miserable existence a religion, and he’d served them, but only after he’d been tortured and starved. Sometime in the Renaissance years, he couldn’t remember precisely when, he’d been sent by the vicious little Parisian coven master Armand to the Children of Satan in Rome to find out how the coven fared. Well, the coven had been in ruins, and Santino the coven master had been living a blasphemous existence in worldly clothes and jewels flouting all the rules he’d forced on others. And Everard saw his chance. He escaped the Children of Satan, striking out on his own, remembering the things that the powerful Rhoshamandes had taught him long ago before the Children of Satan drove him from France.

Since then Everard had survived many an encounter with others more powerful than himself. He’d survived the terrible Burning when Akasha passed over the world striking down Children of Darkness everywhere without regard to character, courage, merit, or mercy.

He’d even survived a brief and insulting mention in one of the Vampire Chronicles by Marius, who’d described Everard without naming him as “gaunt and big boned” with dusty clothes and dirty lace.

Well, he could endure the “gaunt and big boned.” That was true, and he thought himself quite beautiful in spite of it, but the dusty clothes and dirty lace? It infuriated him. He kept his shoulder-length black hair and his clothes immaculate. If he ever ran into Marius again, he intended to smack his face.

But that was all foolishness really. If he played his cards right, he’d never run into Marius or anyone else, except to exchange a few kind words and then move on. The point was Everard lived with other blood drinkers at peace.

And now this inane Voice, this Voice that came right into his head, bedeviled him nightly with commands to kill and to burn and to rampage. And he could not shut this Voice out.

Finally, he’d resorted to music. Everard had started purchasing excellent systems for amplified music since the beginning of the twentieth century. Indeed the storerooms of his little villa were a veritable museum, as he hated to throw good things away. And so he had windup Victrolas, stacks of thick old black phonograph records that he had once played on them, as well as early electrical machines that had once given him “high fidelity” and “stereo” and now collected dust.

He’d moved on to compact discs, streaming, and the like and so forth, and so putting his iPhone into the little Bose dock that would amplify its music, he flooded the villa with the “Ride of the Valkyries” and prayed the Voice would go away.

No such luck. The imbecilic, bad-tempered, and childish little monster continued to invade his thoughts.

“You are not going to persuade me to burn anyone, you idiot!” Everard snarled with exasperation.

“I will punish you for this. You are young and weak and stupid,” said the Voice. “And when I do accomplish my purpose I will send an ancient one to destroy you for your disobedience.”

“Oh, stuff it up your chimney, you vain little nuisance,” said Everard. “If you are so high and mighty and capable of doing this, why are you talking to me at all? And why aren’t you blasting all the blood drinker tramps of Rome on your own?”

Who was this fool, some ancient one buried deep underground or walled up in some ruin somewhere desperately trying to control others and ultimately draw them to his prison? Well, he was doing a very bad job of it with all this incitement to war and idle threats.

“I shall make you suffer,” said the Voice, “and turn off that infernal music!”

Everard laughed. He turned the volume higher, took the iPhone out of the dock, put it in his pocket, connected the earpiece, and went out for a walk.

The Voice fumed but he could hardly hear it.

It was a lovely route he took downhill to the walled city of Siena. And how Everard loved the place, with its tiny winding medieval streets that made him feel safe, made him think of his Paris.

The Paris of today terrified him.

He even loved the bright-faced and gentle tourists who flooded Siena, pretty much enjoying what Everard enjoyed—wandering, gazing into shopwindows, and sitting in the wine bars.

Everard liked the shops and wished more were open after dark. He often sent his mortal servants down to purchase stationery for him, on which to write his occasional poems, which he then framed and hung on his walls. And he purchased scented candles and bright silk neckties.

Like many of the old ones made in the Middle Ages, he favored ornate and big-sleeved shirts, tight-fitting pants that were almost like leggings, and fancy mostly velvet coats. And these things he ordered online with his big dazzling Mac computer. But the town had fine men’s gloves, and golden cuff links and such. Lots of glittering accoutrements.

He had a lot of money, accumulated over the centuries in many ways. He wasn’t hungry. He’d fed in Florence the night before, and it had been a long slow delicious feast.

And so on this cool and mild evening, under the Tuscan stars, he was happy even though the Voice grumbled in his ear.

He entered the town with a nod to the few people he actually knew who gave him a wave as he passed—“the gaunt one with the big bones”—and followed the narrow street in the direction of the Cathedral.

Soon he came to the café he liked the most. It sold newspapers and magazines, and had a few tables set out on the street. Most of the patrons were inside tonight, as it was just a little chilly for them, but for a vampire the weather was perfect. Everard sat down, switching the music feed from Wagner to Vivaldi, whom he liked much better, and waited for the waiter to bring him his usual, a cup of hot American coffee which of course he could not and would not drink.