“Lithu . . . Oh. Um.”

As long as I had known Max (which had only been six or seven months—but it often seemed much longer), he’d had a . . . a thing about Lithuanians. He had never explained it, and I had never really pursued it; but as near as I could tell, he and Lithuanians seemed to be like two Mafia families. Not necessarily enemies, but separate and wary; and if you belonged to one, then you couldn’t belong to the other.

His raising the subject again sparked my curiosity; but with more urgent questions at hand, such as whether a vampire was stalking the city, this didn’t seem the time for me to insist on an explanation about Max’s complicated relationship with the people of a small Baltic nation.

“Er, no, to my knowledge, there are no Lithuanians involved,” I said. “I haven’t gone around specifically asking everyone’s ethnicity, but no self-identified Lithuanians have stepped forward.”

“No?” Max frowned. “I find that surprising. Even puzzling.”

I blinked. “Really?”

“Hmm.” He stroked his beard, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Tell me, were the victims’ intestines consumed?”

“By consumed, you mean . . .”

“Eaten.”

“Yeah, I was afraid that was what you meant,” I said. “I have no idea. I suppose it’s possible. Even though Lopez was so tired that he said more than he meant to, that’s the kind of detail I’m pretty sure he would deliberately omit when talking to me.” If only to spare me from having nightmares.

“Oh, I meant to ask, how is Detective Lopez?”

I had come to Zadok’s Rare and Used Books, located in a townhouse on a side street in Greenwich Village, after showering, dressing, eating, and packing my tote bag with everything I’d need to get me through the day. If anyone in New York could shed light into the dark corners of this situation, it was surely Max—talented mage, long-lived alchemist, ardent student of magic and mysticism, and local representative of the Magnum Collegium, an ancient worldwide (albeit obscure) organization dedicated to confronting Evil wherever it lurked. Max’s help and guidance had saved my life (and the lives of others) on previous occasions, and it was through our friendship that I had discovered that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than were dreamt of in my philosophy.

“How is Lopez?” I said. “If you mean, did anything weird or mysterious happen while he was with me, the answer is no.”

There had been previous . . . incidents.

I’d been in deadly danger one night when Lopez was trying to rescue me, in a pitch-dark church where the electricity had been disabled; my life was saved when the lights inexplicably started working again, apparently in response to his will. On another occasion, he had experienced possession by a fiery Vodou spirit. And then there was the memorable night my bed caught fire for no apparent reason ... while he was in it.

Lopez barely even acknowledged it as a noticeable coincidence that the church lights that night had started working when he wanted them to. He didn’t remember the spirit possession at all (which, Max had told me, was a common reaction among those who’d been possessed). And he thought something was wrong—really wrong—with my mattress, so he wanted an arson investigator to examine it. (However, like most things left outside in my neighborhood, the ruined mattress promptly vanished.)

Max wasn’t sure what to make of these episodes, but he thought it was possible that Lopez possessed unconscious, unwitting mystical talent of some sort. I knew without asking that my ex-almost-boyfriend would find such a theory only slightly less absurd than Daemon’s claims about being a vampire. And I . . . I really didn’t know what to think.

“Actually, I was just asking after his health and well-being,” Max said. “I haven’t encountered him since that ferocious night in Harlem when death came uncomfortably close to embracing him.”

“Too close,” I said. “Much, much too close. I can’t get him involved in anything like that again, Max.”

“He seems to be deeply involved in this matter already,” my friend pointed out gently. “As is his way when there is danger afoot.”

“Well, I guess the one thing we can all agree on is that there’s danger,” I said. “The question is, is it the sort of ‘mundane’ danger that the police are equipped to deal with—such as a serial killer with, um, exsanguination equipment? Or is the killer—despite Lopez’s undisguised contempt for this theory—an immortal creature of the night sinking its fangs into people’s necks to drink their blood?”

“Oh, I very much doubt it’s that,” Max said, shaking his head.

“Really?”

“Indeed, no. I share Detective Lopez’s conviction that such a theory is too outlandish to entertain seriously.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” I said, feeling relieved and very glad that I had come here and told Max everything. Vampires. What had I been thinking? I laughed a little. “It must be the atmosphere I’ve been living in lately. You know—this gothic play, our bizarre leading man, the vamparazzi. I guess it all got to me. I really worked myself into a state of nerves by the time I got here.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Max said kindly.

He patted my hand, then offered to pour me more tea. I accepted. We were chatting in a pair of comfortable old easy chairs next to the little gas fireplace in the bookstore. Nearby was the small refreshment station that Max kept stocked with coffee, tea, cookies, and other treats for his customers. There was also a large, careworn walnut table with books, papers, an abacus, writing implements, and other paraphernalia on it. Along the far wall of the shop there was an extremely large wooden cupboard that happened to be possessed; although the cupboard was prone to alarming displays of smoke, noise, shrieks, and agitated rattling, it seemed to be silent and dormant today—as it often was for weeks at a time.

The shop had well-worn hardwood floors, a broadbeamed ceiling, and dusky rose walls. Its layout was defined by a rabbit warren of tall bookcases stuffed with a wide variety of books about the occult, printed in more than a dozen languages. The stock ranged from recent paperbacks to old, rare, and very expensive leatherbound tomes.

The bookstore had a small, fiercely loyal customer base, and it got some foot traffic from curious passersby. But the shop was primarily an innocuous front for Max’s real work, which was protecting New York and its inhabitants from Evil. I didn’t know whether fighting Evil paid well (did the Magnum Collegium dole out fiscal rewards and bonuses?) or whether Max had invested wisely over the course of his three and a half centuries of life; I just knew that he seemed to have a comfortable income, and I rather doubted it came from the desultory business that the bookstore did.

After Max poured me another cup of tea, he also offered me a cookie. I declined, but the mere mention of something edible caused Nelli to wake up, lift her head, and look at us imploringly, her expression suggesting that she was only moments away from dying of starvation.

“No, Nelli,” Max said firmly. “We’ve discussed this before. The veterinarian says that sugar will wreak havoc with your delicate metabolism.”

She gave a little groan of disappointment and laid her head back down on her paws.

Nelli was Max’s canine familiar. I had been present on the chaotic occasion when she transmuted from an ethereal dimension and assumed physical form in this one, in response to Max’s supplication for assistance in confronting Evil in New York City. Although she was (despite Max’s objection to the word as inaccurate and inadequate for a being of Nelli’s complex mystical nature) a dog, she was nearly as big as a Shetland pony. Her massive head was long and square-jawed, framed by two floppy, overlong ears. The fur on her paws and face was silky brown, and the rest of her well-muscled physique was covered by short, smooth, tan fur.

I leaned back in my chair and sipped my tea, realizing that I had let myself get carried away. “What with all the craziness surrounding the show, I guess the pump was really primed, so to speak, when Lopez told me about the exsanguinations.” I shook my head. “I talked myself into thinking there’s a vampire prowling the city.”

“Oh, that could very well be the case,” Max said, matter-of-factly. “Although vampires are not the only beings who consume the blood of their victims, exsanguination is such a prevalent feature of vampirism that it would be foolhardy not to consider the possibility of a vampire being responsible for these slayings.”

“But we can certainly rule out imaginary creatures.”

Confused, I sputtered, “But you—you . . . Vampires? You just said . . . Lopez . . . too outlandish . . .”

“Oh, dear. I see.” Max made an tsk-tsk noise while shaking his head. “Fiction writers have a great deal to answer for. The absurd misinformation they have encouraged people to believe about a truly dangerous phenomenon is inexcusable! I don’t wish to sound unduly critical or censorious—and no one enjoys a good yarn more than I do—but I consider perpetration of such absurd falsehoods to be unconscionably irresponsible.”

His round, bearded face was creased in a disapproving frown, and there was a steely tone of offended principle in his normally warm, gentle voice.

“Huh?” As was often the case, I had no idea what Max was talking about.

“I hadn’t intended to say anything, since I’ve no wish to appear unenthusiastic about your participation in a popular theatrical production, let alone ungrateful for your kindly securing me a ticket to see it. And I assure you, the inaccuracies which I anticipate encountering in The Vampyre do not in any way mitigate the eagerness with which I contemplate seeing your performance today!”

“Uh-huh.” I knew that he would get to the point if I waited long enough.

“But . . .” He sighed. “I read Dr. Polidori’s story nearly two centuries ago, when it first became all the rage. And there’s no denying that his acquaintance with the facts was extremely scant, at best—”

“The facts about what?”

“Vampires,” Max said. “It was evident to me, when I read ‘The Vampyre,’ that Dr. Polidori’s interest was not in conveying an accurate rendering of such beings, but rather in metaphorically exorcising his grievances against his former employer Lord Byron. As well as exploring his own ambivalent feelings about, er, other things.”

“So vampires aren’t undead creatures who prey on the living and survive by draining our blood?” I asked hopefully.

“Oh, he was more or less accurate in that respect,” Max said dismissively. “But, as I tried so fruitlessly to explain to Stoker many years later, the undead are not articulate, well-dressed aristocrats.”

“Stoker?” I said blankly.

“However, Dr. Polidori’s enduring vision of the vampire as an elegant, intelligent seducer had by then already taken too firm a hold of Stoker’s imagination. Perhaps he should not be blamed—he was Irish, after all, and they are a poetic, fanciful people. And the result of his vision is still with us today, alas.”

“Wait a minute, Bram Stoker?”

“Which is not to say, by any means, that I would ever imply that his work was careless or slipshod. No, indeed. He was a dedicated, almost obsessive researcher.”

“Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula?”

Max nodded. “Moreover, his interest in the subject of vampires was unquestionably sincere and serious. I must also confess that I was genuinely flattered by his inquisitive enthusiasm with regard to my own experiences as vampire hunter.”

“Whoa! Max, you’re a vampire hunter?”

“Oh, not anymore, certainly. That would be completely inappropriate.”

“It would?”

“But before ratifying the Treaty of Gediminas, yes, I battled the undead in Serbia for nearly three terrible years.”

“Serbia?” I said. “Wait. No. We’ll come back in a minute to battling the undead. Max, you knew Bram Stoker?”

“Yes. And I would just like to clarify that despite the claim that he based the character of Dr. Van Helsing on me, my English was never that bad.”

“Oh.” I had read Dracula in college, and I vaguely recalled skimming over Van Helsing’s dialogue, too impatient to wade through the stilted, awkward syntax that Stoker had assigned to the novel’s foreign-born vampire hunter. “No?”

“I attended Oxford University, for goodness sake!” Max sounded a trifle exasperated. “I had been speaking English for more than two hundred years by the time I met Stoker. Oh, I still had a bit of a continental accent then, as I do now, but I was never unintelligible.”

“Of course not,” I said. “Wow! He really based Van Helsing on you?”

“Well, I suppose Oscar could have fabricated that merely to test my reaction. He could be quite devilish that way.”

“Oscar?”

“Wilde.”

I sat bolt upright. “You knew Oscar Wilde?”

“By the time Dracula was written and published, I had not seen Stoker in many years, and I never had the opportunity to ask him myself. Oscar claimed Stoker had told him that I was the inspiration for the character.” After a pause, he added, “Oscar also claimed that the resemblance was unmistakable. Hmph.”

Recognizing my cue, I said, “Well, it is unmistakable, Max. Oh, never mind Van Helsing’s awkward dialogue. That’s just dramatic license. And the character is, er, Dutch, after all. But he’s the hero of the story! Van Helsing arrives on the scene when the other characters are lost and frightened, preyed upon by Evil, and have no idea what’s going on or what to do. And he, in his wisdom and experience, gives them a clearer picture of the situation, organizes them, and courageously leads them into victorious battle against their powerful adversary.” Realizing I meant it, I said, “Of course you were the inspiration for that character, Max.”

“Oh,” Max was blushing bashfully. “Oscar was probably just teasing me when he said that. We shouldn’t take it too seriously.”

Although it was a distraction from the problem at hand, I nonetheless had to ask. “Max, what was Oscar Wilde like?”

“Hmm.” He thought back to his memories of a man who had died more than a century ago. “Brilliant in some ways and surprisingly foolish in others. Very good company when the occasion was right and rather trying company when it was not.” Max smiled and shook his head. “We were acquaintances rather than friends.”

“And Stoker?”

“Well, like so many novelists, he was often more engaged by what was inside his head than by what was right in front of him. He was a decent, civilized man, and on the occasions we met, we found a great deal to talk about—mostly because of his interest in vampires and my experiences in hunting them.” Max added with another touch of exasperation, “So, really, considering our interviews, you would think he would have gotten something right in his novel.”

“Er, just how inaccurate is it?”

“So inaccurate that its far-reaching influence as an authoritative tome on vampirism has misled generations of the living about the nature of the undead,” Max replied sadly.

I began to realize that when we each used the word “vampire,” Max and I weren’t even talking about the same thing. I was apparently talking about something that didn’t exist; and I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Then Hollywood filmmakers subsequently took up the story,” Max said. “At which point, even the faintest remaining resemblance to reality entirely vanished.”

“That’s what usually happens in Hollywood,” I noted.

“Thus we have long since reached the point where people actually think, incredible as this seems, that a vampire is an immortal, befanged, elegant creature of the night who tidily drains people’s blood by biting them in the neck.” Max snorted, making his white moustache flutter. “It would almost be amusing if it weren’t such a deadly serious matter.”

“Let me make sure I understand,” I said. “Vampires are real, but everything I know about them is wrong?”

He beamed at me. “That’s an admirably succinct summation, Esther!”

“Thank you,” I said. “Now that I know what a vampire is not—i.e. Lord Ruthven, Count Dracula, and the like—can you be equally succinct in explaining what a vampire is?”

His face scrunched up briefly as he sought a way to reduce his normally loquacious descriptions to as few words as possible in this case. “A vampire is a mystically animated undead individual driven by mindless, voracious survival instinct to prey upon the living for sustenance.”

“Ah. So Polidori and Stoker did get that part right.”

“In essence,” Max conceded. “But unlike their portrayals, the vampiric undead are not beings whom you’d ever meet at a social gathering. And they certainly don’t make engaging quips about not drinking . . . wine.”

“I gather they’d stand out in a crowd?”

“Being undead isn’t just a matter of lacking a pulse,” Max said. “An undead vampire is always in some stage of decomposition, and this is, er, quite noticeable.”

“Without going into detail about that,” I said quickly, “do you mean they gradually disintegrate and return to the elements? Like dead people who are actually dead?”

“Not necessarily,” Max said. “Well, not soon, anyhow. Blood is the essence of life—the mysterious internal river of our own animation, if you will. The more human blood the vampire consumes, the slower the rate of decay and the longer the creature can prolong its existence. The undead aren’t consciously aware of this equation. They are consciously aware of very little, in fact. But it does mean that they are primally driven to attack and consume prey. It also means that the most violently aggressive vampires are consequently the most enduring ones.”

“So I guess you also wouldn’t find one of them running an estate in Transylvania or hiring a British solicitor ?”

“Indeed, no.”

“It sounds like they’re essentially rabid animals,” I said.

“Another succinctly accurate summary, my dear. But they are far more terrifying and dangerous than that. Infused with dark mystical power, they are ferociously strong, instinctively cunning about hunting and being hunted, and very challenging to dispatch. They are also,” he said with a shadow of dread that I sensed had followed him across the centuries, “horrifyingly prolific. Their numbers multiply with appalling rapidity.”

I gasped in revulsion. “As in ... vampire sex?”

Max blinked. “Good heavens, no. I didn’t mean—However . . . Hmm. I did occasionally observe, er, physiological phenomenon among vampires which would certainly support a theory that they are capable of sexual activity. But I never saw or heard any evidence that they were interested in it, let alone that they were capable of procreation.”

“Oh. Good.” I added, “Based on your description, it really doesn’t sound like a vampire could get a date, anyhow, never mind get lucky.”

“They are truly repellant creatures,” Max said with feeling.

“Quite a stretch from my posturing, womanizing, leather-clad costar who claims to be a vampire,” I said. “Also quite a distance from Lord Ruthven’s flowery monologues about honor, betrayal, pleasure, pain, yada yada.”

“Oh, the undead don’t make speeches,” Max said seriously. “They’re not capable of it.”

“I was amazed before now that posing as a vampire got Daemon Ravel laid so much. After what you’ve told me, now I’m flabbergasted.”

“Yes, the eroticization of the undead has always puzzled me,” Max said. “Then again, I suppose I am the only person alive who actually experienced the Serbian vampire epidemic during the reign of Emperor Charles VI.”

Although I had no idea who Charles VI was, I said, “Yes, I’d say that’s certain, Max. But if they don’t breed and make little vampires, then how does their tribe increase ?”

“Their fatal predation—which sates their hunger, extends their existence, and kills the living—also infects their victims with the same dark magic, turning them into vampires, too.”

“Whoa. That is efficient,” I said, realizing why he dreaded even the memory of his vampire hunting days. “In other words, as soon as you’ve got one vampire in the neighborhood, you’re well on your way to having an infestation of the things.”

“It takes a little time, of course,” he said. “A vampire doesn’t rise the moment the living person dies. There’s a process of mystical transformation. It can take anywhere from a single night to several days for the deceased to rise as a vampire.”

“Hang on.” I thought over what he had told me, then said with relief, “In that case, we don’t have a vampire on our hands. The cops have found exsanguinated murder victims, not vampires. I know Lopez can be a little rigid about these things, but I think he would definitely notice and be interested if any of the deceased had risen from the dead.”

Max disappointed me by saying, “Oh, I should have been clearer in my explanation. The victims can rise from the dead, and all too often do so. Well, too often for me, anyhow. But mystical transition to undeath is not a certainty. In many instances, and for a variety of reasons, the vampire’s victim stays dead. Vampiric transformation is inhibited, for example, if the exsanguination was more or less total at the time of death.”

“Oh.” I thought of Adele Olson, aka Angeline.

“Or if the vampire consumed major organs or body parts upon committing the murder. Particularly if the creature ate the head, the liver, the intestines, the feet, the—”

“I don’t need the whole list,” I said faintly.

“No, perhaps not,” he agreed. “However, this knowledge turned out to be significant in vampire hunting, since the undead, for reasons which have never been quite clear, are particularly attracted to the consumption of intestines.”

“Oh. That’s why you asked about that.” I rather wished he hadn’t explained it to me.

“While this habit leaves behind a dreadful mess for the living to clean up—”

“I can imagine.”

“—it does have the benefit of ensuring that the victim doesn’t become a vampire.”

“Oh. If so, then why don’t vampires, you know, control themselves and skip dessert? So to speak.”

“Infecting their victims with vampirism isn’t a conscious goal or intent. It’s merely a diabolical side effect, if you will, of the vampire sating its mindless craving for human blood.”

“Ah. Right. Driven by instinct. Not self-aware.” How did such creatures morph into the objects of erotic desire in popular culture?

“Mind you, it’s not as if a victim’s corpse is left intact even if the vampire does not consume parts of the body. Indeed, the undead are such messy eaters, it can often be difficult to ascertain what, if anything, is missing from the victim’s remains.”

I felt my gorge rise and recalled that Lopez had said the exsanguination wasn’t done tidily. I swallowed, took a steadying breath, and said, “Obviously, we’re not talking about a couple of delicate fang holes in the neck.”

“Indeed, no. Vampires don’t have fangs.” He paused and added, “Well, rarely. Apart from being in some stage of decomposition and decay, their outward physical features usually don’t change a great deal in undeath. So they primarily rely on strength and viciousness to access a victim’s blood. The results are . . .” Max cleared his throat. “. . . something no one should ever have to see.”

I decided to move quickly past that point. “What about the trope that drinking a vampire’s blood turns a person into one?”

“Ah! That actually happens to be true. But it’s rarely advisable.”

“Based on your description of the undead, I doubt that people are often tempted,” I said. “What happens to victims who get attacked but not killed?”

“Vampirism seldom affects an individual who lives through the attack—though not many people do survive. Interestingly, vampirism is also less likely to infect a victim who is killed during a full moon.”

“Really?” I said in surprise. “I would have thought it was the other way around.”

“It does seem peculiarly counterintuitive, doesn’t it?” Max said. “And, of course, when in doubt, there are thaumaturigical measures one can take to prevent the deceased from rising again.”

“What-ical measures?”

“Thaumaturgy,” Max said. “Magic.”

“Ah. Such as . . .”

“Oh, placing garlic in the mouth and around the head of the deceased, for example. Along with the proper incantations, of course.”

“Hey, garlic! That really works?” I was glad that something I knew about vampires was applicable.

“Only sometimes,” Max said with regret. “All magic is notoriously unpredictable, after all.”

“As I have had occasion to notice.”

“Thrusting a stake through the heart of the deceased is only an effective measure if it really secures the individual to its grave. If the vampire which subsequently tries to rise is particularly strong, or if it’s capable of problem solving, or if the soil is sandy, or if the grave is too shallow . . .” He shook his head. “Well, so many things can go wrong, staking the corpse is almost not worth bothering to do. Especially given what an exceedingly unpleasant task it is, as well as how much it upsets the loved ones of the deceased.”

“But wouldn’t driving a wooden stake through its heart solve the problem once and for all? I mean, doesn’t that kill—I mean, dispatch—a vampire?”

“Alas, no,” Max said. “And this common misconception is a particularly persuasive example of why misleading people about vampires is so dangerous. Thrusting a wooden stake into the heart of an undead attacker, aside from requiring more physical strength than most people possess, would accomplish nothing more fruitful than bringing you into close contact with a diabolically strong monster that wants to drain your blood and eat your intestines.”

“That is a warning,” I said, “that I definitely won’t forget.”

“A misinformed person would almost certainly wind up as a vampire victim by attempting to eliminate the undead in combat by that method. Though it was, I suppose, a convenient way for Stoker to dispatch the villain of his novel,” Max added judiciously. “One must remember, in all fairness, that he was a sensitive person who abhorred violence, and he would probably not have been comfortable writing about vampire slaying with more veracity.”

I thought of myself as a sensitive person who abhorred violence; but apparently this wasn’t a unanimous view of my character.

Max continued, “After all, Stoker had no way of knowing that his wholly ineffectual method of dispatching a vampire would be taken as gospel for more than a century after his novel was published.”

“No, I think Bram Stoker really couldn’t have foreseen anything that’s happened as a result of Dracula.” Though, now that I knew the truth, I was rather tempted to blame the Irish novelist for Daemon Ravel. “But if a wooden stake doesn’t work, then what does? Something must, or I guess you wouldn’t have survived the, uh, Serbian vampire epidemic.”

“Yes, fortunately, several methods are effective for slaying vampires. As well as for disabling them.”

I blinked. “How do you disable a vampire?”

“Ah. The undead vampire is a mystical creature of dark forces, but it is not regenerative. It can be neutralized by dismemberment.”

“That sounds even more unpleasant than staking corpses to their graves.”

“It’s also much more difficult, since vampires don’t hold still for the process.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“And they are dauntingly fierce combatants. Although neutralizing a vampire may be a pragmatic solution to dealing with multiple attackers, it’s a fatal mistake to assume that a vampire has ceased to be dangerous before it’s terminated.” His expression seemed haunted by memories as he continued, “I learned this through bitter experience. Which is also how I learned to dispatch them. I had never seen a vampire before I arrived in Serbia in 1730, and I knew very little about them. We all knew very little. Learning how to combat them was a trial and error process. One which, to my great sorrow, few of my fellow vampire hunters survived. It was a very dark time in my life, Esther.”

I asked, “Were the other vampire hunters friends of yours? Or colleagues from the Magnum Collegium?”

“Yes. Like me, two other members of the Collegium were on that mission at the request of His Majesty’s government.”

“His Majesty?”

“Charles VI, the Habsburg ruler of the Austrian Empire. He also sent soldiers with us, to assist in our investigations. Fine young men who had no idea what they were getting into. Too many of them fell bravely in combat, never to rise again. As did one of my colleagues. The other . . .” As Max remembered his other colleague, his blue eyes clouded with a mist of tears, even after such a long passage of time. “He became one of the undead, and I had to dispatch him myself.”

“Oh, Max,” I said sympathetically.

“I carried out my duty by reminding myself that, had he known the fate that awaited him, he would have instructed me to do so.”

“Of course.” Imagining the horror of it, I said, “The creature who took his place was not your friend and not what he wanted to become. You did what must be done.”

He cleared his throat and retreated safely into a more academic tone. “Decapitation and fire are the effective means we had by then discovered for slaying the undead. Fire, however, was often impractical. It is, as you know, my weakest element as a mage—and was even more so, all those years ago. I was particularly ineffectual at generating fire of any kind when I was under stress or frightened, as I usually was when confronting vampires. And in the 1730s, the mundane means of generating an impromptu fire were very limited and unreliable. Nor did we have always have fuel to maintain one. Conditions were often marginal.”

I tried to picture Max as he must have been in those days. Already well into his seventies in 1730, his unusually slow aging process would have ensured that he still looked like a relatively young man. In that long ago era, he was still within the range of a biologically normal lifespan, and the world in which he was living then was not yet very different from the one in which he had been born and raised.

“So you mostly defeated vampires by decapitating them,” I surmised.

“Yes. Decapitating the animated undead in combat is a bit more difficult than it might sound—”

“Oh, it sounds pretty difficult.”

“—but it was the only reliable method of dispatch I found until . . .”

“Until?”

“Until the Lithuanians came,” he said.

“Max!” I almost leaped out of my chair. “Lithuanians?”

He nodded.

I gaped at him.

He sighed and his gaze grew distant and distracted, as if remembering the encounter vividly now, across the span of centuries.

After a long moment, I said, “Well, you can’t stop there, Max.”

He looked startled, as if having momentarily forgotten where he was. “Ah. Yes . . . They came to Serbia because of the vampire epidemic. Because of our failure to contain it and end the outbreak.” He added heavily, “Because of my failures.”

“Oh, Max.”

“There were three of them,” he said.

“Only three?” For some reason, I had pictured an invading army. Or at least a large wagon train.

“More arrived later. But the three of them were a very effective force,” Max said. “They were led by an elder named Jurgis Radvila, who was one of the most remarkable individuals I have ever known.”

“Go on,” I prodded.

“With Radvila and his comrades came the first ray of hope I had glimpsed during my terrible sojourn in Serbia,” he said. “To understand why I made the choice I did, you must understand what that terrible vampire epidemic was like. And you must also learn, as I had to, that—”

“Yes, Max?”

“That vampirism is a good deal more complicated than I had realized when dealing only with the undead.”