Leeches were undoubtedly predatory parasites, but they also had quite a lot of resemblance to vermin. Vienne's description of them as rats proved to be annoyingly true. They could scurry quickly and silently through the shadows, and hid in any crevice they could find.

While we searched for more of the enemy bloodsuckers, we also discovered more prisoners locked down in underground chambers. The guards, apparently understanding that their time was up, surrendered easily. We accepted their surrender, but I had no idea if that cooperation would lead to them being shown leniency or not.

These cages were built of sturdy iron bars, and inside each one were vampires, all in various stages of starvation. None of them were quite at the level where they were completely mad with the need for blood and likely the reason they had not been released to hunt us, but a few looked close and it was called for blood to be brought to hopefully nurse them away from the edge of insanity.

Others, we discovered, were sitting there calmly, like the vampire I recognized as Davidson. He looked ruffled, but his eyes showed no sign of the red of starvation. "Glad you made it in. They locked us up to starve us before I was able to unlock the gate for you."

"Yes, I was rather displeased by that," Vienne said sternly, although I was pretty sure she was messing with him. She seemed to be going back and forth between angry grief at the losses we took and cocky pleasure that our attack had ultimately been successful.

Naomi was in the adjoining cell. "We managed to compel the guards, do you have any idea how much energy that took? You ungrateful—"

"She's messing with me again," Davidson told Naomi in a weary voice.

Vienne grinned. "Oh dear, I do believe that you've finally figured me out. Hey, come over here and let poor Davidson and Naomi out. They have no need to be trapped any longer, they're not in any danger of madness yet."

A human I did not know hurried over and released them with a clang.

"So, it was a success?" Davidson asked.

"Largely. Still haven't located the magistrate, but Ivan and Beckett are close to dead, along with a lot of other councillors. Obviously we shall have to wait until the sun comes out to properly finish the job. Good news though, I dare say you can stay on the council now, there are tons of open seats now even after its reduction."

"Is there even a council?" my sister asked from beside me.

"Good point," Vienne agreed. "We'll have to figure out some sort of governing body to sort out what's left here. I don't know if we can manage democratic just yet... Eventually you'll get warring factions and power struggles and... Perhaps I should flex my privilege and simply appoint someone who I think will run things well..."

"Perhaps you should have considered some of these issues sooner," Davidson said dryly.

Vienne shot him an angry scowl, and I rather thought she meant this one. "I'm sorry I was too busy nurturing a rebellion to think of everything," she drawled sarcastically. "Perhaps next time you might take the initiative and start one instead."

"Perhaps we were too busy trying to fend off your attacks to do anything else," Naomi added.

"Are they always like this?" Angelique whispered.

I shrugged. "I would guess so."

"Everything I did was for the good of my rebellion, more or less. It was all extremely strategic. Besides, it's not as if I have no plans for the new world. I plan to institute New Hollywood, now that I won't be distracted by all the petty council nonsense."

"New Hollywood?"

She groaned dramatically. "You younglings never get my references, although perhaps I should thank your ignorance for my inspiration. Perhaps we can produce bullet point flyers to educate you before my new golden age of cinema gets into full swing. Just wait until you experience the magic of the theater for the first time..."

I began walking down the row of cells, looking for vampires who looked like they were safe to release. My sister stayed with me, having barely left my side since we had found each other. I did not blame her. I did not like that she had been fighting, and I was relieved that although she had been injured, she had already mostly healed. It would have been terrible to lose her again so soon.

Other people who were now gone ran through my mind, but Angelique's voice interrupted me from going down that path.

"So, you and Vienne, huh? How'd that happen?" she asked in a near whisper. The only thing that kept her from being overheard was that Vienne was still boisterously tormenting Davidson, who apparently had the patience of a saint if this was how she always was with him. As impossible as it seemed, she enjoyed tormenting him even more than she did me, and that was saying something.

It was a strange world where I rather pitied a leech.

"Well, it's a long story," I said, an understatement if I had ever made one.

She narrowed her eyes at me, and I remembered the expression from when we were young. A pang of loss, but it was buried in the thrill that she had been restored to me.

"Well, I want to hear all about it, but I can wait a bit."

"When we get—" My words disappeared as I looked at another of the captives. He was old, his hair greyer than I remembered, and wildly strewn about his head and the eyes in his wrinkled visage red. The cranky old man lunged at me and slammed into the bars, only hurting himself in the process.

"Hadron," I said, my voice weak.

"Do you know him?" she asked.

"Yeah. He's the mentor I mention. Shit. He looks so far gone. Can he even be saved?" I asked, my stomach heavy with dread. Would this damned council never stop stealing from me? I swore again.

"Blood! We need blood over here, right now!" Angelique shouted, and I was grateful, because I was dumbstruck with horror as I comprehended the state he was in. A couple of vampires rushed over with bags and thrust one towards the cell. Hadron's hand snagged it and knocked it onto the floor of his cell, but his attention did not waver from the people outside the cell. He bared his fangs and hissed.

"We can't trust him with a live human," Tiberius said sternly, walking over. I did not know where he had come from, but he clearly was the authority in the situation.

Someone was handing another bag towards another cell. Shaking myself from my daze, I speared the bag on my dagger, breaking the plastic, and held it out on the blade towards Hadron. "Hadron, take it. Come on."

I understood what would happen if he could not come back to sanity, and I did not want to see him die lost in insane bloodlust. If he regained his mind, then he could decide his own fate.

He snatched the bag. It slipped from his hold, and my mentor jumped to the floor and began licking blood from the ground like an animal. I hated what he had been reduced to. Maybe he would rather be dead...

If it came to it, I would stake him myself. The idea hurt, but it would be what he wanted.

"Keep feeding him. Keep feeding all of them. I believe that most, maybe all, can be saved," Vienne commanded. Before she could continue, her name was called from somewhere above us. "Just... Keep doing what you're doing down here. And put the oldest of the condemned in the empty cells, it'll be easier to keep track of them. We don't want them breaking loose. The compelled humans can be temporarily kept in the slave cages until we break the hold on their minds."

She met my eyes, and I went with her up the stairs to the voice that was calling for her.

Javier ran over to us. He had two guns and at least a half-dozen daggers strapped to his sides. He clearly had not let his guard down in the slightest and I approved of his caution.

"The magistrate has been located, and he said he will surrender once he talks to you, Vienne."

She nodded, as if she had been waiting for this. "Of course. Where is he?"

"On the roof, at the top."

"Are we in any condition to fight another old one?" I asked.

"Not really. You come too, Javier. And look, your sister is here, and Naomi. Grab some weapons, I'm pretty sure the five of us could take him, but I doubt we'll have to. Bernard loves to talk, and he loves bureaucracy. I can probably convince him to cooperate with us with just the promise of formal robes and a stupid wig. If that doesn't work, I'll add a few mandatory forms that we would force everyone to fill out."

No one seemed to have anything to say in response to her absurd statement. My sister glanced at me warily, and I nodded. In spite of her flippancy, I did not believe Vienne would do this if she thought the people around her would get hurt. I did not blame my sister for her caution, though. It was hard to see the good in Vienne, because she spent so much time trying to hide it.

I was surprised by the swell of affection that welled up in me. All the hatred and resentment had deserted me. She was frustrating, but she was still...

We arrived at a door with several armed humans standing guard, and we went up the stairs until we broke out into the moonlit night. By the light, and with my improved night vision, I could easily see a form sitting on the edge of the roof, his back to us.

"Bernard?" Vienne asked, her voice surprisingly soft. "I was told you want to talk with me."

"Alone," he said, not turning to look at her. "As friends."

She turned around and looked at her retinue. "You can all leave."

"I'm not leaving." I was not going to argue or give in.

"He's rather stubborn," she said.

The magistrate turned to look. His eyes swept over me. "The notorious vampire slayer? Really, Vienne?"

She shrugged. "I suppose I've got a thing for courting danger."

"You always did like balancing on the very edge of what you could get away with," he agreed with a weary chuckle. I suddenly wondered how long he had known her.

"Either way, he won't hurt you, if you don't threaten me. And he won't say a word about anything we say, he's frustratingly closed lipped when he wants to be." She sat down beside him, as if he could not simply push her off the edge if he chose to. I stepped closer. "It's fine, Jamie, just stay over there. It's a compromise, and isn't that what we've thrived on, all these centuries?"

"Indeed. I accept your terms."

"Thank you, Magistrate."

"I'm not sure that I should be called that any longer," he said.

"You'll always be the magistrate to me. Calling you Bernard, even in my head, is just too strange."

He laughed again. "You always were my favourite."

"Why didn't you side with us, then?"

"Well, I don't know. For the sake of order, perhaps? I've been doing this so long, I could not rebel against the system, any more than you can stop playing your games, Vienne."

I watched them carefully, but he made no moves towards her.

"Well, why don't you surrender, then, magistrate? I know that you were not with the council because you are cruel or unreasonable. I'll pardon you, and you can help set up a new order."

I was surprised that she had suggested such a thing, because she was so vicious with her enemies when we fought. But maybe I should not have been, because her attitude towards him was so different than the way she had dealt with Ivan.

"I'm certain that many of the other survivors will also be pardoned, once we figure out exactly who is and is not a threat. Young vampires were quite disadvantaged as well under the New Vampiric Order."

"There were injustices," he agreed, "but amending the system was more difficult than you can imagine."

"I know. That's why I knocked the whole thing to the ground instead of wasting a millennium trying to make those idiots budge." I did not have to see her face to know that she was wearing that smirk I used to loath so much. "There was too much stasis. I realized that it was never going to change, not without a rather catastrophic push."

She paused, "Although admittedly, we had planned to take decades more in preparation, but then Magnus and company felt the need to start nosing around. I mean, I did want to destroy them, but the timing when they forced me to it was quite inconvenient."

"I'm not going to lie and say I approve of your methods, but I did not miss those three."

She chuckled. "They could not be reasoned with. They tried to blackmail me, of all things."

"That seems a foolish attempt."

"Which they learned the hard way." Her tone bled satisfaction.

They sat in silence for a long moment, before the magistrate finally spoke again. "So, what's next for you?"

"Oh, I don't know. Other than setting up some centre of power to prevent hostile vampires from taking over again, I suppose we'll have to name the continent again."

"Have to?"

"Have to, want to, same difference. I'm partial to Vienneland or the New Republic of Vienne, but I don't think everyone will be as fond of those suggestions as I am..."

She was really laying it on thick.

"I like them," he said, and I detected no trace of mockery in his voice. "I vote for the second."

"You would like to live in the New Republic of Vienne?" she asked.

He paused again. "Almost."

"Almost?"

"Vienne, I'm going to meet the sun?"

"What nonsense is this, Magistrate? You can't. We could use you, you could still build order. Just a better one. One that's more just, and more importantly, more fun."

He took her hand. "You know I'm old, Vienne, and I've been getting tired for a long time."

"Bernard," she said, her voice stern with reproach. "Of course you were tired, dealing with those fools year in and out. This will be far less tedious, I promise you."

He chuckled. "I've already made up my mind. I'll sit here until the sun rises, and then eventually my ash will blow away on the breeze."

"I don't like that."

"I knew you would not. But I'm confident in handing this continent over to you. You try to bring chaos, but there's an underlying order. All your games have rules, and you follow them, and that's good enough for me."

"Hmmm. I suppose that's true, but I don't like that it's obvious."

He laughed again. "In retrospect, I can't believe I didn't see what you were doing earlier. That's what was so obvious. I just chalked it up to you trying to keep the other councillors off balance for your own amusement, when really you had a deeper purpose."

"Oh, it was for fun, too. I'm going to miss that. I loved the way Magnus would turn red with rage, and the way Davidson's hair got all mussed when he was yelling at me."

He chuckled. "Davidson and a few of the other moderate councillors were locked up to starve, by the way, in the lower dungeons."

"No worries, we already found them. I suppose I can still torment Davidson, but it's not the same now that I don't need to pretend to be antagonistic. Meetings are even more dreadfully boring when I don't have enemies present or a need to maintain a clever facade, I discovered recently."

"Well, the New Republic of Vienne is going to need diplomats to South America. The vampires down there are going to be extremely worried at the revolution up here, and you don't want them declaring war. You probably don't have to worry about the other continents just yet, but be aware that they will be watching."

"Ooh, good point. I was going to return home to found New Hollywood, but I suppose that could be passed to some of my humans instead." She turned to me. "Jamie darling, how do you feel about the idea of travelling down to South America to craft some peace treaties? Last thing we need is a war with another continent before we have enough resources to completely overwhelm them."

"Sure," I said.

She laughed wickedly. "It won't be easy for either of us. I'll have to be polite and not insult everyone, and you'll have to not kill any leeches."

"Pretty sure I can manage."

"You're more confident than me. Doubtless their council is filled with as many fools as ours. Perhaps we can make a game of who can hold out longer."

I was pretty sure I would emerge victorious from that challenge with her. She teased more people in a day than the number of vampires I had killed in a lifetime.

The magistrate chuckled again. "Well, Vienne, I must say farewell. I've taken up more than enough of your time. You've got much to do."

"No matter."

He took her hand in his own and brought it to his lips. I tensed in case I had to attack, but he only pressed a kiss to her knuckles. "It's been a delight. I'll give your regards to your sire, if indeed he is wherever I am going, if anywhere at all. Good luck. Now go."

She sighed heavily. "I will miss you, Magistrate Bernard." Vienne stood up and swept towards me. Her face looked pained. I caught her hand in my own and I squeezed it as we walked away.