"Where are you?" Carl repeated, a little confused. "Really, Van Helsing, I know you have a penchant for amnesia, but surely you can't have forgotten where you are already."

"What?" Gabriel snapped his attention back to the present and looked at Carl for a moment or two before he remem­bered. "Yes. I know. We're in Civitavecchia."

Carl gave him a concerned glance. "Good. Because I'd have been worried if you really didn't know where you were."

"I know where I am." Gabriel's tone suggested that he didn't want to discuss this anymore. He picked up the tankard of beer that sat on the table in front of him and took a slow sip. As he drank, Gabriel looked surreptitiously around the room.

It was a tavern—clean and prosperous, with merchants, pil­grims and tourists seated at various tables or standing at the bar. Their mode of dress startled Gabriel for a moment until he remembered what century he was in. He had to force himself to look over at Carl to make sure that it was the Franciscan friar and not Martin Luther who was sitting with him beside the fire.

"Van Helsing, are you absolutely sure you're all right?" Carl asked. "It's just that… well, you don't seem to be yourself."

Gabriel put down his beer and sighed deeply. "I'll be fine. What were you saying?"

Carl frowned, clearly unconvinced, but he let the matter drop. "We were waiting for our dinner. I haven't eaten all day, save for that disgusting gruel that those in the refectory see fit to call porridge."

"It is porridge."

"We ate better porridge shipboard, when we were bound for Transylvania."

Gabriel nodded absently. "Well, you know that was fla­voured with weevils…"

Carl looked ill. "Really?"

"Uh-huh."

"Oh."

Carl turned to look into the fire, his lips pressed tightly together. If it had been anyone else, then Gabriel would have been tempted to laugh. But because it was Carl, and he knew just how sheltered the friar's life had been, then he could find no humour in the situation. Instead he cleared his throat and gestured towards a maidservant carrying a tray.

"Never mind. Look, here's our dinner."

Gabriel couldn't remember what he'd ordered, so the dishes placed upon their table were a surprise to him. A veal steak; a salad of tomatoes, mozzarella and basil; linguine with mushrooms and pesto; gnocchi drizzled with garlic oil; and a bottle of dark red Montepulciano wine. It looked and smelled almost Heaven-sent.

At a loss as to what dish was his, he selected the plate closest to him and jabbed a fork into the gnocchi.

"I ordered the gnocchi," Carl said, sounding hurt.

"Sorry." Gabriel pushed the plate over towards him. "I couldn't remember."

"But you were remembering something."

"Yes." He hoped that he could leave it at that, but Carl had forgotten his sulk and was looking at him with the greatest curiosity, and so he said, "I remembered Martin Luther."

"Luther?" Carl blinked. "But why? Was it because you said the Etruscans were like Lutherans?"

"I don't know. Maybe. The strangest things can trigger my memories, sometimes." Gabriel reached for the breadbasket and tore off a piece of bread, then arranged a slice of tomato and a slice of mozzarella on top of it.

"What are they like, your memories?"

"They're…" Gabriel frowned as the mozzarella fell off the bread and onto his plate. "They're not just my memories. It's more like a flashback or a time-slip, but if I was… involved with one of the participants then, I remember their thoughts and feelings as well as mine."

Carl snatched the piece of mozzarella before Van Helsing could reclaim it. "That's very useful. Or isn't it?"

Gabriel gave him a level look. "How would you like it if I knew your innermost thoughts right now?"

"Ah. I see." Carl blushed pink. "But… you can't, can you? Read my mind, I mean?"

"Nope. I'm not your guardian angel, Carl. If I was, then I'd know everything there was to know about you."

Carl's eyes widened in alarm. "Good grief. So who is my guardian angel? I mean, do you know? And—and do you know them personally?"

Gabriel snorted. He took a bite of the bread and tomato, chewed and swallowed, and then said, "I don't know who your guardian angel is. I'm assuming you still have one, and the system hasn't changed since I… well. Since I became a demon-hunter."

He helped himself to more bread. "There is one thing, though. It seems that my memories tend to come back when­ever I'm up against something puzzling."

Carl ate two forkfuls of gnocchi and a mushroom; then he poured the wine but did not drink from his cup. Instead, he curved one hand around its belly as if to warm it or to protect it from the heat of the fire. Then he said: "Chen, my Buddhist colleague, told me about one of his beliefs. He said that when something puzzles him, such as a formula or the answer to a problem, he simply clears his mind and waits for the solution to present itself. Because, or so he says, we already hold the answers to everything in our minds. It's just a matter of accessing it in the proper way."

He seemed to be relieved about moving from the topic of guardian angels to something more within his control, and he relaxed as he glanced up at Gabriel. "Van Helsing, I think that your memories might work in the same way. For example, your memory in Transylvania…"

"Masada." Gabriel winced. "Sacrifice. And that was what the Valerious family became—a sacrifice. Anna and Velkan both, in different ways. Damn it." He reached for his tank­ard, drained it of beer, and then picked up the wine-cup.

"And now you remember Martin Luther," Carl said pen­sively. He stared into his own wine-cup fixedly, like an haruspex. "You mentioned predestination."

Gabriel sighed. "It was a joke, Carl. A joke. You said yourself, we don't know what the Etruscans believed."

"No. But I have a feeling that somebody did." He twisted his fork in the mound of linguine and ate some of the pasta, biting neatly through the trailing ends.

"Who?" Gabriel asked. "And do we need to worry about them?"

Carl shook his head. "Oh, no. At least, I hope not. They're dead."

"It won't be the first time that dead people have come after me," Gabriel said darkly. "I really hate having to kill some­one twice. It seems so unfair."

"Well," said Carl briskly, finally lifting his wine-cup, "at least it shows the power of predestination, yes?"

Gabriel snorted. "I can see why you're still only a friar."

"Actually, Van Helsing, I prefer being a friar. There's so much more freedom in taking minor orders rather than major orders."

"I don't think I want to know. Hey," and Gabriel raised his own cup, "let's have a toast to the speedy deliverance of this Etruscan demon."

"I'll drink to that," Carl said with feeling, and they clinked their cups together.

One or the other of them was a little too enthusiastic, and some of the wine slopped from the cups to drip onto the table. The droplets of dark red gathered into a small puddle.

Carl muttered and picked up a corner of his cloak to wipe away the wine, but Gabriel stopped him.

"Hmm," he said, scribbling a finger through the liquid, "I wonder if that was what it was…"

"What was what? Van Helsing, are you rambling again?" Carl asked.

"No—just thinking."

"Well, that's dangerous for a start."

"I'm serious, Carl." He looked up from the spill of wine. "What did Bonate say about the demon when he saw it?"

"That it had attacked his dog and killed it," Carl said. "With an axe."

"Demons don't usually go around swinging weapons. They have teeth and claws, and they use them in a fight," Gabriel said slowly.

"So you don't think it was a demon."

"I'm not ruling out that possibility. But… I think we should be careful."

"I am always careful," Carl stated. "I even brought my laboratory goggles along, just in case there was any unstable matter that should happen to spray around."

"Yeah. Goggles would be a lot of help against an axe-wielding demon."

Carl picked at the dishes in front of him, cutting up a large, flat mushroom into tiny pieces and then burying them beneath the tumble of linguine. "I had to bring something, Van Helsing. Just to feel useful. Because…"

"You are useful, Carl," Gabriel said softly. "I'd be lost with­out you."

Carl abandoned the linguine and looked up. "Really?" He smiled, relieved. "That's good. I'd hate it if that demon decided to cut me open with its axe so it could drink my blood, like it did with that poor dog, just because my field­work skills aren't up to scratch."

Gabriel stared at him as Carl's words jogged something into place. "It wasn't drinking the dog's blood."

"Maybe because Signor Bonate interrupted its foul work."

"No." Gabriel shook his head. "I don't think it killed the dog as food. Not in the way we think about it, anyway."

Carl took another helping of gnocchi. "Really, Van Hel­sing?"

"Don't talk with your mouth full. No—the dog wasn't food. Its blood was."

"You mean—" Carl swallowed his food quickly and nearly choked. He grabbed for his wine-cup and took a gulp, then sat back in his chair and tried again. "You mean the demon was making a libation?"

"That's precisely what I think. It's just like transubstantia­tion—as the wafer and wine become the body and blood of Christ, giving spiritual nourishment to the living, so libation blood gives spiritual nourishment to the dead."

"But the Eucharist is never celebrated alone," Carl said, wide-eyed.

"And that's what I'm afraid of. Our demon could be the leader of a whole damn congregation of demons, all clam­ouring for their next drop of blood."

Gabriel set his cutlery down on top of the nearest plate and then got to his feet. "We should go to bed. There's no way of knowing what tomorrow will bring."

"Yes, we do," said Carl. He snatched up a final piece of gnocchi and popped it into his mouth, saying around it, "Tomorrow will bring blue demons with a liking for blood."

"I didn't need to be reminded of that, thank you."

"Peace, Van Helsing." Carl smiled. "Everything happens for a reason."

"Yeah," Gabriel said softly, as he turned away. "That's what they say."