Shido let out a cry of pain and – perhaps fear in the other room. Guni squawked as she felt Cain's shoulder disappear from under her, and she flapped hard to keep from hitting the floor. It was from that vantage she looked into the room through the now-open door.

Cain stood behind Drusla, with a blood noose around her neck. He was grinning.

"It seems we had a talk about this once before, childe of Annanais," he said smoothly in her ear. "It seems you didn't listen. Children have such short memories."

From being frozen, she began to twist, her hands clawing at the noose, but her nails, long as they were, made no effect on the blood cord that wrapped her throat. "What…do you…what are you doing…?

Cain licked her ear gently as he loosened the cord without removing it. "Call your dam, girl. I should have put an end to both of you before, and I will do it now. Call her."

"No." She scrabbled at the cord more as it began to tighten again. "I won't – you can't make me."

"That's true – but I can kill you and your death will draw her. She will know. But you won't be here to help her. I'm giving you that chance – call her. Now."

Drusla looked at Shido in appeal, but he was not even watching from where he was curled on the couch. Cain jerked the cord backward, taking her nearly off her feet, and his voice was very soft. "Now…or pay the price."

With a last wild look around, and seeing no help, Drusla screamed, "Mother! Help me!" Her hands continued to scrabble at the noose that tightened even more around her neck as Cain waited impatiently for a response.

A glitter of golden leaves swirled in through the open window, showering down on the carpet, and a female vampire stood there, immaculate as if she had just stepped from a ballroom in Europe. "I hope this is important, childe – you're interrupting my hunt," she said, glancing around the room.

Cain grinned again, releasing the girl to go to her maker, and letting the noose dissipate. "How nice to see you again, Annanais."

"Cain? Let me guess – my childe does not play nice with your childe?" She glanced at Shido on the couch and shrugged. "He doesn't seem playful."

"We had an agreement – and she broke it. You are accountable for your childe – what will you do about this?"

Annanais raised one eyebrow, and glanced from Cain to Drusla, now huddled at her feet, with annoyance. "Oh heavens, what a silly reason for a spat. We're vampires, Cain – we do what we must."

He watched her for a moment. "Think back. A long way – the day you created her. You told her – as I told Shido – the rules of our society. And she has broken them. I told her if she did that it would be war between us – and that includes you. The next move is yours, Annanais."

"You'd start a war over this? Surely that's a little – well – high-handed? She's a childe." Annanais began to pace, thinking, and leaving her childe where she was. "I mean – well – we haven't had a war in a long time…"

"True. It might be an interesting diversion. My hesitation is not from starting it, but that it would perhaps render us too few to fight the humans effectively – and they would surely know of our existence then, if not now."

"Hmm," she continued to pace a bit, twitching the wide skirt away from the couch where Shido still lay. "Well…I don't know. It's such a bother – and I think you're right about the attrition…" She stopped pacing, and faced Cain squarely, Drusla midway between them.

"Alright then, what do you want me to do about this situation? He's there – you can take him freely, I assume." She looked down and stirred Drusla with one dainty slipper toe. "He's free to go, isn't he?"

"But mother, I wanted…" Dru looked up, and nodded. "Yes…yes, he's free to go."

"There," Annanais said with a smile at Cain. "She's being reasonable. He can go."

"Fine, fine. Shido – leave." Cain glanced over, and getting no response, went to the couch and shook the figure there. "Shido?"

Shido's head rolled back, showing glazed eyes and puncture marks on his collarbone and chest through tears in the thin material of his shirt. "Shido!"

Shido blinked slowly. "Cain…so..tired…"

Cain stood up straight, and the shadows, both light and dark that he cast, filled the room entirely, dwarfing the two females into insignificance. His voice rolled like thunder.

"You have defied me, and defied the rules of our kind, and there is only one remedy for that."

Drusla reached for her mother, but Annanais, her face showing an expression of horror and confusion, backed up from her touch. "Mother – Mother please…"

"Why, Drusla? Why did you do this? You know it's forbidden – " She watched the girl slowly get to her feet, Dru's anger apparent in her movement now.

"Why? Look at you – you who taught me strength was our prerogative, and weaker creatures were to serve. He is not strong. I am strong. If he couldn't be my equal, he could still serve me. I wanted him to serve me."

"You should have made your own childe then," Cain told her, moving a little closer. "You should have found someone to do your bidding, to feed you. Instead, you tried to steal from me that which is mine. And for that, I will have your life and your soul."

With a last look at her own sire, who had made her position plain, Drusla faced Cain. "You aren't any stronger than he is. You say you love him. You laugh at him when he loves these human vermin. But you let him be weak. You have no right to do anything with me."

Guni cowered in the doorway, expecting Cain's anger, but she looked up, puzzled, when he laughed.

"You are young. You do not see the big picture," he told her, almost gently. "I keep the laws we have among us – few though they be. One of those is that I kill no other of our kind without permission of those with the right to grant it."

He turned his eyes toward Annanais. "Deal with her, or give me permission to do it," he demanded.

"I could take her back with me – correct her behavior," the dam said, looking uncertainly between Drusla and Cain, and eventually to Shido and back. "I – have been apart from her too long and did not know she had forgotten what she was taught."

"Forgotten what I was taught?" Dru faced her own sire in disbelief. "You are the one who told me I could do anything I was strong enough to do, anything I could bring myself to do. I was to be the predator, the top of the food chain. I was a god!"

The two senior vampires exchanged glances. "Sounds right," Cain said, tilting his head. "I believe you did tell her that."

"I suppose I did," Annanais admitted. "But I also said within the parameters of our laws, not by trying to set up a separate godhood."

"Well, then?"

Annanais looked at her childe a little longer. "Drusla, would you come back with me and let me reeducate you? We have been apart a long while – being back in our society would be good for you."

Drusla, her look shifting unbelieving between the two, began to shake her head, her voice rising in pitch as she talked. "Oh no…no, no, no… All the stuffy, critical, hidebound old elders who only want to talk politics and never do anything… I would rather die."

"So be it," Annanais said simply, vanishing in whirl of golden leaves.

"Mother!" Drusla reached out one hand toward her departing sire, then it went to her neck as she felt the noose again. She turned on Cain, kicking and clawing, her face a vision of fury and hatred. Cain merely let her do it.

"That's it – use your energy. Waste it. The energy you stole from my childe, which will soon be returned to him."

"You can't – he won't do it –" She fought against his grip still, but if anything, the noose only grew tighter.

"He will. He's changed – I've seen it and I can feel it. He is coming into his power, at last. For that, at least, I should thank you."

"He's weak – He will never rule as you have, never be a master to another…" She jerked against the noose again and again as it tightened. "He …"

"You tried, and you failed, childe. He is - and always will be - mine," Cain smoothly and quickly drew the noose closed. The head separated from the body and blood fountained in the room to pool on the floor. The body disintegrated quickly, with Cain shoving it aside as it fell. The blood he gathered up, shaping it with his hands into a basin.

"Eww, that's nasty," Guni said, walking around the dust and ashes that marked where the body fell. "Is Shido okay?"

"He will be," Cain told her, walking over to Shido. He held the basin to his childe's lips and blew gently on the surface of it, where it began to flow like water. "Drink, Shido – your power is returned to you."

Guni climbed up on the back of the couch, watching as Shido swallowed reflexively the liquid Cain poured from the blood basin. "I thought he had to drink from humans?"

"Normally yes – but this is blood taken from humans and transformed by the vampire body – it is more than blood, for it contains power as well. It is why we do not permit vampires to drink from other vampires."

"What would happen if I drank it?" Guni edged forward, looking at Shido's eyes which were not so glazed looking now.

Cain paused, and gave her an evil smile. "You'd be the smallest vampire ever," he said.

"I'll pass."