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"Yeah, which reminds me," said Isabelle, pulling away from the panel and turning to Ceres, "What are you doing with those humans?"

Ceres scrunched her face.

"That's a story," she said. "We have a network to keep people moving. No one can stay anywhere for very long before they're discovered by those beings. I shuttle people across the city. It keeps them moving; it keeps me moving. I've been doing it for so long now, I forgot what put me onto it. Now it's just a matter of survival."

"Not much of a story," said Edgar, still peering out the slat.

Ceres shrugged.

"I guess not. Wish I knew how to push those wankers out of here, but I am one person and they are so bloody many."

Minutes passed without another word being uttered. Edgar then stepped away from the slat, slamming it shut.

"What happened at the Manor?"

"The usual shit. Identity politics."

"How? I raised you all better than that."

"Sure you did. And you went to sleep, Penelope disappeared, another coven walked in and cremated Don Roberto, and then everything went to shit. I don't know what else to tell you."

"The other coven, who were they?"

"They called themselves 'The Flock.' Cultist nut jobs. I didn't stick around long enough to find out what the punch tasted like."

"Might have been better if you did." Edgar was growling.

"Francesca, Victoria, Sylvia, Hugo, and Daniel all welcomed them with open arms. No one bloody listened to me."

Edgar was slightly amused at her British accent cutting through her attempt to annunciate the Latin names in their proper Spanish. He had always enjoyed listening to her speak. His amusement, however, did not linger.

"I have never heard of this Flock. How could they have gotten so big in so little time?"

"Edgar," said Ceres. "You've been asleep for almost three hundred years."

Edgar paused. Three hundred years. Could it be true? But he had no time to ponder. There were more important things to address. He pressed the issue:

"So you left? Where did you go? What could have possibly been more important than taking care of things at home?"

"I went hunting. 'The Flock' is, apparently, bloody massive. I thought I could cut their numbers down before murdering the squatters at home. I wanted them to call for help and find that none was coming."

"And? How far did that go?"

"Not bloody far at all. We found--"

"We?"

"I wasn't going to do it all alone!" Ceres was exasperated. "Face off with culty vampires? Are you mad? You lived through the crusades, Edgar. You lived through the Inquisition. You know what fanaticism looks like!"

"So you brought the Pelicans along for the ride."

"Of course I did. We picked up Isabelle on the way."

Ceres looked up at Isabelle as she turned away from the slat. Isabelle wasn't sure if there was longing or sorrow in Ceres' eyes. Feeling more than a little embarrassed at witnessing the exchange between these two, she broke off eye contact and whipped her attention back out through the slat.

Continued after the break

"You returned to the Manor, eventually." Edgar did not want to spark conflict between Isabelle and Ceres, but he also wanted the truth. "That is where I found Isabelle."

"Yes, I returned. The beings landed. They started bloody murdering everyone. They did a bang up job wiping out The Flock cells we uncovered. We rushed back to warn our people, and that sparked a big fight between us and the squatters."

"They knew."

"They did. The only reason they showed up at our doorstep was because they were fleeing the beings who invaded their territory."

Isabelle listened and processed. Vague flashes of campfires and crosses popped in and out of her memory. Masks. Torches. It all seemed so primitive. It all seemed so ... familiar.

She gasped. Ceres and Edgar snapped their attention in her direction. Edgar turned to the boarded up window and slammed open the slat to peer out.

"What is it? They shouldn't be heading this way at this time, on this day," said Ceres.

Isabelle stepped back without turning toward the others. She let out a big sigh.

"I was one of them, wasn't I?"

Edgar turned away from the window as Ceres' mouth dropped open.

"How do you remember that? You were feral," said Ceres.

Isabelle shook her head.

"I don't know. I see pictures. Moments. Masks and fires and chanting. Spinning around a bonfire with other vampire women. Drinking blood out of a skull." She turned her head, snapping her gaze between Ceres and Edgar, then shrugged. "Typical cultist shit, right?"

She watched Ceres sit with an expression of surprise.

"You were a bloody raving lunatic. You decimated almost half of that little pueblo before we caught you. Fuck, Isa, you didn't say anything meaningful for weeks!"

Isabelle stared at the floor. She felt like she was in training again, being punished for mistreating the others at the Manor. The members of The Flock knew. They teased her about it, though she didn't know any better then. She thought they just wanted to get under her skin. She had put more than a few of them to her teeth before Ceres pulled her away.

"I don't know. It's not normal, these pictures. I know they're not from our travels."

"Well, they bloody couldn't be. No sooner did we find you than we had to rush back."

Edgar attempted to piece the timeline together between what Isabelle had told him and what Ceres was relating. Perhaps what Ceres said was all true. Perhaps they were half truths. He didn't know what to believe. He had raised Ceres from a youngling into the powerful vampire she was; he had no reason to mistrust her. However, much could change in three hundred years. The thought rankled.

"I have much to think on," said Edgar. "And, it seems, so do you, Isabelle."

Isabelle shrugged. She didn't know what to say.

"Let's go back. We will have much time to contemplate while we wait for sunset."

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