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sit?’
    ‘Yes, yes,’ said Ulrika. ‘Just be silent.’
    She heard him draw up a stool beside the fire as she took a chair at the table facing away from him. She picked up the book Gabriella had given her, The Nehekharan Diaspora , a vampire-written history of the times of Neferata and Nagash, opened it to the place where she had left off and tried to read.
    It was no use, of course, the strange foreign names – W’soran, Abhorash, Ushoran – jumbled senselessly in her head, and she found she was reading the same sentence over and over again. And it made no difference how silent Quentin was. She could still smell him, and hear his blood beating in his veins like a hawk’s wings. Her eyes continued looking blankly at the pages of the book, but all her other senses were focused behind her, noting every change in the youth’s breathing or the tempo of his pulse.
    How was she going to resist as she must? She had no illusion that the countess would not follow through on her threat to destroy her if she failed. Gabriella seemed to have some affection for her, but she had seemed to have some affection for Johannes as well, and she had left him to be torn to pieces without a second thought. Ulrika was certain that if she disappointed her here, the countess would have no compunction about ‘taking care of loose ends’. She even understood the necessity of it. If all one’s children had the potential to become Kriegers, abandoning them to their own devices was foolishness. They would have to be controlled or killed.
    This put Ulrika very close to death. If she failed to control herself with Quentin, she was finished. Of course, there was another option. The windows of the room were not locked or barred. She could run again, and this time she could hide, find shelter in the forests and never have to worry about control again.
    Her eyes slid to the windows. The thought was terrifyingly appealing. What a glorious feeling to just let herself go, to surrender completely to the animal within her and hunt like a wolf in the night. What a joy to run and howl, to bring down her prey at a sprint and drink it dry as it thrashed beneath her.
    But there was another side to that savage freedom – the hunters, the men with torches. Ulrika remembered a time from her youth when her father had roused his lancers and they had gone in search of something in the woods, something that had been dragging off the peasants in the night. She hadn’t known what it was then, and he had never said, but she knew now. That was what she could expect if she lived like an animal – to die like an animal, to be hounded at every turn, to hide and starve and never know peace.
    And there was another thing, perhaps more important than all that. A wolf had its pack. A fox had its mate. Would there be others of her kind to run with out in the wild? Ulrika had never been entirely comfortable alone. At home she had enjoyed the company of her father’s men and the camaraderie of patrol and watch. Even when she had left for the south as her father’s envoy she had always found someone to travel with – Felix, Max and others before them. And now, in this new existence, where nothing was familiar, and she knew none of the rules, she felt even more unwilling to be alone. She hardly knew the countess – Gabriella had plucked her from the haunted ruins of Drakenhof little more than two weeks before – but the thought of leaving her, of being without her guidance and wisdom, was paralysing. She would be lost without it. She might have her wild run in the night, but it would be short. Too soon the hunters would come, and she would die alone – alone and damned.
    Quentin shifted on his stool behind her. Ulrika glanced at the hourglass. The bottom chamber was a quarter full. Her heart leapt. She was doing better. Johannes had already been dead by this time. Not that bettering a complete failure was anything to crow about.
    She cursed as a fresh wave of hunger rolled