The music as always had a dark sweet luster, but it was more than ever like an endless beginning-a theme ever building to a climax which would never come.

Ah, but prophecies have a way of fulfilling themselves,' Khayman said. 'That's the magic of it. We all understood it in ancient times. The power of charms is the power of the will; you might say that we were all geniuses of psychology in those dark days, that we could be slain by the power of another's designs. And the dreams, Marius, the dreams are but a part of the great design.

Finally those you love are simply ... those you love.

To be human, that's what most of us long for. It is the human which has become myth to us.

I had to have him, had to. Just the way I had to have everything I wanted; or had to do everything I'd ever wanted to do.

Maybe we do go home, finally.

I watched him rise from the coffin, with slow, elegant gestures; our gestures, for we are the only beings who routinely rise from coffins.

After all, these were blood drinkers, beings who spoke gently, liked poetry, and yet killed mortals all the time.

Alas, my being the James Bond of vampires isn't the whole issue. Vanity must wait.