Prologue Two - Maria Zabione

     Maria Zabione remembered that smell.  Amid the dusty book lined shelves that enveloped her like some ghostly laberinth her senses pulled that familiar miasma out of the air almost effortlessly.  All of the memories and terror linked to it came clawing back up inside her as she whirled around to come face to face with the figure she had spent every night since her sire had been slain trying to find.  He was just as he had appeared that night, dark and tall with a great pale domed hairless head smirking with that perverted smugness that only Nosferatu seem to be able to conjure up.
     "My dear Maria, your rise within the Camirilla is quite admirable.  I myself have spent so many nights persuing that very thing." Vernon said in his slow calculated drawl.
     "I didn't do anything for power, I did only what I needed to do to find you!" Maria replied, her voice sounding muted by the parchment surrounding her.
     "Both of you disciples of Cervantes should have heeded my warning the last time our paths crossed.  After all, what would you do if I decided that you were not worth the entertainment you provide me?"
     Maria felt a surge of anger pulse through her, and did everything in her power to draw strength from it.  She had learned a few tricks since he had beaten her and Giuseppe within an inch of their lives on the African contenant, but here in these chambers she was as weak as she had been in her past life.  The thought passed through her mind that perhaps he too was drained of all of his blood magic while surrounded by the walls of the prince's library, but somehow she didn't think so...