AMADEO spent the rest of the week in the palace. Several times he watched Joy go out with Athen and Julien. He was sure they drove in Julien's car to the city and then split up to look for the humans they would inevitably kill. Amadeo would sit in the long gallery watching the paintings, all the details were clues to who the portraits were of. Angels were illuminated not from usual light sources but on their own; no shadows fell on them whatever the angle. If you were not willing to believe they were Angels you would say Athen had no understanding of light. Light was reflected in a unique way by Vampyre skin, and their eyes are too clear they, reflected and refracted light in every painting. Humans looked like they were so much more alive than the others were. It seemed the pictures breathed even when Amadeo didn't have a taste of Joy's blood in his mouth. He could not have studied every painting by the time they returned.

And there were endless other diversions...a room full of flowers and in the center a Roman styled bath with modern heat, air jets and lights. They told him the dolphin border around the walls was after the ancient palace at Knossos, Crete. Shade's room was styled after some villa; and another room of his had Egyptian glyphs painted on the walls which Athen said they had made the brushes and tools special for the work so it would look authentic.

They also had a chapel, a room in the eastern wing with its eastern wall made of plate glass, which Joy said had moved several feet in each direction during The Big One without breaking. The western wall was stone and it amused Athen to write little messages then roll them up and place them in the deliberate cracks of the wall. Southward was the mosaic lined sanctuary which protruded from the rest of the palace and so it was able to have not painted angels but a sky light which Julien said was marvelous because if the curtain was drawn across the window and all the doors were closed and the lights were put out it seemed Heaven was illuminating anyone who stood under the light, and it was especially eerie under a full moon. There were candles and religious icons all through the chapel. On the altar were a cup and a knife. That was a little disturbing, but after all it was a chapel belonging to Vampyres. There was no formal seating but for some prayer mats on the floor. Joy told Amadeo that Shade had been to church, that he had gone to attend a Catholic mass.

"He goes to mass? I know it's a lie about the crosses but isn't going to mass a bit much?" Amadeo asked.

"He hasn't received Communion," said Julien. Now, Amadeo wasn't Catholic, but it became obvious then to him that Julien was, or had been.

"He confesses his murders to the priest," Athen laughed.

Joy was not as amused. "Shade takes it very seriously. The priest there knows what he is. Shade promised not to hurt him or kill in the church. He goes up to the rail with the believers and when the priest sees it's him he does not give him the host, he lays his hand on him to bless him. I think he is a man who understands Shade did not choose to be a Vampyre. But I mean, if you are a Vampyre who has met the Christ and Gabriel is a personal friend of yours, I do not think you would have anything to fear from attending mass. Then, I was never Catholic."

"Lucky" said Julien.

Athen scoffed at that. "It's also true Shade is fairly well acquainted with Lucifer. I know he was chasing me for a while. I'll be damned if I ever die, I mean that literally, and I don't look forward to it. Especially now that Angel is up in the tower. She married the fiend and I'm sure he'd love an extra excuse to torture me."

"Your sister married Lucifer?" Amadeo asked Julien.

The tall blond Vampyre glared at Amadeo as if he had trespassed in revealing his existence to Julien directly. But he answered, "so far as I know; I was Human then. I know she married Shade first, not that I believe a Catholic ceremony between two Vampyres particularly binding...but I suppose I should cut others slack regarding marriages, as I got this fiend here to marry me three times, and not only were we both Vampyres for two of those, but men couldn't marry each other that first time. Using 'men' loosely."

"I'd forgotten they used to disallow marriages between persons of the same gender," Amadeo said quietly.

Meanwhile Athen muttered, "I'm over 19-hundred years older than you!"

"The church still does," Julien said to Amadeo, then to Athen. "Yes yes, people got married when they were teens back then, and you are very nicely filled out for someone who died at seventeen."

Athen rolled his eyes as he crossed his arms about his chest. He looked ageless to Amadeo, hard to place within a racial group, but not in any way a child. "Get over yourself! I've done horrible things to children like keep them as slaves and drink their blood! I've had my way with more men and women than you can imagine, whether they wanted it or not - no offense to Joy - and you love me!" Athen laughed. "You are all caught up in your sad guilt and go about telling everyone I never gave you a choice like some lame fictional character-" Joy snickered, "when you love being immortal and stealing blood from desperate young men!"

Athen stopped his rant as his shirtsleeve burst into flame. He glared hotly at Julien who stood smugly as Athen removed his shirt and trod out the flames, nursing his arm in the opposite hand until it healed, rapidly.

"Julien," Joy scolded, "he does it just to see you mad, you really don't have to set him on fire!"

Julien raised his eyebrows in mock innocence.

"You are more clever than that," Joy purred, but she was at Athen's side then feeding blood to him from the crook of her arm.

"I don't love all of this," Julien said and glared at Amadeo as he left the chapel.

"Over two thousand years old, could you have stopped the fire?"

"I don't know how it would be done," Athen confessed. "he's only...it's been near a century...what time of year did he die, Joy?"

"It was Black Friday."

"I wonder if that has anything to do with it, " Athen mused. He looked up and now that the shock of the fire was gone Amadeo noticed Athen had both nipples pierced, a neat gold ring through each. "anyway, I meant to say, Julien and his sister are rather freakishly strong, maybe because Shade and I were already millenials when we turned them. If Joy does turn you, Amadeo, you won't lose the talent that makes you a witch, it gives you an edge, is enhanced in addition to the regular vamp stuff."

"Really?"

Athen nodded. "The Asbeelian Vampyres know a lot about such things, kept much better track of things that we did I confess, plus I stole all the research the Redjacks gathered. It might surprise you the odd combination of genes that can come about just through breeding of many persons just a little not Human."