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her clothes and some bones they had not broken for the marrow."
    He'd spat out the words, as if by wounding her he wounded her mother. Though he had never known the woman, he'd had reason enough to hate her.
    When the soldiers found her and her mother's remains, they followed their orders and delivered Joanna into Turkish lands, leaving her at the first village they passed, along with information on her mother's suicide and a letter from Vlad Dracul to Mezid-Bey, her grandfather.
    Whatever Dracul had written had not been enough to soothe Mezid-Bey's rage. And he knew all too well whom to vent it on.
    Not a tiny girl, too young to understand and who he often said resembled her mother. Much better to turn his attention to his hostages. The pampered life that Vlad and Radu lived in Mezid-Bey's court came to an abrupt and bloody end.
    Vlad was brought to Mezid-Bey's chambers. No words were spoken, no explanations given. The sultan stripped off the silk and fine tooled leather clothes he wore, flung him onto the carpet and fell on him, pleased that the child would not relax, that he fought as hard as an eleven-year-old could fight, that he did not cry when he lost, not that night or for the dozens of nights to come.
    And that was how Vlad Tepes, one day known as The Impaler, learned hate.
    Joanna never admitted to her brother how much her grandfather had doted on her, how often he said he cherished her as he had her mother. No, he would never have killed her mother, though how was she to know that? It was a piece of her past that she thought best not to share with her half brother, a secret she kept through her life and the centuries of life-in-death that followed.
    Though they shared the same house, brothers and sister rarely spoke.
    Her happiest memories were of the sultan's garden. She dreamed of it now, of the heady scent of the flowers, the lilting trickle of water in the pools, and the brilliant golden sun beating down.
    It darkened her skin until she looked pure Turk. Only the reddish cast of her dark hair gave hint of her heritage, that and the brilliant green eyes with the fire in their center. Sometimes, when she would look directly at her grandfather, he would wince and turn away for a moment, then turn back to her, smiling again.
    As she grew older she learned to never look at him directly. He did not seem to notice. After all, it was how any well-bred Ottoman woman would have behaved.
     
    Night came, pulling her from her dreams. She knew she had work to do, but the nature of it eluded her for a moment. She sat in the darkness, listening to the drafts in the ancient hall above her. the scurrying of rats in the crumbling walls, the clop-clop of the horses' hooves on the packed earth and stones of the courtyard.
    And remembered.
    She rushed to the courtyard, gave the horse water then led it into the high meadow beyond the castle so it could graze.
    There were wolves in the area, so she dared not leave the horse alone. Instead, she sat beneath a tree and guarded the beast, her means of escape. Even at a distance, she could feel its heat, its life; smell the blood that moved through its veins.
    Something rustled in the leaves close beside her. She reached out, almost absentmindedly, and closed her fingers over the tiny vole. Its tiny heart beat in terror and she ran a finger down the soft fur of its back, calming it slightly before raising it to her lips to drink. It would nourish, as would any warm-blooded creature, but not in the same way as human blood, whose taste reminded her of the life she had lost so long ago.
    It was past midnight when, with hunger appeased by a half dozen tiny lives, Joanna returned the horse to the castle. Once the gates were safely closed behind it, she descended into the lower chambers, places dank with moisture, whose walls glowed with a soft phosphorescence only a vampire's eyes could detect.
    In the centuries they had lived here, lord and peasant alike had been their prey. Though Vlad had