Bemused, David followed the other vampire towards the source. As they drew nearer, and David began to be able to make out little clusters of individuals, he realized that the sense was coming from underground. Soon he was walking directly over some of them. Rob led the way to a low rise, no different than hundreds of other scrub-covered hills in this part of the desert. They circled around it. On the far side the hill had been dug out and at the bottom of the sloping passageway there was a pair of gleaming silvery doors. They descended the slope and stood in front of them.

Rob went over to a panel beside the doors. He pushed a series of buttons on the panel, and the doors slid open with an eerie silence. David squinted. Light poured out of the doors. But like the lights of his cabin, it wasn't UV light, just ordinary visible light that fanned out across the nighttime desert. As his eyes adjusted to the glare, he saw that behind the doors was a corridor. It was made of the same silvery stuff, mostly featureless. It stretched a few yards, sloping gently downhill, then ended in another set of doors.

Feeling more than a little nervous, David followed Rob into the brightly lit corridor. The doors at the other end slid open as they approached. There was nobody near them, so they had somehow done that on their own. David's eyes were wide. Beyond this set of doors lay another corridor, this one at right angles to the last. It was not featureless, but had a series of colored bands painted along the walls, and was studded with doors and openings, each of which had a sign next to it. Rob turned to the left, and David followed, readings signs labeled things like "Research Department", "Synthesis Facilities.", and "Hydroponics." At least there's something familiar here, he thought at that one. They turned at a sign in front of an open corridor that read "Central, Quarters, Supply."

"I'll give you the grand tour eventually," said Rob, "And show you everything, but right now I've got to report in. Those are the rules, you find somebody new, you bring them straight in. And breaking the rules is a very bad idea." He looked at David. "You remember that. Doesn't matter how powerful you are, you don't break the rules."

As they went down this new corridor, David caught a faint scent in the air. He looked over at a pair of closed doors to his right. The signs on them read "Personal Quarters" and they smelled faintly of human blood.

"Ah, you noticed those, did you?" said Rob. He grinned. "I've been here since almost the beginning. When we had about twenty of us we brought down a big road train. Actually managed to get somebody in close enough to go under the engine, cut the power to the lights on the cars. With just the engine lights, there were enough shadows for the rest of us to take the whole crew. Keeps us all fed quite nicely. You can have a taste later, if you like. Though no torturing them, and no taking more than you need. Those are rules too. We need them, can't use them up. He's very strict about that one.

"Ah, here we are," he said, and stopped in front of a door that read "Central." David could sense a single vampire on the other side. It was a weak vampire, quite possibly the weakest he had ever sensed before. And yet it had to be the "Him" that Rob spoke of with respect and fear in his voice. David was even more bewildered than before.

There was another panel beside this door, and Rob pressed one of the buttons on it and spoke. "Sir? I found somebody new. I brought him to see you."

A voice, sounding oddly distorted, emerged from the panel. "Very good. Bring him in then."

The door slid aside as soundlessly as the first had. Inside was a circular chamber. The walls were covered in screens rather like Aidan's television screen. Most of them were blank and dark, but several were lit, showing lines of colored text and diagrams that were completely unfamiliar to David. One had a map on it, which David did recognize. He saw the road north, the cities, the mountains where the cabin lay, the badlands where the vampires laired. The map was marked with text, but David wasn't close enough to make it out.

At the center of the room there was a ring of panels at waist height, set an an angle rather than upright as the ones by the doors had been. There was a break in the ring directly in front of the door, and at the center of the ring a vampire sat in a chair, tilted back, looking confident and at ease.

The vampire looked young, younger even than Rob. Perhaps fifteen or sixteen, no more. He was moderately tall, several inches taller than David, but thinner, almost scrawny. Though something about the way he sat in his chair made David change the mental adjective. Not scrawny, spidery. His hands on the chair's arms were long-fingered and delicate, his face narrow and set in a hard, sour expression. Around his forehead was a thin band of something silvery, very much like whatever made up the walls. A pair of ridged braces, or cables, or something, ran from the band behind his ears, along the sides of his neck, and to a kind of heavy v-shaped collar at the base of this neck. Other than that very peculiar adornment, he was dressed in ordinary clothes; black jeans and a black t-shirt, just what David might have expected a teenager to wear. "Very good," he said, and without the distortion his voice was high, youthful. He regarded David for a long moment, then said "Welcome to the vampire city, and welcome to the cause."