"It wasn't me. It was Oliver Hazard-Perry actually."

“Ah. Oliver, yes. A very helpful boy. From an excellent family. For Red Bloods, that is."

"Don't change the subject. What's Croatan?"

Cordelia raised the partition separating them from Julius. When it was fully closed, she turned to Schuyler with a frown. "What I am going to tell you is verboten. We cannot speak of it. The Committee has legislated it out of existence. They have even tried to suppress it from our memories."

"Why?" Schuyler asked, looking out the window at the city. It was another gray day, and Manhattan seemed to be lost in a fine mist, ghostly and majestic.

"As I told you, times have changed. The old ways are no more. The people in power do not believe. Even the woman who wrote that diary would disown her words. It would be too dangerous for her to admit her fears."

"How do you know she would feel that way?" Schuyler asked.

"Simple, because I wrote it. It's my diary."

"You're Catherine Carver?" Schuyler asked.

"Yes. I remember the Plymouth settlement clearly, almost as if it were yesterday. It was a terrible journey." She shuddered. "And an even more terrible winter followed it."

"Why? What happened?

"Croatan." Cordelia sighed. "An ancient word. It means Silver Blood."

"Silver Blood?"

"You were told the story of our Expulsion."

"Yes." The car slowly made its way across Fifth Avenue. Because of the bad weather, there were only a few people milling outside the department stores, a handful of tourists taking pictures of the window dressing, shoppers trying to get out of the rain.

"When God cast out Lucifer and his angels from heaven, as punishment for their sins, we were cursed to live our immortal lives on Earth, where we became vampires, dependent on human blood to survive," Cordelia said.

"They told us all this at The Committee meetings."

"But they don't tell you this part. It's been stricken from our official records."

"Why?"

Cordelia didn't answer. Instead, her voice took on a monotone quality, as if she were reading from a book committed to memory. "Early in our history, Lucifer and a small host of his loyal followers broke off from the group. They rejected God, and were contemptuous of their banishment. They did not want to regain the Lord's Grace. They did not believe in the Code of the Vampires."

"Why not?" Schuyler asked, as the car idled at the light. They were on Sixth Avenue now, among the skyscrapers and corporate office buildings with the names of their companies engraved on the façade. McGraw-Hill. Simon and Schuster. Time Warner. A bank of televisions in the Morgan Stanley building blasted the latest news from the stock market.

"Because they did not want to live within any kind of law. They were willful and arrogant, on earth as they were in heaven. Lucifer and his vampires discovered that performing Caerimonia Osculor on other vampires instead of humans made them more powerful. As you know, Caerimonia Osculor is the sucking of blood that vampires commit on humans in order to gain strength. In the Code of the Vampires, it is forbidden to perform the Caerimonia Osculor on fellow Blue Bloods. But this is exactly what Lucifer and his vampires did. They began to consume Blue Bloods to complete Dissipation."

"You mean—"

"Until they had sucked out the very life force from a being, yes. Until they had consumed a Blue Blood and all his memories."

"But why? And what happened then?"

"By consuming the Blue Blood's life force, Lucifer and his vampires' blood turned Silver. They become the Silver Bloods. Croatan. It means Abomination. They are insane, with the lives of many vampires in their heads. They have the strength of a thousand Blue Bloods. Their memories are legion. They are the devil in disguise, the devil that walks among us; they are everywhere and nowhere."

As Cordelia spoke, they drove past Sixth Avenue to Seventh, and the neighborhood changed again. Schuyler saw Carnegie Hall on the corner and several people lined up outside buying tickets, huddled under their umbrellas.

"For thousands of years, the Silver Bloods hunted and killed and consumed Blue Bloods. They broke the Code of the Vampires by directly interfering in human affairs and acquiring power in the world of men. They were unstoppable. But the Blue Bloods never stopped fighting them. It was the only way to survive."

"The Last Great War between the Blue Bloods and the Red Bloods ended during the final years of the Roman Empire, when the Blue Bloods were able to unseat Caligula, a powerful and wily Silver Blood vampire. After Caligula was defeated, for many centuries Blue Bloods lived in peace in Europe."

"So why did we come to America?" Schuyler asked, as the car shot up Eighth Avenue.

"Because we were distressed by the religious persecution we found rising in the seventeenth century. So in 1620, we came to the New World on the Mayflower with the Puritans, in order to find peace in the New World."

"But there was no peace, was there?" Schuyler said, thinking of Catherine's diary.

"No. There was not," Cordelia said, closing her eyes. "We discovered that Roanoke had been savaged. Everyone was lost. The Silver Bloods were in the New World as well. But that was not the worst."

"Why?"

"Because the killings began again. In Plymouth. Many of our young Blue Bloods can only be taken during the Sunset Years, when we turn from human to our real vampire selves. It is our most vulnerable time. While we are not in command of our memories, we do not know our strength. We are weak and can be manipulated and controlled, and in the end, consumed by the Silver Bloods."

They drove up the West Side Highway, past the shiny new developments by the river and next to Riverside Park.

"Some refused to believe that the Silver Bloods were responsible. They refused to see what was right in front of them, insisting that those who had been consumed would be able to return somehow. They were blind to the threat. And after a few years, the killings stopped. The years passed and nothing happened. Then centuries—still nothing. Silver Bloods became a myth, a legend, passing into a quaint fairy tale. Blue Bloods gained wealth, prominence, and status in America, and as time went on, most of us forgot about the Silver Bloods completely."

"But how? How could we forget something so important?"

Cordelia sighed. "We have become complacent and stubborn. Denial is a strong temptation as well: Now everything about the Silver Bloods has even been removed from our history books. Blue Bloods today refuse to believe that there is anything stronger than them in the world. Their vanity does not allow them to conceive of it."

Schuyler shook her head, appalled.

"Those of us who warned and campaigned for eternal vigilance were banished from The Conclave, and have no power in The Committee today. No one listens to us anymore. No one has listened to us since Plymouth. I tried then, but I was not powerful enough to take control."

"John wanted to raise the alarm," Schuyler said, remembering what the diary had said. "Your husband."

"Yes. But we were unsuccessful. Myles Standish you know him today as Charles Force—became the head of the Conclave of Elders. He has led us ever since. He does not believe in the danger of Croatan."

"Not even when it kills children?"

"According to Charles, it has not been proven."

"But Jack said all of Aggie's blood was drained, as were two others they'd found earlier. They had to have been consumed by a Silver Blood!"

Cordelia looked grim. "Yes, that is my guess as well. But no one listens to an old woman who has lost her fortune. I never believed the Silver Bloods had gone away entirely. I always thought they were only resting, watching, and waiting, for their time to return."