Our father was a good man, for a vampire, and he had taught us restraint and a respect for the unsuspecting humanity that swirled around us. But more importantly he had taught us to deal with the eventual self-hatred that we developed once we realised exactly what we were capable of. Marcus and Fergus had handled the whole situation a lot better than I had done. They had approached their differences with a kind of fatalistic acceptance, and had used their individual talents to transform themselves into the accomplished geneticist and electronics expert that they had become.
I had not been quite as accepting, and I had fought. Initially I had fought my father, but his kindness and patience had defeated me. Then I had taken on my brothers, who had quickly teamed up together to repulse my hostilities. Then I had launched myself on an unsuspecting world.
I was fifty nine years old on the day that I sat at that table in our family home with our guests, but I still looked as if I were twenty. I had seen much of the world by then, and I had destroyed a fair bit of it. In my defence, the elements I had removed from existence had desperately needed removing - I targeted criminals for the most part, and I obliterated them, deriving as much satisfaction from the act itself as I did from the knowledge that it needed to be done.
And then I met Rebecca. She had stumbled into my world less than two weeks ago and she had irrevocably changed my life.
I glanced at her profile as she spoke to one of my brothers, and marvelled at her loveliness. It was still very difficult for me to sit so close her; her scent enveloped me and drove me almost wild with desire. I suppose it may have had something to do with my enhanced, predator's sense of smell. Either way, being near her was both ecstasy and agony for me.
She had coped with the events of the past ten days remarkably, almost unbelievably well. Not quite eighteen years old, she had transformed into an iron metaboliser, and had been repeatedly abducted by Jack's minions, and eventually by Jack himself. Rebecca had brought him down, and he had died at the hands of his sister yesterday.
I looked across the table at Julia. She seemed younger somehow, now that her brother was dead. Even for a vampire. She and Marcus had developed a promising relationship, and she was going to travel back to Russia with my brothers and her children, Oliver, Simon and Lucy. They would be safe there for now.