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Kinslayer. Beast.
 But that is only two thirds of the
Unholy Triad. What of the Betrayer of the Blood?
Slowly, Isabella rose to her feet.  The timing of the prophecies, she said,
 has long been a mys-
tery to me. Like the apostle Paul waiting for the return of his Lord, I have
awaited the Undoing. I
left a trail for you to follow the letters between
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you and El Greco. Through my spies in the Sabbat, I even influenced the name
of the experiments that led to the blood curse.
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place for
Owain.  Project Angharad, he said almost to him-
self, then turned to Isabella.  That was solely for my benefit.
She nodded.  I m afraid my faith in the prophe-
cies was not as strong as Joseph s. He gave his life, yet I endeavored to
construct signposts to bring you to me. I should have known that the visions
would lead you here eventually. Once the Winnowing struck, the visions would
follow.
 Then I m touched by the blood curse? That is what sparked the visions? This
revelation per-
plexed Owain. Most Cainites stricken by the curse had died horribly within
days, or weeks at the long-
est.
Isabella shrugged away his question.  Perhaps the curse, which Joseph foresaw,
spawned the visions.
Or perhaps it was the song of your beautiful siren in Atlanta that touched
your soul, that pried loose those hidden memories just enough, and the vi-
sions followed. Either way, the visions came, as
Joseph knew they would& and you are here. It is your destiny.
Destiny. From the earliest days of his mortal childhood, Owain had always
striven to be the master of his own destiny. He had fled Wales rather
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Dark Prophecy than submit to the yoke of the descendants of the
Norman invaders. He had chafed under the author-
ity of El Greco and the Sabbat, of Prince Benison and the Camarilla. In
corrupting the Templars and searching for the grail, Owain had gone as far as
to defy the God he blamed for the tragedies heaped upon him.
Now, however, he found that he was not king but pawn in the games that
Isabella had played for centuries. He was an unwitting piece in Joseph s
prophecies.
Or so Isabella would have Owain believe.
 My destiny, he said in measured and deliber-
ate tones,  is mine to decide.
Isabella did not attempt to dissuade him. Not in so many words.  You asked
about the Betrayer of the Blood named in the prophecy, she reminded him.  The
woman in your visions she was some-
one you knew. It was a statement. Not a question.
Owain felt the color rising to his cheeks. Albert and Ellison may have given
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in to Isabella s emo-
tional blackmail, but Owain was determined not to repeat their mistakes. He
would maintain what-
ever control he might actually have over his own destiny.  You have sullied
her name twice already,
he warned.  With Albert, and with Carlos and the
Sabbat. Those were lures to bring me here. We both know that she has nothing
to do with this affair, so tarnish my memory of her no further.
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276
Isabella looked suddenly concerned, her expres-
sion becoming a caricature of a worried mother.
 Oh, but Owain, what of your book? She gestured toward his tattered
commonplace book.  Wasn t it she who gave it to you? Why do you suppose she
would have copied part of Joseph s prophecy into it? And how could she have
known it?
Owain tensed at Isabella s questions. He had been asking himself much the same
thing and had no reasonable answers.
 And what of the visions? Isabella asked.
 What of them? Dreams and phantasms.
 But didn t all your visions seem coincidental and random at first? And now
you see that they are signposts pointing to the prophecies.
 Do I? Owain asked. For a brief time he had been taken in by her story. There
were uncomfort-
able similarities between his visions and the prophecies, to be sure, but more
than that?  Coin-
cidence, he stated.  Pure coincidence. And even if you were right, even if I
am the Kinslayer, and
Montrovant is the Beast, Angharad could not be the Betrayer. She is dead and
long gone. Your prophecy is unfulfilled.
 Are you so sure? Isabella asked.
 You are mad, Owain said.  You would have me play your game so that I might
destroy myself?
 What good fortune have your centuries of unlife brought you, Owain? she
asked sharply.  All those
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Dark Prophecy you have known and loved have died, while you linger on. Have
you not, during those endless nights, felt the pull of the sun, the longing
for your eternal nightmare to end?
Again, Isabella s questions eerily mirrored
Owain s own thoughts. She had watched him too long for the Ventrue to fool
her. It was that very espionage, however, that infuriated Owain, that led him
to resist her at every turn. She had manipu-
lated him enough. No more.  You claim to have lived for more than a thousand
years. Answer your own question.
 Ah, but I am not like you, Owain, said Isabella.
Her voice turned cold.  You are a blight upon the face of the earth, a curse
upon humanity. Joseph said that he offered hope. He spoke the truth. He offers
the hope of release. For you, the hope of re-
lease from your curse. For the world, the hope of release from you.
 I am not like you, she said again.  I live for a purpose. I do not rise
every night to steal life so that I might go on only to steal more life, night
after night until the end of time. And this is the
Endtime.
Her hatred for Owain and all his kind was fully revealed. No thin veil of
sarcasm or desire for knowledge masked her intentions any longer, and as much
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as she angered Owain, he could not re-
fute her words. He had spent many years thinking
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278
much the same thing wishing for the courage to meet the sun, wanting the curse
to end but lack-
ing faith. And hope.
I offer hope.
Now he possessed, quite possibly, the means to end the curse. Not just for
himself but for the en-
tire world. Isabella was a scholar of the prophecies.
He could merely follow her direction, and the eter-
nal hell would come to an end. But faced with the prospect of the destruction
of his accursed race, Owain realized that Isabella had missed one detail.
A tiny spark of hope did burn within his breast.
 You are wrong, he told her.  I don t go on with-
out purpose, though for some time I too have believed that. Owain pictured
Angharad as he had seen her in the most recent visions. She had seemed so
completely real. After all, he had not merely stood before her. He had touched
her. His hand had rested against her delicate face. The rest he tried to
overlook. She had turned on him, had named him Kinslayer. But even these
disturbing and hurtful actions only served to prove to Owain that her memory
was still alive for him. His pas-
sions that, months ago, had been sparked by the siren s song flamed higher
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