"No?" Armand's question is light, amused. He's enjoying himself a little, watching Daniel grope around the truth lodged inside him, blood pounding through his body, throbbing between his legs, flushed across his face. He notices the way Daniel touches his finger and thumb together and experiences an urge to lean over and sink his teeth into him right then and there.

But still, a mote of pity, an awareness of his own responsibility for the parts of Daniel carefully and surgically altered as he himself was once altered, a perversion of memory and time.

"My history is the history of vampirism," he continues, placid in the face of Daniel's unhappiness. "I am a vampire. I cannot be what I am not. You felt more comfortable, in Dubai, when you believed that Louis was the only one, and willing to be like you. You watched him enact his human rituals, the dinners, the schedules of rising and sleeping. Partially because he insists upon it, for his own reasons. Partially for your comfort."

He leans forward, eyes ablaze, canine teeth lengthening in his mouth. "You want to know me, Mr Molloy, but you are afraid to face the truth. You believe that I am, on some level, still human. Because, you believe, if I am not.. you are in love with something you can never possibly understand."