Drake sat in his room in the Exchange. It was comfortable if spare, more ascetic than he would have expected from a place with such a sybaritic reputation, but the simplicity was soothing. He tried to read, but his thoughts kept leaving the world of the novel and wandering off to explore the new place he found himself.

He could feel that he was doing some of the same things he'd done when he arrived in San Fransisco, two years earlier, and he hoped it wouldn't end the same way. He was always drawn to power, he supposed. His feelings about Whitebird already echoed those he'd felt for Aucassin and Mishel... especially Mishel. He pictured the two elder Tremere in his mind... the woman with her inhuman beauty, long curling auburn hair; the man with the haunted expression in his ancient dark eyes. He thought of how things had finished between them.. the chilly sort of affection that the beautiful Tremere Regent Aucassin had grudgingly given him in the end, and the carefully suppressed hatred of Prince Mishel Dicen - and he thought that at least this one wasn't Tremere. Though whatever he was, was just as arcane it seemed... even more so perhaps.

He wondered if it was something Sigfried had had done to him, this obsessional loyalty to the one in whose domain he found himself. It didn't matter. And there was a chance things would be ok this time... after all, he was different. He knew himself much better now. When he'd found himself in San Fransisco, he hadn't even known he could feel anything but the bloodlust... believed all his emotions dead with his body. Now he knew better. Patryce, Aucassin, Keri, and Claire had taught him that. And Claire had taught him much more, showed him what he really was, and how to control it.

Drake thought about his Mistress and how she'd trained him, finally harnessing his masochism to the will of a dominant. He'd been afraid to give that control to anyone, but once he'd blood bonded Claire, he found he could trust her enough to surrender to her - she couldn't stop loving him no matter what, now.... No, he thought, correcting himself for an earlier thought, masochism was part of it, but there was more. He wasn't sure what it was called... he thought someone here would know, though. Not that he felt comfortable asking them that sort of thing yet. He didn't even know where they kept their... toys...

And then there were all the mysteries. Alien shapeshifters... it was a very strange place indeed, even when one put aside all the vampires and bondage. He was sure Whitebird had been about to tell him ... something... he thought that perhaps Whitebird was an alien, and his strange religion was an alien religion. It reminded him of a movie script he'd read once, one that hadn't ever been produced. In that story, the alien had come to Earth to escape religious persecution in his home world, and re-created certain aspects of his own lands in a remote jungle camp, drawing oddities of humanity to him with his charisma and compelling strangeness. He was sure it wasn't much like the real Whitebird story, but he was nevertheless intrigued.

Mikal was another compelling mystery. Perhaps someone like himself, but who'd been embraced many, many years earlier. He certainly hadn't expected to find an elder vampire as a slave here; but he put that down to his own lingering prejudices and told himself it was perfectly ... well, normal was not the right word. But it was not even close to the weirdest thing going on here. He hoped Mikal's interest in him hadn't vanished though... he looked forward to what the Ravnos might do...

He thought that quite possibly every person here was going to prove fascinating. Certainly brandy had her own charms... she rather reminded him of Patryce, the woman who'd awakened feeling in him for the first time after his embrace... but he stopped himself there. He was committing the grossest acts of transference. Whitebird was *not* Mishel, brandy was not Patryce, he would stop those thoughts right now and go back to reading. After all, the book was fascinating too... its alien morality, if not having the immediacy of reality, at least had the attraction of lucid writing and an engaging story. Which was something his imagination had always rather lacked. He smiled to himself at one more thought - he hadn't had the urge to look at the sun even once since his arrival. It would come back, but he should enjoy the respite. Drake shifted onto his side, and turned the page back, and soon was absorbed in his reading once more.