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Chapter Twenty-four

"Let me tell you a little story while we wait," I said as the sequencer began the process of scanning and sorting the genome of New York's vampire Doman.

"Once upon a time—a little over four hundred years ago, in fact—there was a baby girl born into the house of Báthory. It wasn't enough that she was produced by centuries of savage Darwinism laced with significant episodes of inbreeding, she had the additional advantage of growing up among relatives who practiced witchcraft, bestiality, torture, and twisted cruelties beyond the scope of most human imaginations."

Around the room the expressions ranged from "been there, done that" to "so?"

"As a child of the nobility," I continued, trying to keep them quiet and in their seats for just a couple more minutes, "she had wealth and privilege and essentially carte blanche permission to do as she pleased without fear of consequence or retribution. It was, in other words, the perfect greenhouse for cultivating a monster."

"You state the obvious!" my captive protested.

"Yes," I agreed, "yes, I do. Just as I would if I spent the next hour recounting the Blood Countess' many cruelties, the torturous deaths visited upon the young women of her province. I could state the obvious in telling the old story of how Erzsébet Báthory, a vain and selfish woman, struck a servant girl one day and discovered that the girl's blood made her skin appear more youthful where it had been splashed. Obvious, well-known—and, patently, untrue."

"What do you mean, untrue? It is true!" she cried. "That is how it started!"

I shrugged but didn't relax my hold on her. "Perhaps you're right. I wasn't there and you were so maybe that part of the story is true. Perhaps you planned it that way and staged it so the other servants would witness the event. The story certainly helped you when it all began to crumble and the tribunals were called."

"This serves no purpose!" she exclaimed.

"Maybe not," I concurred. "Maybe it's just a little conversation to pass the time until the results come in."

>Cséjthe, she is trying to mind-bend the man operating the computing machine.<  

Well, block her, Old Dragon! If she interferes with the results, I'm dead and ninety-nine percent of the world will follow in short order.  

>You ask much!<  

For myself? Maybe. For the rest of the planet? Suck it up and try being useful for a change.  

>I will not forget your impertinence when this is over . . .<  

Oh, bite me! "Liz, baby, leave the poor lab tech alone and let him finish running the scans without interference."

"Someone's blocking me!" she said through clenched teeth.

"How about I cut just part way through your spinal cord now? It will certainly change the distraction level for you." She shut up and seemed to strain a little less. "So, where was I? Oh, yeah. Over six hundred virgins drained of blood during a single decade. What a time that must have been! Imagine trying to find six virgins now, never mind six hundred. Makes you long for the good old days."

Kurt had moved to flank the lab tech by the computer monitors. "You," he asked me, "have a point to make in all of this?"

"Gee, I sure hope so," I said. "Now help me out here because I'm still somewhat of an outsider on all the undead etiquette. I mean, if there's a Miss Manners for monsters or Emily Post for the posthumous, I've missed the advice column. So, isn't it customary when you become a vampire that you're automatically a vassal to the one who made you?" I snorted. "I can't believe I just used the word 'vassal' in a public discourse."

Throughout the gathered assemblage heads nodded and turned to see what might be the inclinations of their neighbors. No one had given any indication of wanting to rush me yet and I figured I had a decent chance of surviving a few more minutes as long as I kept them entertained. And, of course, the golden knife less than a centimeter away from my hostage's spinal cord.

Kurt cleared his throat. "Yes. You are obligated to your Sire or Dam and, by extension, to theirs, all the way up to the surviving head of that particular line."

"So," I asked, "what's with the oath? Isn't it sort of ipso de facto that we're all family, with the requisite pecking order? Why administer a formal oath?"

"There are some crossovers upon occasion," he answered. "Yourself, for example. Dracula was your Sire yet you are—or were—taking the oath to swear fealty to the House of Báthory."

I gave my captive a little shake. "Do I look like someone who was willing to take an oath of fealty? How about you and your buddies, Kurt? You and the rest of the old guard here have mentioned your oath. Was it taken willingly? How about the rest of the European aristobats? And why an oath? If she made you, why did she have to bind your loyalty in a blood-oath?"

His face was like stone. "The countess did not grant us the Dark Gift. Each of us was the head of our own line before we took the oath and swore fealty to the Bátor clan."

"So . . . your only allegiance to this woman is through the oath you've sworn to the Báthory line. Which might sort of include me by genetic disposition."

He nodded, well, curtly. "Except she is eldest and head. And she is noble born, a countess."

I nodded. "You Old World guys really do have a major hard-on when it comes to the aristocracy. I always thought the undead pecking order was based along the lines of oldest and strongest or something like that."

Kurt's smile was humorless. "You are young. And, like the young, you want to believe that the universe is fair, that justice will always prevail. It takes age and wisdom to see things as they really are. Even your country is young, its history no more than a child's compared to the rest of the world. America likes to pretend that 'all men are created equal' when it clearly knows better and operates otherwise."

I sighed. "Okay. So, I guess you're pretty firm in your dedication to the nobility."

"Nobility and its bloodlines," Kurt affirmed. "Even if she did not grant the Dark Gift directly, she is still noblest and eldest among us."

I nodded in agreement. "Blood will out."

The computer beeped.

"Sounds like the results are in," I said.

My prisoner made one last desperate attempt to squirm out of my grasp. I could use a little help here! She suddenly slumped in my grasp and I almost dropped her. Jeez, Drac, I thought you were on the run all of these years because you were overmatched. 

>I had some help this time. Can you get out now?<  

I didn't have time to answer as Kurt was moving toward me. "What did you do?" he demanded.

"Easy, Captain Kurt, she's just unconscious," I said. "See, she's still—well, not breathing, of course—but she's still, um, corporate."

He slowed his advance. "The countess is all right then?"

I shook my head slowly from side to side. "No, Kurt," I said carefully, "the countess is dead."

"What? But you said—"

"Erzsébet Báthory," I elaborated, "died some four centuries ago in her tower in Cséjthe Castle. The woman who's been giving you orders for the last three hundred years is an imposter." I looked over at the lab tech who was staring at the monitors and probably programming an additional run of tests into the sequencer. "Isn't she, man?"

He hesitated, then nodded. "She's not even a close match to either of the Báthory of Nádasdy lines."

"Then who—?"

"I can't prove it," I said, measuring the distance between the door and yours truly, "but I believe the real Witch of Cachtice was a woman named Katarina Beneczky, one of Countess Báthory's maids."

"What? How? I thought they were all put to death."

"Not Beneczky. She was the only one on the countess' personal staff that was found innocent. She was set free by the same tribunal that sealed Erzsébet in her tower and executed the others."

I looked around at my audience. Gee, this was like those old-fashioned, locked-room mysteries where all the suspects sit in the parlor while the inspector explains the case to everyone. I continued, hoping I wouldn't pull a "Clouseau."

"While Erzsébet developed her sadistic proclivities early, I believe it was Katarina who turned that private obsession into crimes of monstrous proportions. She used the dark arts to bind the countess and the others to her will. Using an aristocrat was the perfect tool and the perfect cover for carrying out her nefarious schemes." I shook my head. "I can't believe I just used the word 'nefarious' in a public forum."

The entire room appeared to be shocked by this turn of events but Kurt seemed utterly thunderstruck. "Then that means . . . that we . . . that I . . ."

"Yep," I said, "you swore a blood-oath of fealty to a commoner, a peasant."

The other vamps in the room turned to Báthory-turned-Beneczky's majordomo, their expressions asking the same questions: what have we done; what do we do?

"Except," I continued, "you really didn't." They all looked back at me. "If I understand the situation correctly, you all swore in word and in your hearts, to serve the Countess Erzsébet Báthory and her House. Not . . ." I paused for effect, " . . . some servant girl passing herself off as the countess. So, you're free."

Now came the part where I explained to everyone about what terrible things the counterfeit countess had plotted and how important it was for us to join forces to keep these terrible plots from going forward.

Before I could launch into that part of my vague plan, some guy in the fourth row of chairs stood up. "Do you know what this means?" he asked, smoothing back his hair. He had three horns, curved close to his skull and peeking through his pompadour like the stripes of a skunk.

Maybe this was my opening.

"It means," he continued, "that you no longer have a viable hostage!"

And then again, maybe not. "Hey," I said, "I've got an idea. Let's do 'The Time Warp,' again . . ."

Several audience members, rising from their seats, hesitated. "What?" a couple of them asked.

"It's just a jump to the left!" I said, hurling Beneczky toward them and running for the door.

It would have been a clean break except for the two vamps guarding the exit.

Each one possessed speed, strength, and reflexes that were inhumanly superior to mine: between the two of them, I didn't stand a chance. Anticipating my charge, they went into side-by-side crouches, each dropping one knee to the floor to brace themselves and then—

Inclined their heads?  

Instead of attacking they were kneeling and assuming a position of obeisance!

I looked back over my shoulder and saw that most of the other vamps were facing me and doing the same. Everybody else just looked confused. Myself included, I suppose.

Kurt raised his head and addressed me: "Sire."

"Sire?" I felt a little stupid as most of my brain was still working out the problem of my escape. "How can I be your 'Sire' when you're older than me?"

"Master, then," he conceded. "We have sworn our oaths to the House of Báthory and, as of now, you are our Blood-liege by default."

I looked around at all of the kneeling vampires. "Just like that?"

He nodded.

"Don't you want to run a few more tests? Make sure she isn't the real Countess Báthory?"

"No, Master. We have had our doubts for over two hundred years. It is like a fulfillment of prophecy: the true Báthory heir has come to free us from centuries of false servitude."

"Yeah, well—"

"Under your reign, the Eastern Demesnes will become a great empire, ruling the night for a thousand years!"

"Um," I said.

>Cséjthe? Can you get away, yet? What is happening?<  

Well, I'm not sure. But I think I've just been offered your old job.  

>What?<  

=You need to get out here!=  

Deirdre?  

=A bunch of trucks and vans just came through the front gate and have pulled around to the loading docks at the rear of the buildings. There must be a hundred guys running around in fatigues and Ninja-casual, waving automatic weapons and preparing some sort of loading operation.=  

They're loading their weapons?  

>No, Cséjthe, they are loading the trucks. I certainly hope that I did not absorb your genetic proclivity for obtuseness from the transfusion of your blood.<  

Tough toothies, Vlad; beggars can't be choosers. I turned back to Kurt. "Beneczky has set a plan in motion that will destroy most of the world's population. We've got to stop it!"

"Will it affect vampires?" Skippy wanted to know.

"Does it matter?" Kurt growled. "If our supply of food becomes extinct then we are harmed, as well. Besides, our Master commands—that, alone, should be enough!"

The presumed Katarina Beneczky began to stir and was promptly hoisted to her feet by two large vamps. Correction: her feet now hung a few inches above the floor. They carried her over to where we could speak to each other without yelling but maybe she was oblivious to that fact: the ersatz Erzsébet began yelling anyway. And her choice of words was anything but aristocratic.

I reached out and pinched her mouth shut. "I don't have time for niceties," I said, forcing as much menace into my subvocals as my human throat could manage. "I want this whole operation called off right now! Do it and I might let you live. Refuse and I'll kill you right here and now!"

She glared at me but she stopped struggling and, when I removed my hand, she spoke more civilly. "I can't. It's out of my hands now. In fact, it has always been out of my hands."

I was afraid of this. I was about to suggest locking her up in something airtight when Kurt walked up behind her and twisted her head off. There was a soggy "pop" and our dusting was not unlike that of an ancient vacuum cleaner exploding.

So much for one of my theories: Katarina Beneczky was a vampire, after all.

"So ends the treachery and falsehood of four centuries," my new majordomo announced. "What would you have us do, now, my lord?"

"Um," I said again. "Follow me." I was going to have to have a talk with him later about taking me literally.

As I exited Gen/GEN and started down the hallway, my eyes were drawn to a trail of blood that stippled the carpet and led toward the stairs. Looking back I could see that the trail emerged from the office where I had left Chalice Delacroix's body less than a half hour before. "No!" I ran and slammed the door open.

The back trail of blood led to a now-empty desk.

I whirled.

>Cséjthe? Are you coming?<  

Not now, Pops, I'm busy!  

>What could be more important than saving the world?<  

I'm following the path of the Grail. I was back out in the corridor and running toward the stairs. "Kurt, take all the vamps you can down to the loading docks and stop those trucks from leaving!"

I winced as he said: "Yes, Master."

"Call me Chris."

"Yes, Master."

"You're doing that on purpose, aren't you?'

"Yes, Master."

A phalanx of undead glided by, speeding toward the elevators. "Aren't you going with them?"

"No. My place is with you, now. They know what to do."

We started down the stairs. "Kurt, do I really strike you as a likely candidate for aristocracy?"

"Let me put it this way," he said as we flew down two flights of stairs in the space of a double heartbeat. "You are as likely a candidate for nobility as we are likely to find among this sorry generation."

"Gee, Kurt, that's almost kind of sweet."

"Everyone is entitled to their opinion, my lord, but I would hate to have to kill you for expressing it publicly."

Another frenzied half-circle at the next landing and down another flight. "When you put it that way," I said, "it gives me hope that this relationship might actually work out."

Exiting out of the stairwell and into the first-floor corridor, I reversed direction and continued to follow the scarlet spoor toward the back of the building.

"You're headed for the voodoo altar, aren't you?" my undead shadow asked.

"I think someone is." I rounded the corner and found the remains of Chalice's black party dress, shredded and abandoned next to the trail of bloody droplets. It was no longer salvageable in any sense of the word so I tossed it aside. Blood from the dress clung to the palms of my hands and I had to resist the compulsion to lick them clean.

"You know what bothers me?" I asked as I wiped my hands off on the wall.

"It would be hard to guess," he answered. "Compared to my former Doman, so much seems to bother you."

"It's the vast amounts of blood involved in the Báthory legend." I started down the corridor again. "I mean, even if the countess and her inner circle were all vampires—which history has pretty well disproved—they couldn't consume more than a fraction of the blood produced in any given month. So what was the deal?"

"According to legend, the countess bathed—"

"But if she was being manipulated by the real Witch of Cachtice," I interrupted, "the motivation for spilling such vast quantities of blood might have been Beneczky's alone. What purpose was served through so much pain, death, and exsanguination?" The subbasement stairs were coming up and the bloody trail left little doubt that someone or something had taken Chalice Delacroix's body to the djevo underneath the building.

"Blood magic," suggested Kurt, "though I do not know what sort of necromancy would require such a volume of life essence." We plunged down the stairs. "Perhaps it was all meant as a sacrifice of some kind?"

"But to who? Or what?" The secret door at the bottom of the stairs was open but I slowed down as I needed time to adjust my eyes to the darkness beyond. "Too bad I can't ask Katarina Beneczky."

"I doubt that she would have answered the question—at least not truthfully."

"Well, I guess I'll never get the chance to find out now, will I?"

"You said you would kill her if she didn't—"

"Is the word 'bluff' in your lexicon? Remind me to teach you how to play poker."

Kurt sounded wounded: "I prefer chess. One does not bluff in chess."

"No? We really must play a match some time. Perhaps after the end of the world."

The candles were still guttering in their alcoves along the inner corridor. I gave them a glance. And then a second look as I moved into the dimly lit passageway.

"What is it?"

"Those candles. They were red the last time I was down here. Now they're black."

"What does that signify?"

"Something, I'm sure. If this place is still being used as a Vodoun temple, then color would be significant in identifying the Loa who are invoked here. My guess is the Ogou clan has been cleared out and something else has checked in."

"What?"

"Something that likes the color black. Now hush."

He hushed but the quiet was broken by another voice. "Koki Oko," a voice sang in the distance.

"O wa djab-la!" It was a woman's voice, high-pitched and eerie.

"Koki Oko ki anba . . . nèg mare nou!
Koki Oko, ki anba, nèg mare nou
Koki Oko, ki anba, n'a lage!
Koki Oko, o wa djab-la . . . 
Koki Oko, ki anba, nèg mare!
Koki Oko, o wa djab-la . . . 
Koki Oko ki anba, nèg mare nou!"

"Jesus," I whispered.

"What is it? What do the words mean?"

"I'm not sure," I said quietly, hoping my voice wouldn't carry in the sudden silence following the song's end. "I recognize two or three of the words. Djab-la is a Vodoun name for a wild spirit. It's a distortion of the French word diable for devil—only its connotation here is more in the magical realm than the spiritual."

"Could have fooled me. What's Koki Oko?"

"Um, the translation wouldn't do it justice. Let's just say the song was oriented somewhere between naughty and nasty."

The voice started again, this time chanting instead of singing: "Amen. Seculi venturi vitam et. Mortuorum resurrectionem in baptisma unum Confiteor. Ecclesiam apostolicam et catholicicam, sanctum, unam et . . ."

"That sounds like Latin," I said.

"It is," Kurt agreed, "but it is gibberish. The words make no sense."

" . . . prophetas per est locutus qui . . ."

"Maybe," I said, moving ahead, "and my Latin's a little rusty but there's something familiar about some of that gibberish."

It made sense: Vodoun was such a distorted blend of African Mystère and Catholicism that Latin might well be invoked along with variants of French, Spanish, and the Fon language of West Africa.

" . . . mortuos et vivos judicare Gloria cum est venturus iterum et. Patris dexteram adsedet . . ."

"Wait a minute," I said as we came to the hounfort and entered the temple area. "I may not know my masses beyond a Te Deum and an Agnus Dei, but isn't that the Nicene Creed?"

Kurt considered the chanting more attentively.

" . . . Scripturas secundum, die tertia resurrexit et . . ."

"Yes. It's being recited backwards."

"Thought so."

"What does it mean?"

"It means something very bad. Voodoo is always getting a bad rap from the Hollywood treatment—"

"Yes," he said, "they do the same disservice to vampires."

I let that one slide. "Rada—or 'right hand' voodoo—is a positive religion. Even Petro—the left hand or sinister perversion of the African mysteries—wouldn't hold their services underground like this. So whatever we have here is something off the map."

" . . . coelis de descendit salutem nostram propter et . . ."

As we started across the peristil, I could see the altar room beyond the sinister maypole of the poteau mitan. Someone had come in since the conflagration accompanying my last visit and cleaned up. Black drapes now hung on the sides of the alcove but the back wall was left uncovered. There, on a series of small shelves, were racks of tiny glass bottles—DNA sample vials like the ones in the Gen/GEN lab upstairs. The flames from thirteen ebony candles did little to illume the dark décor but here the glass containers seemed to glow with pale red and blue phosphors—much like the alternating glow from the BioWeb sign outside. A swatch of scarlet was draped across the altar table, appearing in the pulses of blue light, disappearing in the counterpoint bursts of red illumination.

" . . . saecula omnia ante natum Patre ex et . . ."

The rest of the Ogou paraphernalia had been removed from the area but the crimson dress had been salvaged. Symbols, Father Pat had said, are very powerful agents in systems of belief.

I was beginning to form a theory concerning the nature of Cachtice's blood sacrifices.

"Isn't that Chalice Delacroix?" Kurt whispered.

She had been nearly invisible against the backdrop of darkness but now that my attention was drawn and my eyes adjusted, I could see the woman standing by the altar. She wore nothing but her own skin and a faint, golden limning of light from the votive candles on the altar. An arm-shaped thread of gold extended toward the swirl of red and a moment later a crimson flash of fabric unfurled, setting a dozen and one points of light a-shiver. She wasn't dead! Chalice had survived!

"What is she doing? Kurt whispered.

Chanting was the first answer that came to mind as I moved toward her. But as I circled around the great wooden post and got a better angle and a closer look I wasn't sure that it was Chalice after all. Four lines of clotted blood still striped her stomach, but her umber flesh seemed vaguely out of place, as if subtly redistributed. It was like clothing that you are used to seeing on one person being worn by another: the colors and patterns are identical but the shape and drape differ, even on similar forms and figures.

" . . . invisibilium et omnium visibilium . . ."

She turned her head and my heart seized up in my chest. Chalice's moss-green eyes might appear to be black in the near darkness of our surroundings but these eyes glittered red and orange with a light that was not all reflected candle-flame. Her mouth moved in an unnatural way and the teeth within appeared to be filed to triangular points as if they were retro-engineered for tearing flesh and separating gristle from bone.

" . . . Deum unum in credo," she finished and smiled. Her mouth grew inhumanly wide. "Cséjthe! How good of you to come!" It definitely wasn't Chalice Delacroix's voice!

"Wh—who are you?" I asked.

"Don't you recognize me?" she purred. No, that wasn't the right word: "purred" suggests something feline. But cats are warm-blooded creatures and there was nothing warm-blooded here. She turned and posed provocatively, the red silk flung over one shoulder. "Didn't you get a good look?"

I stopped moving toward her. I was already closer than I suddenly wanted to be.

"How about another taste?" She sauntered toward me, one hand caressing her bloody belly. "You took so little before. A few sips, really."

"You're not Chalice," I said, taking a step back.

"What is a chalice?" She came toward me, step by step. "A glass? A cup? A drinking container? I contain blood; would you like another drink?"

I took another step back. "No."

"No?" Her eyebrows went up in a parody of surprise. "I thought you liked me. I thought you loved the taste. Wasn't I yummy? Yummy in the tummy?"

"Don't," I said.

"Yummy in your tummy?" she asked, closing the distance between us with a dreamlike inexorability. "Didn't you find my tummy yummy?"

I got a better look at the fabric draped over her shoulder and stopped backing away.

"You look very thirsty, Cséjthe. Maybe even a little hungry. Would you like a little nibble before the fun begins? A little taste? There's room on the altar for two. Or I could stand here while you kneel . . ."

"I know who you are," I said.

"Yes, I think I'd like that—you on your knees . . ." Flickers of light from ancient sacrificial fires danced in her eyes and she began to hum.

"You're Marinette Bois-Chèche," I said.

She shook her head. "I am your chalice . . . your goblet . . ."

"Yeah, more like my hob-goblet." Somewhere in the back of my brain a beeping sound commenced, signaling that I seriously needed to be backing up now! Instead I stood my ground, wrestling with the problem of Katarina Beneczky and Marinette Bois-Chèche. Were they one and the same?

In Vodoun, the spirit Loa manifest by possessing a human body. It's called "mounting the host" who is referred to as a "horse" as the spirit "rides" the human. Chalice—whether truly dead or still alive—was gone and the most dangerous, bitter, and vengeful of the Petro Loa was sitting in the saddle and applying supernatural spurs.

"Kneel, Cséjthe . . . kneel and drink . . ."

I hesitated and felt invisible bands of pressure close about my head. While there was no doubt about my ability to physically overpower Chalice Delacroix, this was an entirely different matter. Given the manifest changes in her physicality while the Loa had her boots in the stirrups, I had serious doubts about the efficacy of any direct resistance. I could remain defiant and see just how high Marinette could ratchet up the grief-o-meter. Or I could apply the principles of Ju-jitsu and use her centers of balance against her.

I sank to one knee and felt the pressure lessen.

"Kneel . . . and feed . . ." She stepped up to me and, reaching behind my head, pressed my face to her belly.

I embraced her legs with my left arm and ran my right hand up the smooth curve of her flank in a leisurely caress.

"Taste the blood of the Loa," she crooned. "Taste the power . . ."

That wasn't my goal. The touch of her cold, blood-slicked flesh was actually the last thing I craved at this particular moment but I had to endure it to keep a promise. I had turned out to be no damn good at keeping my word to Chalice's daddy but the world's fate might well be sealed tonight if I failed in my charge from Mama Samm.

A funny thing happened in the midst of my deception: The Hunger began to return. In spite of the revulsion I felt for the atrocities rendered upon Chalice Delacroix's flesh this night, I felt the ancient lusts begin to stir as the scents of blood and sweat and musk bathed my nasal epithelial receptors. My hindbrain began to wake from its ten-thousand-year slumber, stretching limbic limbs and flooding my veins with a hormonal soup of predatory impulses and drives. A few moments more, I told myself as my right hand roamed higher, palm surfing the wavelets of muscle-sheathed ribs. It was unavoidable, it was necessary, I told myself, sipping at the dark wine that trickled by the well of her navel; she must believe me compliant, complicit . . .  

Compromised . . . 

The power that transmogrified Chalice Delacroix's flesh and shaped it to the will of Marinette Bois-Chèche burned in her blood like bitter whiskey and sweet rum. Lightning from the Ogou forge crackled there and something latched onto my tongue, drawing it into a whirlpool of sensation, a whorl of power, a vortex of violence.

The plan had been to catch the demon Loa off-balance but it was I who had suddenly lost my own footing. Even as I took her dark essence into me I felt my will, my resistance, my very conscience being drained. Metaphysical fangs were biting into my own heart, a vampiric feeding frenzy had begun: even as my body took on unaccustomed physical strength and power, I felt my inner strength ebb and fade.

God help me, I thought frantically. I can't disengage! I tried to think of a prayer, a scripture that would help me pull out of this Tantric tailspin. Psalm 121 began with: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." When I looked up, the only hills I could see undermined my resolve that much more.

Then I saw a flash of scarlet and my attention was drawn to the red dress still draped from her shoulder, now inches from my questing right hand.

She sighed and caressed the back of my head. "Deeper . . ."

I strained my hand upward . . . an inch . . . then another.

"Ooo," she cooed, "devour me!"

The monster inside was breaking loose, ripping the chains of conscience away with brutish strength and subhuman rage. In moments it would be free.

"No," I murmured, crimson threads gumming my lips.

Her hand fell away from the back of my head and I looked up.

Her head was tilted back, her own gaze turned upward, as well. "What?" she asked, slowly, dreamily.

"I've had about all I can stomach," I said more clearly as the fingers of my right hand closed on the hem of the dress. As I yanked it from her shoulder, I pulled her legs out from under her with the sweep of my left arm. I bounced to my feet even as I heard the back of her head thud against the earthen floor.

"Kurt!" I yelled.

"Here, Master," he answered from a few feet away. "I couldn't move!"

"Can you move now?"

"I think so, yes."

"Then the last one out is a rotten corpse!"

We ran for the exit. Kurt should have been twice as fast as I but he followed closely while keeping me in front; guarding my back, no doubt.

"What are we doing?" he asked as we scrambled into the outer corridor and headed for the stairs.

"Saving the world!"

"By running away?"

I held up my scarlet trophy. "By preventing the Whore of Babylon from putting her red dress on!"

"I don't understand!"

My reply was drowned out by the thunder of our feet pounding up the stairs.

"What?" he yelled as we reached the first floor.

"I said: Neither do I!"

We turned and ran for the rear exit and the loading docks.

"It can't be that simple!" he protested.

Of course, it wasn't. . . . 

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Framed

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Contents

Chapter Twenty-four

"Let me tell you a little story while we wait," I said as the sequencer began the process of scanning and sorting the genome of New York's vampire Doman.

"Once upon a time—a little over four hundred years ago, in fact—there was a baby girl born into the house of Báthory. It wasn't enough that she was produced by centuries of savage Darwinism laced with significant episodes of inbreeding, she had the additional advantage of growing up among relatives who practiced witchcraft, bestiality, torture, and twisted cruelties beyond the scope of most human imaginations."

Around the room the expressions ranged from "been there, done that" to "so?"

"As a child of the nobility," I continued, trying to keep them quiet and in their seats for just a couple more minutes, "she had wealth and privilege and essentially carte blanche permission to do as she pleased without fear of consequence or retribution. It was, in other words, the perfect greenhouse for cultivating a monster."

"You state the obvious!" my captive protested.

"Yes," I agreed, "yes, I do. Just as I would if I spent the next hour recounting the Blood Countess' many cruelties, the torturous deaths visited upon the young women of her province. I could state the obvious in telling the old story of how Erzsébet Báthory, a vain and selfish woman, struck a servant girl one day and discovered that the girl's blood made her skin appear more youthful where it had been splashed. Obvious, well-known—and, patently, untrue."

"What do you mean, untrue? It is true!" she cried. "That is how it started!"

I shrugged but didn't relax my hold on her. "Perhaps you're right. I wasn't there and you were so maybe that part of the story is true. Perhaps you planned it that way and staged it so the other servants would witness the event. The story certainly helped you when it all began to crumble and the tribunals were called."

"This serves no purpose!" she exclaimed.

"Maybe not," I concurred. "Maybe it's just a little conversation to pass the time until the results come in."

>Cséjthe, she is trying to mind-bend the man operating the computing machine.<  

Well, block her, Old Dragon! If she interferes with the results, I'm dead and ninety-nine percent of the world will follow in short order.  

>You ask much!<  

For myself? Maybe. For the rest of the planet? Suck it up and try being useful for a change.  

>I will not forget your impertinence when this is over . . .<  

Oh, bite me! "Liz, baby, leave the poor lab tech alone and let him finish running the scans without interference."

"Someone's blocking me!" she said through clenched teeth.

"How about I cut just part way through your spinal cord now? It will certainly change the distraction level for you." She shut up and seemed to strain a little less. "So, where was I? Oh, yeah. Over six hundred virgins drained of blood during a single decade. What a time that must have been! Imagine trying to find six virgins now, never mind six hundred. Makes you long for the good old days."

Kurt had moved to flank the lab tech by the computer monitors. "You," he asked me, "have a point to make in all of this?"

"Gee, I sure hope so," I said. "Now help me out here because I'm still somewhat of an outsider on all the undead etiquette. I mean, if there's a Miss Manners for monsters or Emily Post for the posthumous, I've missed the advice column. So, isn't it customary when you become a vampire that you're automatically a vassal to the one who made you?" I snorted. "I can't believe I just used the word 'vassal' in a public discourse."

Throughout the gathered assemblage heads nodded and turned to see what might be the inclinations of their neighbors. No one had given any indication of wanting to rush me yet and I figured I had a decent chance of surviving a few more minutes as long as I kept them entertained. And, of course, the golden knife less than a centimeter away from my hostage's spinal cord.

Kurt cleared his throat. "Yes. You are obligated to your Sire or Dam and, by extension, to theirs, all the way up to the surviving head of that particular line."

"So," I asked, "what's with the oath? Isn't it sort of ipso de facto that we're all family, with the requisite pecking order? Why administer a formal oath?"

"There are some crossovers upon occasion," he answered. "Yourself, for example. Dracula was your Sire yet you are—or were—taking the oath to swear fealty to the House of Báthory."

I gave my captive a little shake. "Do I look like someone who was willing to take an oath of fealty? How about you and your buddies, Kurt? You and the rest of the old guard here have mentioned your oath. Was it taken willingly? How about the rest of the European aristobats? And why an oath? If she made you, why did she have to bind your loyalty in a blood-oath?"

His face was like stone. "The countess did not grant us the Dark Gift. Each of us was the head of our own line before we took the oath and swore fealty to the Bátor clan."

"So . . . your only allegiance to this woman is through the oath you've sworn to the Báthory line. Which might sort of include me by genetic disposition."

He nodded, well, curtly. "Except she is eldest and head. And she is noble born, a countess."

I nodded. "You Old World guys really do have a major hard-on when it comes to the aristocracy. I always thought the undead pecking order was based along the lines of oldest and strongest or something like that."

Kurt's smile was humorless. "You are young. And, like the young, you want to believe that the universe is fair, that justice will always prevail. It takes age and wisdom to see things as they really are. Even your country is young, its history no more than a child's compared to the rest of the world. America likes to pretend that 'all men are created equal' when it clearly knows better and operates otherwise."

I sighed. "Okay. So, I guess you're pretty firm in your dedication to the nobility."

"Nobility and its bloodlines," Kurt affirmed. "Even if she did not grant the Dark Gift directly, she is still noblest and eldest among us."

I nodded in agreement. "Blood will out."

The computer beeped.

"Sounds like the results are in," I said.

My prisoner made one last desperate attempt to squirm out of my grasp. I could use a little help here! She suddenly slumped in my grasp and I almost dropped her. Jeez, Drac, I thought you were on the run all of these years because you were overmatched. 

>I had some help this time. Can you get out now?<  

I didn't have time to answer as Kurt was moving toward me. "What did you do?" he demanded.

"Easy, Captain Kurt, she's just unconscious," I said. "See, she's still—well, not breathing, of course—but she's still, um, corporate."

He slowed his advance. "The countess is all right then?"

I shook my head slowly from side to side. "No, Kurt," I said carefully, "the countess is dead."

"What? But you said—"

"Erzsébet Báthory," I elaborated, "died some four centuries ago in her tower in Cséjthe Castle. The woman who's been giving you orders for the last three hundred years is an imposter." I looked over at the lab tech who was staring at the monitors and probably programming an additional run of tests into the sequencer. "Isn't she, man?"

He hesitated, then nodded. "She's not even a close match to either of the Báthory of Nádasdy lines."

"Then who—?"

"I can't prove it," I said, measuring the distance between the door and yours truly, "but I believe the real Witch of Cachtice was a woman named Katarina Beneczky, one of Countess Báthory's maids."

"What? How? I thought they were all put to death."

"Not Beneczky. She was the only one on the countess' personal staff that was found innocent. She was set free by the same tribunal that sealed Erzsébet in her tower and executed the others."

I looked around at my audience. Gee, this was like those old-fashioned, locked-room mysteries where all the suspects sit in the parlor while the inspector explains the case to everyone. I continued, hoping I wouldn't pull a "Clouseau."

"While Erzsébet developed her sadistic proclivities early, I believe it was Katarina who turned that private obsession into crimes of monstrous proportions. She used the dark arts to bind the countess and the others to her will. Using an aristocrat was the perfect tool and the perfect cover for carrying out her nefarious schemes." I shook my head. "I can't believe I just used the word 'nefarious' in a public forum."

The entire room appeared to be shocked by this turn of events but Kurt seemed utterly thunderstruck. "Then that means . . . that we . . . that I . . ."

"Yep," I said, "you swore a blood-oath of fealty to a commoner, a peasant."

The other vamps in the room turned to Báthory-turned-Beneczky's majordomo, their expressions asking the same questions: what have we done; what do we do?

"Except," I continued, "you really didn't." They all looked back at me. "If I understand the situation correctly, you all swore in word and in your hearts, to serve the Countess Erzsébet Báthory and her House. Not . . ." I paused for effect, " . . . some servant girl passing herself off as the countess. So, you're free."

Now came the part where I explained to everyone about what terrible things the counterfeit countess had plotted and how important it was for us to join forces to keep these terrible plots from going forward.

Before I could launch into that part of my vague plan, some guy in the fourth row of chairs stood up. "Do you know what this means?" he asked, smoothing back his hair. He had three horns, curved close to his skull and peeking through his pompadour like the stripes of a skunk.

Maybe this was my opening.

"It means," he continued, "that you no longer have a viable hostage!"

And then again, maybe not. "Hey," I said, "I've got an idea. Let's do 'The Time Warp,' again . . ."

Several audience members, rising from their seats, hesitated. "What?" a couple of them asked.

"It's just a jump to the left!" I said, hurling Beneczky toward them and running for the door.

It would have been a clean break except for the two vamps guarding the exit.

Each one possessed speed, strength, and reflexes that were inhumanly superior to mine: between the two of them, I didn't stand a chance. Anticipating my charge, they went into side-by-side crouches, each dropping one knee to the floor to brace themselves and then—

Inclined their heads?  

Instead of attacking they were kneeling and assuming a position of obeisance!

I looked back over my shoulder and saw that most of the other vamps were facing me and doing the same. Everybody else just looked confused. Myself included, I suppose.

Kurt raised his head and addressed me: "Sire."

"Sire?" I felt a little stupid as most of my brain was still working out the problem of my escape. "How can I be your 'Sire' when you're older than me?"

"Master, then," he conceded. "We have sworn our oaths to the House of Báthory and, as of now, you are our Blood-liege by default."

I looked around at all of the kneeling vampires. "Just like that?"

He nodded.

"Don't you want to run a few more tests? Make sure she isn't the real Countess Báthory?"

"No, Master. We have had our doubts for over two hundred years. It is like a fulfillment of prophecy: the true Báthory heir has come to free us from centuries of false servitude."

"Yeah, well—"

"Under your reign, the Eastern Demesnes will become a great empire, ruling the night for a thousand years!"

"Um," I said.

>Cséjthe? Can you get away, yet? What is happening?<  

Well, I'm not sure. But I think I've just been offered your old job.  

>What?<  

=You need to get out here!=  

Deirdre?  

=A bunch of trucks and vans just came through the front gate and have pulled around to the loading docks at the rear of the buildings. There must be a hundred guys running around in fatigues and Ninja-casual, waving automatic weapons and preparing some sort of loading operation.=  

They're loading their weapons?  

>No, Cséjthe, they are loading the trucks. I certainly hope that I did not absorb your genetic proclivity for obtuseness from the transfusion of your blood.<  

Tough toothies, Vlad; beggars can't be choosers. I turned back to Kurt. "Beneczky has set a plan in motion that will destroy most of the world's population. We've got to stop it!"

"Will it affect vampires?" Skippy wanted to know.

"Does it matter?" Kurt growled. "If our supply of food becomes extinct then we are harmed, as well. Besides, our Master commands—that, alone, should be enough!"

The presumed Katarina Beneczky began to stir and was promptly hoisted to her feet by two large vamps. Correction: her feet now hung a few inches above the floor. They carried her over to where we could speak to each other without yelling but maybe she was oblivious to that fact: the ersatz Erzsébet began yelling anyway. And her choice of words was anything but aristocratic.

I reached out and pinched her mouth shut. "I don't have time for niceties," I said, forcing as much menace into my subvocals as my human throat could manage. "I want this whole operation called off right now! Do it and I might let you live. Refuse and I'll kill you right here and now!"

She glared at me but she stopped struggling and, when I removed my hand, she spoke more civilly. "I can't. It's out of my hands now. In fact, it has always been out of my hands."

I was afraid of this. I was about to suggest locking her up in something airtight when Kurt walked up behind her and twisted her head off. There was a soggy "pop" and our dusting was not unlike that of an ancient vacuum cleaner exploding.

So much for one of my theories: Katarina Beneczky was a vampire, after all.

"So ends the treachery and falsehood of four centuries," my new majordomo announced. "What would you have us do, now, my lord?"

"Um," I said again. "Follow me." I was going to have to have a talk with him later about taking me literally.

As I exited Gen/GEN and started down the hallway, my eyes were drawn to a trail of blood that stippled the carpet and led toward the stairs. Looking back I could see that the trail emerged from the office where I had left Chalice Delacroix's body less than a half hour before. "No!" I ran and slammed the door open.

The back trail of blood led to a now-empty desk.

I whirled.

>Cséjthe? Are you coming?<  

Not now, Pops, I'm busy!  

>What could be more important than saving the world?<  

I'm following the path of the Grail. I was back out in the corridor and running toward the stairs. "Kurt, take all the vamps you can down to the loading docks and stop those trucks from leaving!"

I winced as he said: "Yes, Master."

"Call me Chris."

"Yes, Master."

"You're doing that on purpose, aren't you?'

"Yes, Master."

A phalanx of undead glided by, speeding toward the elevators. "Aren't you going with them?"

"No. My place is with you, now. They know what to do."

We started down the stairs. "Kurt, do I really strike you as a likely candidate for aristocracy?"

"Let me put it this way," he said as we flew down two flights of stairs in the space of a double heartbeat. "You are as likely a candidate for nobility as we are likely to find among this sorry generation."

"Gee, Kurt, that's almost kind of sweet."

"Everyone is entitled to their opinion, my lord, but I would hate to have to kill you for expressing it publicly."

Another frenzied half-circle at the next landing and down another flight. "When you put it that way," I said, "it gives me hope that this relationship might actually work out."

Exiting out of the stairwell and into the first-floor corridor, I reversed direction and continued to follow the scarlet spoor toward the back of the building.

"You're headed for the voodoo altar, aren't you?" my undead shadow asked.

"I think someone is." I rounded the corner and found the remains of Chalice's black party dress, shredded and abandoned next to the trail of bloody droplets. It was no longer salvageable in any sense of the word so I tossed it aside. Blood from the dress clung to the palms of my hands and I had to resist the compulsion to lick them clean.

"You know what bothers me?" I asked as I wiped my hands off on the wall.

"It would be hard to guess," he answered. "Compared to my former Doman, so much seems to bother you."

"It's the vast amounts of blood involved in the Báthory legend." I started down the corridor again. "I mean, even if the countess and her inner circle were all vampires—which history has pretty well disproved—they couldn't consume more than a fraction of the blood produced in any given month. So what was the deal?"

"According to legend, the countess bathed—"

"But if she was being manipulated by the real Witch of Cachtice," I interrupted, "the motivation for spilling such vast quantities of blood might have been Beneczky's alone. What purpose was served through so much pain, death, and exsanguination?" The subbasement stairs were coming up and the bloody trail left little doubt that someone or something had taken Chalice Delacroix's body to the djevo underneath the building.

"Blood magic," suggested Kurt, "though I do not know what sort of necromancy would require such a volume of life essence." We plunged down the stairs. "Perhaps it was all meant as a sacrifice of some kind?"

"But to who? Or what?" The secret door at the bottom of the stairs was open but I slowed down as I needed time to adjust my eyes to the darkness beyond. "Too bad I can't ask Katarina Beneczky."

"I doubt that she would have answered the question—at least not truthfully."

"Well, I guess I'll never get the chance to find out now, will I?"

"You said you would kill her if she didn't—"

"Is the word 'bluff' in your lexicon? Remind me to teach you how to play poker."

Kurt sounded wounded: "I prefer chess. One does not bluff in chess."

"No? We really must play a match some time. Perhaps after the end of the world."

The candles were still guttering in their alcoves along the inner corridor. I gave them a glance. And then a second look as I moved into the dimly lit passageway.

"What is it?"

"Those candles. They were red the last time I was down here. Now they're black."

"What does that signify?"

"Something, I'm sure. If this place is still being used as a Vodoun temple, then color would be significant in identifying the Loa who are invoked here. My guess is the Ogou clan has been cleared out and something else has checked in."

"What?"

"Something that likes the color black. Now hush."

He hushed but the quiet was broken by another voice. "Koki Oko," a voice sang in the distance.

"O wa djab-la!" It was a woman's voice, high-pitched and eerie.

"Koki Oko ki anba . . . nèg mare nou!
Koki Oko, ki anba, nèg mare nou
Koki Oko, ki anba, n'a lage!
Koki Oko, o wa djab-la . . . 
Koki Oko, ki anba, nèg mare!
Koki Oko, o wa djab-la . . . 
Koki Oko ki anba, nèg mare nou!"

"Jesus," I whispered.

"What is it? What do the words mean?"

"I'm not sure," I said quietly, hoping my voice wouldn't carry in the sudden silence following the song's end. "I recognize two or three of the words. Djab-la is a Vodoun name for a wild spirit. It's a distortion of the French word diable for devil—only its connotation here is more in the magical realm than the spiritual."

"Could have fooled me. What's Koki Oko?"

"Um, the translation wouldn't do it justice. Let's just say the song was oriented somewhere between naughty and nasty."

The voice started again, this time chanting instead of singing: "Amen. Seculi venturi vitam et. Mortuorum resurrectionem in baptisma unum Confiteor. Ecclesiam apostolicam et catholicicam, sanctum, unam et . . ."

"That sounds like Latin," I said.

"It is," Kurt agreed, "but it is gibberish. The words make no sense."

" . . . prophetas per est locutus qui . . ."

"Maybe," I said, moving ahead, "and my Latin's a little rusty but there's something familiar about some of that gibberish."

It made sense: Vodoun was such a distorted blend of African Mystère and Catholicism that Latin might well be invoked along with variants of French, Spanish, and the Fon language of West Africa.

" . . . mortuos et vivos judicare Gloria cum est venturus iterum et. Patris dexteram adsedet . . ."

"Wait a minute," I said as we came to the hounfort and entered the temple area. "I may not know my masses beyond a Te Deum and an Agnus Dei, but isn't that the Nicene Creed?"

Kurt considered the chanting more attentively.

" . . . Scripturas secundum, die tertia resurrexit et . . ."

"Yes. It's being recited backwards."

"Thought so."

"What does it mean?"

"It means something very bad. Voodoo is always getting a bad rap from the Hollywood treatment—"

"Yes," he said, "they do the same disservice to vampires."

I let that one slide. "Rada—or 'right hand' voodoo—is a positive religion. Even Petro—the left hand or sinister perversion of the African mysteries—wouldn't hold their services underground like this. So whatever we have here is something off the map."

" . . . coelis de descendit salutem nostram propter et . . ."

As we started across the peristil, I could see the altar room beyond the sinister maypole of the poteau mitan. Someone had come in since the conflagration accompanying my last visit and cleaned up. Black drapes now hung on the sides of the alcove but the back wall was left uncovered. There, on a series of small shelves, were racks of tiny glass bottles—DNA sample vials like the ones in the Gen/GEN lab upstairs. The flames from thirteen ebony candles did little to illume the dark décor but here the glass containers seemed to glow with pale red and blue phosphors—much like the alternating glow from the BioWeb sign outside. A swatch of scarlet was draped across the altar table, appearing in the pulses of blue light, disappearing in the counterpoint bursts of red illumination.

" . . . saecula omnia ante natum Patre ex et . . ."

The rest of the Ogou paraphernalia had been removed from the area but the crimson dress had been salvaged. Symbols, Father Pat had said, are very powerful agents in systems of belief.

I was beginning to form a theory concerning the nature of Cachtice's blood sacrifices.

"Isn't that Chalice Delacroix?" Kurt whispered.

She had been nearly invisible against the backdrop of darkness but now that my attention was drawn and my eyes adjusted, I could see the woman standing by the altar. She wore nothing but her own skin and a faint, golden limning of light from the votive candles on the altar. An arm-shaped thread of gold extended toward the swirl of red and a moment later a crimson flash of fabric unfurled, setting a dozen and one points of light a-shiver. She wasn't dead! Chalice had survived!

"What is she doing? Kurt whispered.

Chanting was the first answer that came to mind as I moved toward her. But as I circled around the great wooden post and got a better angle and a closer look I wasn't sure that it was Chalice after all. Four lines of clotted blood still striped her stomach, but her umber flesh seemed vaguely out of place, as if subtly redistributed. It was like clothing that you are used to seeing on one person being worn by another: the colors and patterns are identical but the shape and drape differ, even on similar forms and figures.

" . . . invisibilium et omnium visibilium . . ."

She turned her head and my heart seized up in my chest. Chalice's moss-green eyes might appear to be black in the near darkness of our surroundings but these eyes glittered red and orange with a light that was not all reflected candle-flame. Her mouth moved in an unnatural way and the teeth within appeared to be filed to triangular points as if they were retro-engineered for tearing flesh and separating gristle from bone.

" . . . Deum unum in credo," she finished and smiled. Her mouth grew inhumanly wide. "Cséjthe! How good of you to come!" It definitely wasn't Chalice Delacroix's voice!

"Wh—who are you?" I asked.

"Don't you recognize me?" she purred. No, that wasn't the right word: "purred" suggests something feline. But cats are warm-blooded creatures and there was nothing warm-blooded here. She turned and posed provocatively, the red silk flung over one shoulder. "Didn't you get a good look?"

I stopped moving toward her. I was already closer than I suddenly wanted to be.

"How about another taste?" She sauntered toward me, one hand caressing her bloody belly. "You took so little before. A few sips, really."

"You're not Chalice," I said, taking a step back.

"What is a chalice?" She came toward me, step by step. "A glass? A cup? A drinking container? I contain blood; would you like another drink?"

I took another step back. "No."

"No?" Her eyebrows went up in a parody of surprise. "I thought you liked me. I thought you loved the taste. Wasn't I yummy? Yummy in the tummy?"

"Don't," I said.

"Yummy in your tummy?" she asked, closing the distance between us with a dreamlike inexorability. "Didn't you find my tummy yummy?"

I got a better look at the fabric draped over her shoulder and stopped backing away.

"You look very thirsty, Cséjthe. Maybe even a little hungry. Would you like a little nibble before the fun begins? A little taste? There's room on the altar for two. Or I could stand here while you kneel . . ."

"I know who you are," I said.

"Yes, I think I'd like that—you on your knees . . ." Flickers of light from ancient sacrificial fires danced in her eyes and she began to hum.

"You're Marinette Bois-Chèche," I said.

She shook her head. "I am your chalice . . . your goblet . . ."

"Yeah, more like my hob-goblet." Somewhere in the back of my brain a beeping sound commenced, signaling that I seriously needed to be backing up now! Instead I stood my ground, wrestling with the problem of Katarina Beneczky and Marinette Bois-Chèche. Were they one and the same?

In Vodoun, the spirit Loa manifest by possessing a human body. It's called "mounting the host" who is referred to as a "horse" as the spirit "rides" the human. Chalice—whether truly dead or still alive—was gone and the most dangerous, bitter, and vengeful of the Petro Loa was sitting in the saddle and applying supernatural spurs.

"Kneel, Cséjthe . . . kneel and drink . . ."

I hesitated and felt invisible bands of pressure close about my head. While there was no doubt about my ability to physically overpower Chalice Delacroix, this was an entirely different matter. Given the manifest changes in her physicality while the Loa had her boots in the stirrups, I had serious doubts about the efficacy of any direct resistance. I could remain defiant and see just how high Marinette could ratchet up the grief-o-meter. Or I could apply the principles of Ju-jitsu and use her centers of balance against her.

I sank to one knee and felt the pressure lessen.

"Kneel . . . and feed . . ." She stepped up to me and, reaching behind my head, pressed my face to her belly.

I embraced her legs with my left arm and ran my right hand up the smooth curve of her flank in a leisurely caress.

"Taste the blood of the Loa," she crooned. "Taste the power . . ."

That wasn't my goal. The touch of her cold, blood-slicked flesh was actually the last thing I craved at this particular moment but I had to endure it to keep a promise. I had turned out to be no damn good at keeping my word to Chalice's daddy but the world's fate might well be sealed tonight if I failed in my charge from Mama Samm.

A funny thing happened in the midst of my deception: The Hunger began to return. In spite of the revulsion I felt for the atrocities rendered upon Chalice Delacroix's flesh this night, I felt the ancient lusts begin to stir as the scents of blood and sweat and musk bathed my nasal epithelial receptors. My hindbrain began to wake from its ten-thousand-year slumber, stretching limbic limbs and flooding my veins with a hormonal soup of predatory impulses and drives. A few moments more, I told myself as my right hand roamed higher, palm surfing the wavelets of muscle-sheathed ribs. It was unavoidable, it was necessary, I told myself, sipping at the dark wine that trickled by the well of her navel; she must believe me compliant, complicit . . .  

Compromised . . . 

The power that transmogrified Chalice Delacroix's flesh and shaped it to the will of Marinette Bois-Chèche burned in her blood like bitter whiskey and sweet rum. Lightning from the Ogou forge crackled there and something latched onto my tongue, drawing it into a whirlpool of sensation, a whorl of power, a vortex of violence.

The plan had been to catch the demon Loa off-balance but it was I who had suddenly lost my own footing. Even as I took her dark essence into me I felt my will, my resistance, my very conscience being drained. Metaphysical fangs were biting into my own heart, a vampiric feeding frenzy had begun: even as my body took on unaccustomed physical strength and power, I felt my inner strength ebb and fade.

God help me, I thought frantically. I can't disengage! I tried to think of a prayer, a scripture that would help me pull out of this Tantric tailspin. Psalm 121 began with: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." When I looked up, the only hills I could see undermined my resolve that much more.

Then I saw a flash of scarlet and my attention was drawn to the red dress still draped from her shoulder, now inches from my questing right hand.

She sighed and caressed the back of my head. "Deeper . . ."

I strained my hand upward . . . an inch . . . then another.

"Ooo," she cooed, "devour me!"

The monster inside was breaking loose, ripping the chains of conscience away with brutish strength and subhuman rage. In moments it would be free.

"No," I murmured, crimson threads gumming my lips.

Her hand fell away from the back of my head and I looked up.

Her head was tilted back, her own gaze turned upward, as well. "What?" she asked, slowly, dreamily.

"I've had about all I can stomach," I said more clearly as the fingers of my right hand closed on the hem of the dress. As I yanked it from her shoulder, I pulled her legs out from under her with the sweep of my left arm. I bounced to my feet even as I heard the back of her head thud against the earthen floor.

"Kurt!" I yelled.

"Here, Master," he answered from a few feet away. "I couldn't move!"

"Can you move now?"

"I think so, yes."

"Then the last one out is a rotten corpse!"

We ran for the exit. Kurt should have been twice as fast as I but he followed closely while keeping me in front; guarding my back, no doubt.

"What are we doing?" he asked as we scrambled into the outer corridor and headed for the stairs.

"Saving the world!"

"By running away?"

I held up my scarlet trophy. "By preventing the Whore of Babylon from putting her red dress on!"

"I don't understand!"

My reply was drowned out by the thunder of our feet pounding up the stairs.

"What?" he yelled as we reached the first floor.

"I said: Neither do I!"

We turned and ran for the rear exit and the loading docks.

"It can't be that simple!" he protested.

Of course, it wasn't. . . . 

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Framed