Ordinarily, Marcus preferred to fly, but for a trip this short, from one city to a neighboring one, he felt it would be sufficiently safe to drive. And, of course, he'd taken precautions in case day came with him still on the road. In the back of the car was a long trunk, lined and sealed with dark cloth. It did have clothing in it, but it wasn't really there as a suitcase. In the last city that Marcus had passed through, he'd looked up his protege, Alexander, and in the next one, Marcus was planning on checking up on a young anarch that he'd helped settle there. Despite the usual ease of this trip, Marcus felt strangely uneasy, a feeling of being watched with malign intent settling down over him.

He drove more slowly, watching the road around him with care, and tried to pin down the source of this premonition. The half-frown of concentration sat oddly on his lean, kindly features. His short-cropped hair was long since iron gray, threaded with silver at the temples, and his wise face was lined with age. There was something faintly odd-seeming about his appearance, though. His skin, pale as marble, appeared also as smooth and hard, and indeed would have proven so to the touch, had anyone been there to touch it. He looked like some exquisitely detailed statue gifted with motion. Marcus still appeared fit and strong, but as a hale 50-year-old might be, not as a younger man might. A heavy gold ring carved with a lion's head in bold relief winked on his finger as he gripped the steering wheel.

The road was empty, and the woods that surrounded the road were blank black clouds, visible as trees only with Auspex. But someone was there nonetheless, and they did not mean well by him, or at least by someone. Marcus took an unnecessary breath and attempted to settle his nerves. For a confirmed Stoic, Auspex was a mixed blessing at times. His hands clenched slightly on the wheel as another wave of hostile anticipation washed over him from the same unknown source. Where was it coming from? The old vampire tapped the brakes again and cast about, trying to localize the source of the emotion. Which way? Further, no, more that way, and too diffuse to be just one person . . . There!

Marcus threw the wheel hard over and hit the brakes as a black van roared out of the trees directly into his path. The smaller car skidded, spinning in a half-circle and lurching over into the opposite embankment. Even before the car had completely come to rest, Marcus threw the door open and jumped from the car. His white clothing was inconveniently visible, even in the thick shade of the forest, as he ran into the darkness. Behind him, a half-dozen armed men dove from the van and began firing wildly after him. The hail of bullets ripped through the trees around him, several bullets hitting him and bruising or tearing his resistant flesh. Smears of blood marked his shirt as he dodged again, moving faster and starting to leave them behind. Auspex gave him only a split-second warning before the trees right before him burst into flame.

Marcus threw himself sideways, clamping down hard on a surge of panic as burning splinters and twigs rained down on him. He kept rolling, crushing out the smoldering embers on his clothing and skin, as he saw a gaunt, scar-faced man in black step out between the flaming trunks. Marcus made it to his feet again just as the attacking vampire lifted his hands again and fires exploded from them in long ribbons. One ribbon licked across his shoulders like a searing whip, and Marcus gasped in pain and rolled again, hearing, in the distance, running feet coming from the road. Ignoring the agonizing burn, he bolted, trying to double around the burning trees. His feet hit the thick mould on the ground, skidding momentarily on the fallen leaves as he caught his balance again. What did they want? And which was the best direction to head? He put on another burst of speed, watching the trees blur by as he raced back towards the road, ducking branches that whipped by.

"Back there!" Someone shouted, and a thunder of gunfire shattered the night, ripping tattered leaves from branches, and leaving bloody pockmarks deeper and deeper on Marcus's body. The repeated impacts left him staggering, bloody and battered and fighting to stay on his feet as he ran. This time, he half-expected the sudden curtain of fire that rose before him, pitch-filled branches exploding in the sudden heat. Splinters of wood ripped his skin as he was forced, once again, to double back and around. He raked the charring slivers from his body, feeling a dozen points of searing pain as his skin started to burn. Another, closer burst of gunshots blew his feet out from under him, ripping bloody tissue from his legs as he fell. The pain was dizzying, and he couldn't close the wounds fast enough to keep pace.

He rolled, again, climbing to all fours as he felt the minds of his attackers closing in around him, all hot with excitement and blood lust. Dragging one leg, he rose again and made for the thinnest part of the encircling ring. Marcus no longer had any great hope of escaping, but he refused to lie down and die so easily. The two men closest to him dove for him as he bolted, and Marcus narrowly evaded them, knocking one aside with a heavy-handed blow across the chest. The other jerked his gun up and fired, spraying Marcus with bullets. The hot lead tore into his chest and arm, slamming him against a tree. The thin, black-clad vampire appeared out of the night, silhouetted against the flaming trees, as Marcus fell for the last time. With a quick, brutal kick, he flipped Marcus onto his back, then stamped one of Marcus's arms down to the ground with amazing force. Marcus gasped again, feeling the bone snap under his heel. Then he kicked Marcus again, boot slamming into the side of his head. Dazed, Marcus collapsed against the earth for a second, only then seeing, with blurred eyes, the pale wooden shaft the other vampire held. In the second before it pierced his heart, Marcus reached out in thought to the only person who might hear him. Orpheus! Then pain shot through him in a jagged wave, and everything went black. His limbs hung limply, and the voices of his enemies were distant.

"And that is how you catch an elder, Yakob." Dimly, Marcus felt another kick planted in his ribs.

"I told you, pick a loner, and never, never, never let them near you. You, men, load him in the van." Rough hands grabbed arms and legs, dragging him over the uneven forest floor. Then, with a sudden heft, his paralyzed body was heaved into the back of the vehicle, sliding over corrugated metal. The engine rumbled to life, sounding too distant, and the van lurched back onto the road.

"Orpheus. . .� Marcus thought again, but his mental voice was a whisper, confined within his skull, as the darkness around him became overwhelming and he sank into a deathlike sleep.

Far away, there was a house in a city, with a small, windowless study on the second floor. In that room was a desk piled with old books, an antique chest by the wall, and a man in black velvet sitting at the desk. A broad-brimmed black hat hung on the back of the chair, with a single white feather nodding gently in the air. The man in the chair was bent over a crumbling sheet of parchment written in a dead language, with a look of stern intensity on his handsome, grave features. If one had to guess, one would say that he was perhaps 25 or 30 years old, but he was much, much older. Long, dark-brown hair hung in loose waves around his pale face as he leaned closer to make out a blurred letter.

"Orpheus!" He swung abruptly out of the chair, hearing his name called in urgency by a man unknown miles away.

"Father!?" Orpheus looked about, trying to get some sense of Marcus's need. In a reflexive gesture, his right hand had settled on the hilt of the sword that he wore, half-hidden by his cloak as it swirled with his movement.

"Orpheus. . . " The mental voice sank into a dying whisper, but Orpheus was already out of the room and down the stairs as it fell silent. Confused faces turned towards him in the lower rooms as he made for the door; black-haired Julian and little Jenny, the Ravnos in his usual garish clothing and huge, muscular Harry by the door. He raced past them, unconsciously blurring time as he moved to make better speed.

Hardly giving a thought to his actions, Orpheus raced down the worn steps of his home, half sliding his way through the door into the cool dimness of the small garage, and yanked back the heavy tarp covering his old, but well kept motorcycle, and leapt on. His thoughts were not on the blur of motion, however, but on where his father might be. A thousands places and local threats washed through his mind. Should he be going to London, where Marcus kept his haven? To find Victor, his old enemy? Who else could be responsible? Marcus had made dozens of enemies in his time. The bike roared to life beneath him, and Orpheus tore from the garage, his hair caught in the wind and lashing behind him. He remembered, by then, Marcus�s schedule of travel, passing through several local cities only a short distance apart.

The perfect time to attack him, Orpheus thought, and cursed himself for not having learned more about his father�s plans. He tore down the highway. The bike trembled and roared beneath him as he increased his speed. Alexander, he remembered the name, one of the students on Marcus's tour, could he have been involved? Orpheus wouldn't rule it out, and the younger vampire could at least tell him whether Marcus had reached that city.

"Hold on, Father, I'm coming..." His words vanished in the windswept night.

It was a long trip, and the blackness came and went until Marcus lost all track of time. Many of his wounds had healed, but the rising hunger became a pain to rival the remaining burns. Having no other option, Marcus strove to endure with dignity. He occupied himself, with dry humor, in mentally reciting poetry memorized centuries ago, and, more seriously, with attempts to divine the nature and intentions of his captors. Sabbat vampires might very well hunt elders, but with human help? Most unlikely. Few Camarilla vampires would care to make so visible an effort to attack an elder of their own sect and even fewer would let mortals see an elder shrug off bullets and another Kindred throw fire. A personal enemy of his? Marcus couldn�t, offhand, think of anyone who disliked him enough to expend this kind of energy over it. More than a few would shed no tears if he died, but most wouldn�t want to run the risk of actually killing him. Besides, if his captors wanted him dead, he could have been by now. Honestly, with this much time, they could have decapitated him with a salad fork if they�d had nothing more appropriate. A staked vampire makes a very easy target. It must be something else altogether, which struck him as more ominous. Information, perhaps? If so, this would be unpleasant at best, for anything that persons using these methods might want to know, he could not in conscience tell them. Or, perhaps the simplest answer? Maybe all they wanted was his blood. If that was it, his captors were likely to find him harder to forget than they might think, but he himself would surely die before his son could possibly find him.

Several times, the van jerked or lurched, and his limp body rattled over the corrugated floor, sliding into a corner or against a wall. He could feel flakes of rusty metal, or perhaps paint, coming away and scattering as he slid over the floor. It was all somewhat painful, but might be born with calm, save for one time when the van slewed so violently that Marcus was flung sideways against a wall, wrenching the stake in his heart and then driving it deeper. Agony like an explosion of stars engulfed him for a brief instant. Had he been able to move he would have had to grit his teeth against a cry of pain. As it was, lights flashed behind his closed eyes and the darkness came back again for an instant.

Some time later, the vehicle stopped, rolling Marcus up against the partition between himself and the cab. After a few moments, the back doors were opened, and strong hands dragged him forth. Near him, he heard the thin-faced vampire speaking.

� . . . And make sure that stake�s still seated right!� A careless hand prodded it, and Marcus strove to ignore the pain from that movement. Another, lower voice spoke from the other side.

�Sariel, are you sure we can get it through like this? I don�t fancy anyone deciding to search the case . . ."

�Always fretting, Yakob? Have you no faith in our Masters? Nothing will stop us now! Everything has come into place for us. . ..� The first voice trailed off, in reverie, then resumed. �It will work, and our Master will reign again! He has told me how it shall be. Wrap this vessel� A boot-toe jabbed Marcus in the ribs. �And conceal it in the crate, as I bade you!�

A sheet of dirty-smelling fabric was tossed over Marcus�s body, and he was tipped, lifted and rolled as unseen hands bundled it around him. The minds attached to the hands were dulled, constrained by fear or greed. Ordinary men, not all understanding what they saw, but all too fearful of the commanding vampires to be of any help, even had they been aware that the body they handled still housed a living awareness. No one else was present but the two aloof Kindred. Yakob felt . . . young. Greedily ambitious but fearful as well. There was a taint to him, but it was nothing to the corrupt darkness engulfing the other, Sariel. That one was lost. The adoration in his voice when he spoke of his �Masters� was not feigned. Marcus�s thoughts were briefly interrupted as he was tumbled unceremoniously into a deep crate, where he landed on a pile of uneven objects, hard edges and softer, yielding piles pressing against him. The layers of sailcloth wrapped and tied around him provided only minimal protection, either from the things he lay on or the additional piles being thrown in atop him. Grasping at the minds of the men handling it, he caught fleeting images of himself, laying pale and battered in a shipping crate, and the mish-mash of things, mostly books and antique ironmongery, being tossed in on top of him. Then, the wooden lid was dropped onto the crate, and nailed firmly down.

As the crate was passed through buildings, carts, and human hands, Marcus tried to catch at passing minds to learn his location and destination. Most were too preoccupied to afford him any information, in his weakened state, but one mind glanced at the case, giving him a brief look at the packing slip stapled to it. He strained to read, through the indifferent eyes. . . Shipment of antiques, books, and preserved model skeleton, from Nashville, Tennessee to Boston, Massachusetts. Yes! Marcus sank back mentally, abandoning the effort to see and gathering strength to try to reach Orpheus again later, as his crate was pitched into the hold of a north-bound plane, and came to rest, after rolling, on a pile of luggage deep in the dark. And deep in the dark, Marcus sank back into a weary sleep, saving his strength for his next call

The Prince of Knoxville, Orpheus discovered, lived in a Spanish-style hacienda just outside the city limits proper. This was Alexander, Marcus's erstwhile prot�g�. He was also the youngest Camarilla prince in the state, and had recently won a series of amazing victories against the local Sabbat. Further, a number of the city's resident elders had recently died or simply vanished, leaving Alexander in de facto as well as de jure control. Orpheus was able to glean this much information over his cell phone during the ride, by calling an old Nosferatu that he was on good terms with. Gunther was a bit confused by Orpheus�s sudden interest in such a minor city and such a young Prince, but gave him all the information he had. After all, he owed Orpheus a favor or three.

In less than half an hour, Orpheus had made it to Prince Alexander�s Elysium. The young prince held court in an old, high-ceilinged, office building downtown. Typical for a Ventrue, Orpheus thought as he started up the steps. Most of the narrow second floor had been cleared out into a single large room, and Alexander, a rather handsome and neatly dressed black man who appeared to be in his late forties, was sitting in a high armchair at one end of the room. The inside lights were not in use, and a series of long windows along the outside wall cast orange-yellow stripes of light over the worn, polished floor and the broad, rectangular table off to one side. Chairs were scattered around the table, but only one of them was in use. A hunched, wrinkled, leathery-skinned little old man wearing tattered and faded Elizabethan court clothing sat in it, feet dangling, and juggled three wooden balls.

When Orpheus stalked in, Alexander was talking to a petite, brown-haired woman with a shy manner, who stood between him and the Malkavian, Jester. The prince looked up as Orpheus came to a halt five feet from the chair and bowed perfunctorily.

�Who are you?� Alexander asked, justifiably surprised at the entrance of this strange vampire. Orpheus was dressed in dusty black velvet, cut like a French cavalier, with his broad-brimmed hat tucked under one arm.

�My name is Orpheus d�Avignon. I believe you are acquainted with one Marcus Verus? Has he passed through this city recently?� Orpheus, True Brujah or not, had a definite edge of tension underlying his voice. Alexander, not best pleased with Orpheus and his strange questions, steepled his fingers coolly and looked over them at his importunate visitor.

�I do not deny the acquaintance, indeed, am honored by it, but I fail to see why it should be of concern to you.�

�Has he been here?� Orpheus demanded, grimly. Alexander, beginning to take umbrage at his visitor�s tone, started to rise when, suddenly, the wrinkled little man hopped to his feet and flipped himself onto the table at one side. His wooden balls clattered to the floor and rolled away.

�Passed? Now who really passes . . .? Yes, he passed over, passed under, passed through here, and then he passed away. . . � Jester cackled madly, with blood tears seeping down his leathery cheeks. He pointed at Orpheus with one brown and shaking hand.

�Aha, you�re looking for your father! Such a noble son! But they took him away over earth and water, and now they�ll play hide and seek.� Jester slumped on the table, rapping his knuckles rapidly against the wood. Then, totally throwing off his apparent dejection, the Malkavian leapt to his feet on the table and began to declaim, head thrown back and striding about the table as if on a stage.

�He cannot be such a monster�,br> To his father, that so tenderly and entirely loves him.
Heaven and earth! Edmund, seek him out, wind me unto him,
I pray you: frame the business after your own wisdom.
I would unstate myself, to be in a due resolution....�

The slim, pale woman, who had grown even paler as Jester began to rave, knelt on a chair and tried to coax him down from the table, finally all but dragging the other vampire from the hall. Echoing down the narrow corridors behind him, Orpheus and Alexander heard:

�My liege,
They are not yet come back. But I have spoke
With one that saw him die: who did report
That very frankly he confess'd his treasons,
Implored your highness' pardon and set forth
A deep repentance: nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it; he died
As one that had been studied in his death
To throw away the dearest thing he owed,
As 'twere a careless trifle.�

A distant door closed, cutting off Jester�s recitation of Macbeth and King Lear, which had risen almost to a shriek as he was pulled further away. Alexander, looking rather shaken, turned back to Orpheus.

�What the devil?� The prince blinked, off balance at this unanticipated display from the Malkavian. �Do you have any idea what that was all about?" Orpheus, immersed in grim speculation, had no reply.

�Well, as I daresay you�ve gathered, yes. Marcus Verus was here last night, and left just after sunset this evening.� Alexander capitulated, with a shrug. �Beyond that, I don�t know. And I am still rather interested in your reasons for wanting to know his whereabouts.�

�He is my father.� Orpheus said flatly. �I have reason to believe he is in some distress, and I am looking for him. Which way did he go when he left?� �Your father?� Alexander blinked. He was on the verge of asking more, but stopped himself at the look on Orpheus�s face.

�He took the highway north. I believe he was headed for Lewisville.�

Tossed, bruised, and battered, Marcus lay where he had been dropped, having had small choice in the matter. Only a handful of burns remained, but the healing of the bullet wounds had cost him. Hunger gnawed at him, twisting his guts. And the stake, now blackened with the blood it had absorbed, still held him helpless. The mortal guards who had removed him from his crate and dragged him in had been sent away, but someone was approaching from the other side of the little antechamber. Marcus could hear the footsteps, and feel the mind of another vampire. This one was sharp, incisive, and gloatingly ambitious. Other footsteps came following the first, minds grayed with fear and need. Briefly, Marcus struggled to make his paralyzed limbs obey him, and gave it up again, schooling himself to such calm as might be attained.

�Begin!� A low, female voice said commandingly. A bizarre choir of cracked, thin voices took up a mumbling chant in some half-familiar language. Marcus, baffled, tried to listen as hands caught him, lifting him into the air briefly, then lowering him with surprising gentleness onto a flat surface. A table, Marcus guessed, as he tried to focus on just one person�s perceptions. A kaleidoscopic whirl of images filled his mind briefly, then spun and narrowed down to one pair of eyes. He saw himself, pale as marble, still half-wrapped in a canvas tarp, lying on a broad metal table, saw a tall, dark-featured woman, wrapped in a black, translucent veil on the far side of it, and felt his host�s fear of her. An odd set of jagged scars ran down her cheeks, looking unpleasantly familiar to Marcus. Some three or four other people, thin and raggedly dressed, stood about the table, having just finished lifting his body onto it. His host mouthed the chant without comprehension or thought, reciting the syllables in droning sequence.

The dark woman gestured and the slaves? Yes, they were. Began peeling away the thick tarp, and then stripping the bloody, torn clothing from his stone-hard flesh. The stained stake, protruding at an angle from the left side of his chest, was left carefully untouched. Marcus probed carefully at the memories of the mind he had entered, and found only hazy scraps. This person was heavily addicted to something, used it regularly, looked forward to that drug alone, rarely ate, drank, or washed, and had very little left save need for the drug and terror of his mistress. Piecing together scraps of things seen or overheard by this deadened mind, Marcus concluded, with an unpleasant chill, that he had been captured by a coven of Infernalists. He had been as yet unable to give Orpheus more than the weakest scraps of information to go on, and therefore had but little hope of being found. All things taken together, Marcus realized, it behooved him to prepare to bear a painful death with dignity.

He relaxed his �reach� and let his perceptions fall back into darkness broken by the sounds of movements, and sought to compose his mind as his body was turned, lifted and shifted by the dulled slaves. Distantly, he felt himself being stripped of the last tatters of his clothes, then felt water on his skin, felt his wounds being sponged clean and traces of blood and forest dirt being washed away. Holding himself deep within, Marcus began his meditations as fine brushes painted patterns of black and gilt on his skin.

The veiled woman laughed softly, holding a black brush in her hand. With almost loving care, she drew the tip along the line of Marcus�s eyelid, outlining his eyes with exaggerated black lines. More black framed his lips, and traced the line of his cheekbones. Gilt paint, swirling like tarnished light in it�s pot, she used to add a line of dots over his brows, repeating the pattern around his eyes. The handful of ghouls huddled quietly in corners, not having been dismissed and not daring to disturb their mistress at her work. Referring frequently to an ancient text, she carefully traced characters from a dead language over his hands, the soles of his feet, and across his chest. The corrupted Enochian squiggles looked like tattoos when she was done, dabbing the brush clean in a cup of water. With a swish of silk, she drew a black bundle from a trunk beneath the table, and proceeded to dress Marcus in its contents. A long, full robe of translucent black silk, open down the front, full trousers of the same material, gathered beneath broad cuffs of beaten gold at the ankles. A heavy, broad collar of gold tiles and squares of polished jet was hung around his neck, and a matching belt was clasped around his waist, completing a look of barbaric splendor. Marcus, briefly noting the outfit, managed a moment of stifled amusement at its overdone melodrama. It still didn�t bode well, he was probably going to be sacrificed to something fairly nasty, but it was at least humorous, if profoundly undignified, he thought.

At a snap from their mistress�s fingers, the huddled slaves jumped to their feet and lifted Marcus carefully from the table, bearing him in slow procession into the next room. Their droning chant had resumed as they shouldered his weight. Marcus, trying to distract himself, attempted again to decipher their words. It sounded half-familiar, somehow, like ones� native language being spoken underwater. He found that when he let his mind drift snatches of meaning came to him for some of the mumbled phrases.

�Dread lord, thy servants. . .�

�Accept, Master. . ..�

Enochian? Marcus thought in surprise. But it was. A corrupted, almost incomprehensible dialect of Enochian. Now why would they be speaking that? Of course, it wasn't exactly as if he could ask.

Marcus sighed silently, feeling the nagging ache of the stake in his heart and the deadening weakness of his limbs. All practicality and linguistic curiosity aside, he wished he could move. It would be equally hopeless, or nearly so, but it wouldn�t seem quite so bad. Then he shrugged the feeling off, being rather embarrassed by his own lapse into self-pity.

A jostling movement as one of the slaves stumbled rocked his head, allowing one eye to fall open slightly. Marcus winced at the sudden light, but was unable to blink. The room he�d just been born into was not actually all that bright, lit mostly by lights hidden behind smoked screens of glass. Marcus wasn�t sure if they were electric lights or actual torches, from the little he was able to see.

Unexpectedly, the people carrying him turned him over and lowered him unevenly on to a table face down. As the butt of the stake hit the surface, it was jammed deeper, almost flush with his chest by the end. Marcus, dizzy with pain, felt the point pressing sickeningly upwards through the skin and muscle of his back. Every movement shifted the wooden shaft; raking and twisting it against the raw, torn flesh it passed through. An involuntary tremor shook his body as the stake shifted in his heart. It took him several moments to re-establish a sort of calm, fighting the new pain off grimly.

When his thoughts cleared again, the veiled woman was directing one of the slaves to fetch something for her. He'd missed the first part of the command, but she was telling him where to look for the item in question. Footsteps left the room, and returned several minutes later. More than one person, and they were dragging something. It sounded like something hard and heavy, scraping rather than brushing over the concrete floor.

His head was resting at an angle on the low table, so he was able to see when the vampiress came around to him again, holding another small pot in one hand, and a small metal tool in the other. He couldn't quite make out what it was. Unwanted apprehension tightened his chest before he could push it away. Stepping half out of his line of sight, she dipped the tool and bent. Marcus felt something drip on his back, through the thin silk, then felt it smeared or brushed out into a line. It had felt cold, but by the time a second drop hit, it felt almost hot, then burning! Marcus shuddered slightly, through the paralysis, as he felt the acidic paste burn through the cloth and start into his skin. The witch finished her first row of script and began another. Marcus's limp, pale hands trembled for a moment as she started again, daubing the thin, cloudy paste onto his helpless flesh.

By the time she was done, five inch-wide bands of skin were eaten down into the muscle below, leaving the vile phrases of the invocation seared into Marcus's body. His mind was spinning, and he felt like gasping for air, useless though it was. This was going to be every bit as bad as he'd expected. I wonder if Orpheus will ever figure out what happened to me? I hope not. It'll be better if he doesn't know the details . . .. Marcus thought, lightheaded. It would just make it worse for him. He'll think it's his fault anyway, poor boy. I wish I could tell him ....

Hands caught at him again, lifting, carrying, and then flipping him over onto his raw back. Marcus unfocused his eyes and stared at the light on the ceiling until the pain subsided again, holding not his body but his thoughts ruthlessly still until the shrieking agony faded into a dull, persistent ache. He was lying across some sort of broad beam, sprawled at a bit of an angle, with his right arm hanging across his chest and his left outflung, along another crossing beam. This was probably what he�d heard being dragged in, but what. . . .? Abruptly, Marcus realized what was about to happen. Oh dear ... He thought, seeing Sariel, the gaunt faced fanatic, enter the room and lift a hammer from a bench. The other, shorter man, Yakob, looked nervous, perhaps lacking the nerve for this endeavor. He was carrying what looked like a pair of tongs.

Sariel, with a tight, hungry smile on his face, laid the hammer on the table and began chanting loudly in the defiled Enochian Marcus had heard before. Glancing sideways, Marcus could just make out Yakob, standing by a deep brazier filled with glowing coals. He was shuffling the embers about with the tongs, as if looking for something hidden in them. Marcus swallowed a wave of dread, seeing the tongs start to heat as Sariel finished his chant.

At a gesture from the woman, two of the slaves stepped forward again and arranged Marcus on the cross beams, stretching his right arm out along the wood, and straightening his left arm as well. His wrists were secured with a few turns of rope on each side. Then the world dissolved briefly as they tugged him slightly downwards, scraping his back over the rough-hewn beam. His vision came back a few seconds later, as they carefully overlapped his feet and bound his ankles in place. On the left, Yakob picked a large, glowing, dull-red nail out of the coals, and Marcus grimly looked away as Yakob held the iron spike above his left wrist, close enough for the heat to sear the skin. Sariel, still smiling dreadfully, lifted the hammer and brought it down again. Raw agony lanced up Marcus�s arm as the searing nail was driven perhaps an inch into his resistant flesh.

Stroke after stroke, Sariel hammered it in, piercing skin and muscle before finally burning its way into the coarse-grained oak beneath. The pain was sickening, exhausting, never-ending. Marcus�s world narrowed down to his tortured wrist and the one remaining coherent thought in his mind: To the body belong sensations, to the soul appetites, to the intelligence principles. . .. To the body, only to the body, belong sensations . . .. As Yakob lifted a second nail from the dish of coals.

That mantra sustained him in some semblance of sanity through the final stroke of the hammer, seating the third nail through his paired feet and flattening them against the beam. Half-entranced, Marcus was still aware of the feel of small bones breaking as the nail was driven through, and of the incredible pain as his flesh began to char from the hot metal. He was also able to push it away, almost to ignore it. He felt giddy, lightheaded, almost floating. And perhaps because of his unusual mental exertions, his Auspex seemed preternaturally sharp. He could feel the sunrise approaching, miles away from the buried room he lay in. He could feel, in distant yet exact detail, every nuance of his captors� minds. He felt their little needs and their great ones, their fears, plans, and hatreds, but felt no concern for himself at their hands, only a faint shock as he realized the nature of the sacrifice they sought to prepare. He could not now escape his body through the flight of the mind, he realized, but must linger and endure, perhaps hopelessly.

He could feel the movement of rousing birds in the forest above this maze of rooms, and it was hard, so hard, to avoid letting himself join them. Marcus hung in exhausted clarity as the cross was heaved upright and against one wall, as the stake was torn from his chest in a wrench of new pain, as a hasty circle of arcane symbols were scrawled about him on the floor. A bizarre calm had overtaken him at the cessation of his torture, and he found himself surprisingly untroubled even by the prospect of his protracted fate, holding only a vague regret for the tangled darknesses of his captors� hearts. It was sad, that they should be so troubled, he thought briefly. Reaching out, almost carelessly, Marcus felt a most familiar distant mind and was faintly surprised to be reminded of Orpheus�s concern and dread. It was easy to see, but hard, somehow, to frame coherent thoughts. Easier to become only perception without thought. . . . Yet, his son, so worried, and looking for him. . . . Marcus forced himself ruthlessly back into his body, feeling again the agony of his pierced wrists and broken feet.

�Orpheus, my son. . . . �

�FATHER!! Where ARE you?!� Orpheus�s thought responded in urgency. Yes, where was he, after all? Marcus thought. Orpheus�s distress was making it easier to recall mundane concerns, but it was also making it much harder to retain any distance from the agony in his limbs.

�Boston. . . .Outside of Boston. . . .Hidden. . . . Be careful. . .It�s too late now, I can�t. . . Not your fault, my son. . .Sun rising. . . . .� Marcus managed, pitying Orpheus�s worry as mental exertion, physical pain, and the lassitude of sunrise overtook him, pulling him down into sleep and away from the contact.

It took Orpheus less time than he had feared to find clues after he left Knoxville. On the other hand, the nature of those clues was bad, very bad. Knowing that Marcus frequently rented a car for his over-land trips, Orpheus had pulled his cycle over when he saw a small white car with rental plates parked half-in, half out of a ditch by the road, and facing the wrong way, headlights glowing. The driver�s door was open, and a soft, periodic chime sounded into the empty forest: ting, ting, ting.

The dome light was on, still, and so were the headlights, although they were beginning to dim slightly. Orpheus circled the car cautiously, inspecting it from all sides before coming closer. There were two sets of broad skid marks crossing the road at that point, and deep depressions in the soft earth a little further on. It looked like a heavier vehicle had been driven off the road as well, then back on to it, churning up heaps of torn soil and leaves as it�s wheels spun.

Orpheus knelt by the driver�s side, and saw the keys hanging in the ignition, wrenched over to off with such force that the key itself was bent slightly towards the door. Then Orpheus felt a sudden sinking feeling of confirmation. The car was new, and unfamiliar, but the trunk in the back seat was something he�d seen a thousand times or more. It was big, and heavy, an elderly steamer trunk. The last time he�d seen it had been in Marcus�s London haven, sitting at the foot of his father�s bed. He flipped it open, tipping the thick lid back. It was better than half empty, with a few garments folded and lying in the bottom of it. Marcus�s white wool tunic and toga, a pair of sandals, and another set of more modern clothes, turtleneck and trousers, also in undyed cloth. A cloak-clasp of hammered gold, dating back to the days of the Roman Emperors, winked forlornly from a nest of creamy white cloth. Unthinking, he reached out and picked it up, turning the smooth, cool weight over and over in his hand as he stared blindly across the road, weighing possibilities with lightning speed.

Marcus had been the driver, and something had happened to cause him to abandon his car, leaving the door open and all the lights on. It looked like the other vehicle had cut him off, pulling out across the road in front of him. What had happened then? Orpheus circled the car a second time, looking at the damp ground. The car had slid off the road rather than been driven, the tires leaving sideways scrapes from the edge of the asphalt. Where the driver�s door hung open, there were footprints pressed shallowly into the gravely ground. Marcus must have been moving very fast to leave even that much of a mark, Orpheus noted, stepping back and looking about for the next footprints.

Kneeling on the cold earth and wishing for the hundredth time that he�d been able to learn Auspex, Orpheus inspected the ground, finding first one, then another impression, then a few more, all shallow, all from a running man, and all leading deeper into the forest. Following slowly, Orpheus rose again, switching on a flashlight and moving, pace by pace, as he picked out each step. After several yards, he saw something odd on the ground. A small, distorted lump of lead. He picked it up, and, looking around, saw other bullets on the ground and embedded deeply in the tree-trunks. This whole area must have been raked with fire to leave so many. A few paces ahead, there were a scattering of dark droplets on the leaves of a low-growing fern, and more on the pale bark of a beech tree. Orpheus dabbed a fingertip in the dark, thick fluid, unnaturally liquid still, and touched it to his tongue. Even before he�d tasted it, the rich, potent smell filled his nostrils. The taste only confirmed it. The splatter was Marcus�s blood, or else someone had found and attacked some other 5th generation Salubri elder. Looking at the smudge remaining on his fingers and smelling the strength of even that scant droplet, Orpheus thought coldly �A diablerist would covet this.� And felt a bitter rage at the idea of his father, that wise, saintly man, being extinguished forever to feed some avaricious ancilla�s lust for power.

But there wasn�t enough blood on the ground, or enough trampling, to suggest that Marcus had actually been brought down here. And the footsteps continued deeper into the forest, with only occasional traces of blood. Marcus had been hit, but he hadn�t fallen, so far as Orpheus could tell. He might even have made it away, and collapsed hurt and unconscious deeper in the woods. He hoped so, but he didn�t really believe it. In his long experience, life, and unlife especially, didn�t work that way. In the next clearing, his sense of smell warned him before his eyes did, the smoky scent of burning hanging heavy between the blackened trees. Not fire, please not fire for him. . .Orpheus thought, moving faster along the trail. One particular stand of trees had been burnt to skeletal husks, a few limbs still glowing ominously with dying embers. Flames had charred the fallen leaves and moldering twigs around them down to the bare earth, but had, oddly, burned no farther. Orpheus searched the ashes, but found no smell of blood, no bone, and no scrap of cloth nor trace of metal. He rose from his knees, fingers gray with ash, and looked about again, seeing only then a handful of smaller burns on a few trees to his left.

Now, these were strange. It looked like someone had held a torch to them briefly, all at about the level of Orpheus�s shoulders, just long enough to char the bark black and brittle. All the damage was in one long stripe. Thrown fire. Thrown at Marcus? Orpheus wondered, studying the ground again. Yes. Footsteps again. Marcus had doubled back, turned back by the inferno admidst the trees before him, and had run this way, first to the left, then curving back towards the road. Orpheus followed the trail for another few minutes, slowly, before coming to a larger clearing, where the ground was trampled by many feet and another half-ring of trees had been torched. The scent in the air was simple enough to read, though.

He could smell Marcus�s blood heavy on the still air, overlaid with wood smoke and the lingering acrid smell of gunpowder. The trees were riddled with bullets, some of the smaller ones leaning and half-severed by the hail of fire. The dark, scattered smears were mostly lost in the trampled earth, but some remained on the lingering autumn leaves. A bloody rag of white cloth hung on the bark of a yellow pine, at one edge, and a thick smear of blood was on its pockmarked trunk. Not three paces from that pine, there was a single, darkly ominous stain, sunk deep into the earth, but still wet. So much blood had been spilled on this spot that the thirsty earth could not absorb it all. Very slowly, Orpheus laid one hand palm-down on the darkened earth then lifted it, seeing the dull, rusty stains left on the pads of his fingers and the flat of his palm. His father�s blood, spilled out on the insensate clay. Orpheus closed his eyes for a moment, digging his nails into his palms. No ash. Orpheus thought. No ash. Marcus did not die here. If he is dead. If. Moving with careful deliberation, Orpheus rose to his feet again, holding his bloody hand as if balancing something precious in the open palm. He took the rag of bloody cloth from the pine tree, and wrapped it around the gold clasp in his pocket, holding the bundle tightly.

Orpheus began circling the clearing again, trying to work out what happened next. Obviously, Marcus had been very badly hurt by then, he had fallen, he had been in some way injured further to leave so much blood on the earth, but then what? Orpheus was willing to presume that Marcus had been staked. Otherwise, he�d have heard from him again by now. If he is still alive. If whoever had attacked him hasn�t yet decided to diablerize him.

Orpheus smelled the blood on the air again, rich and compelling, and grimly redirected his thoughts. If there were any chance at all that Marcus might still need any aid he could render, he would find him. And if it was too late, if his father had been murdered already, someone would pay. In the circle of the clearing, many footprints overlapped, but all of them seemed to have left the same way, back towards the road at a slight angle. The trail was so confused, Orpheus couldn�t make out if any of the tracks were deep enough to indicate someone carrying a man of Marcus�s weight. He followed it anyway, back to the road. It was getting near to dawn, and he wouldn�t have time to make it into a city, so late. It looked like whoever had left the clearing had all gotten into the other, heavier vehicle, and had left in it. If Marcus had been with them, he could be almost anywhere by now.

Orpheus sat down in the driver�s seat of Marcus�s abandoned car and looked at the gold clasp. Marcus had owned it for almost all of his life, mortal and immortal. Orpheus had seen it on his shoulder countless times, happy and sad. It was smudged with blood from the cloth, and from his fingers. He closed his hand around it again, tightening his grip until the soft gold started to bend under the pressure. It would have been a relief to be able to weep, but all he could feel was cold. Empty. Alone. The trunk on the back seat, and the clothing within it all smelled like the marble-faced library in Marcus�s haven, where the shelves of ancient books and scrolls were protected from moths and vermin with rosemary sprigs tucked into the shelves, and the smoke of burning sandalwood.

Orpheus closed his eyes and smelled it, the lingering, piney scent of the dried herbs and the warm, smoky fumigant. It almost blotted out the smell of blood on his hands. It smelled like Marcus, like the faint, proud smile on his face as he rose to welcome his errant son home again. It smelled like the long evenings spent arguing philosophy back and forth, Marcus playing devil�s advocate and smiling more noticably every time Orpheus won a point from him.

�Orpheus, my son. . . . � It was the softest possible whisper of presence, a tenuous feeling like golden lamplight and the rough warmth of Marcus�s wool cloak that strengthened as he focused on it.

�Father!! Where are you!� Orpheus�s head snapped up, hearing his father�s voice. There was a nebulous feeling of confusion for a moment, and then Orpheus winced, feeling a hot-needle stab of pain in his wrists and through his feet, a painful itching on his back, and a dull ache in his heart, and realized that he was feeling this by proxy. These were shadows of Marcus�s sensations, along with the leaden weariness that had just settled on him.

�Boston. . . .Outside of Boston. . . . Hidden. . . � Marcus�s thought whispered. The contact thinned almost to breaking for an instant, the pain pulsing more sharply through to Orpheus�s perceptions, then solidifying again, with the pain pushed away.

� Be careful. . .It�s too late now, I can�t. . . Not your fault, my son. . .Sun rising. . . . .� A flash of stunning agony lanced through the link for an instant, then it broke completely.

�No! Father!!� But there was no other reply. Orpheus heard the echoes of his own voice lose themselves between the trees as he sank back into the seat, head bowed in pain. Too late now? What did Marcus mean? Orpheus considered the ominous implications of the last phrase and gritted his teeth. Sun rising. His wrists still ached in sympathy with the projected sensation, and the phantom pain laid like a burn across his back was slow to fade. What have they done to you, Father?

Overhead, the sky was just beginning to lighten. Orpheus felt a faint, familiar twinge of instinctive fear as the east turned gray, and slid into the back seat. He carefully lifted the folded clothing from the case before climbing in. Marcus was a tall man. Orpheus�s head and feet cleared the ends of the case as he stretched himself out in it, pulling the lid closed and finding, by touch, the catch on the inside. Boston. Orpheus thought drowsily, smelling the rosemary and sandalwood. Hold on, Father.

The antique-look upright phone on the end of her desk was ringing. Mildly annoyed, Morgana yawned and climbed out of her broad, velvet-curtained four-poster and went into her study to answer it. Who would call this close to dawn, anyhow?

�Hello?� On the other end of the phone. Oh. It was Julian. Now what?

�Yes?�

�I�m sorry to call so late, really I am, but do you know where Orpheus is?� The boy sounded more than slightly distraught.

�He�s not with you? Or are you not in his haven?�

�No, I mean, I am, but he isn�t. He took off all of a sudden a few hours after sunset. I thought he�d be back before now, but it�s dawn, and he�s not back, and no-one�s called or anything, and.. .�

�And you wanted to know if I�d sent him off to do something. No. I had no idea he was gone. Which is a bit odd by itself, actually.� Morgana was starting, reluctantly, to wake back up. �Ordinarily he�d call me and ask me to keep an eye on you if he�s going to be away during the day.� She shook her head, still groggy.

�Julian, I know you�re worried, but Orpheus is a big elder now. I don�t know what he�s off about, but I�m fairly sure he can take care of himself. You�ve seen him fight. Maybe a friend asked him for help, or someone called a favor in right away. But you know he wouldn�t do that if he thought you�d be in any danger.�

�No... but. . .�

�Don�t worry, for now. If I hear anything, I�ll call you. And if anything happens over there, or you need help, I want you to call me, okay?�

�Okay. . ..�

�Go to sleep, Julian. You�ll feel better. Goodbye.�

�Bye. . .� Morgana hung up the phone and went back to bed, heavy-eyed. It was odd, but Orpheus did a number of odd things. And Harry all by himself was a better daytime defense than most vampires would ever have. Orpheus�s brood would be fine. She flopped back under the coverlet and fell gladly asleep, sprawled like a tiny porcelain doll in the oversized, red-hung bed.

A dozen blocks away, Julian sat unhappily on his bed, lean body hunched over as he hugged his knees against his chest. This wasn�t like Orpheus. Their elder guardian had never just taken off without so much as a word to them. Something somewhere must have gone drastically wrong for him to do this.

Orpheus�s little daughter, Jenny, was whimpering softly to herself in the next room, and it was that sound, more than anything else, which got Julian back onto his feet. He went over to check on her, and found the little Malkavian hunched up on her bed much as he had been, pale-pink flannel nightgown tucked around her little white feet. With a sigh, Julian sat down on the edge of her frilly rose bed and wrapped his arms around her, hugging her head against his chest.

�He�ll come back, Jenny. You know he�ll come back.� She sniffled sadly, wiping a bloody tear off her cheek. Her long dark hair was hanging in tangled, loose curls, and Julian began to smooth it back, stroking her hair gently.

�Hey, hey. Shhhhh.. . . It�s okay, Jenny. Why are you so worried right now?�

�Daddy�s upset.� Jenny looked up at Julian with miserable dark eyes. �He�s scared and angry and worried, and he�s going to go even further away.� Julian blinked. He knew Jenny had Auspex, and that she usually had a decent feel for what Orpheus was thinking, but what could make Orpheus scared? Orpheus was the Cainite answer to the Vulcans! He had always been very loving to his childer, very protective, but the man was incredibly cool. Julian could count on the thumbs of one hand the number of times he�d seen Orpheus visibly upset by anything. The worried neonate hugged his �sister� closer, patting her back as she sniffled against his tee shirt.

�Go to sleep, kiddo. He�ll be back. He loves you, Jenny-girl. You know that.� Julian held her back briefly and looked at her teary-eyed face, then sighed.

�What if I stay in here with you, huh? Will that make it easier for you to sleep?� Jenny nodded solemnly. Julian tucked her into bed, fluffing the frilly comforter up around her shoulders, then flopped down beside her, his feet hanging off the foot of the little bed. Jenny pushed her face up against his shoulder and promptly fell asleep. Julian, still worried, took longer to drift off into unsettling dreams.

Marcus, unfortunately, did not go through any merciful period of confusion when he awoke. The enduring pain in his pierced wrists and broken feet was more than enough to remind him. His hunger was a red haze in his mind and a devouring need in his body. He swallowed, dryly, and was slightly surprised by his ability to move. Oh yes. They took the stake out. The lingering scent of his own blood was aggravating his hunger. Carefully ignoring it, he took a breath, and then, very deliberately, bent as much strength as he could muster against the nail in his right arm. Gods of Olympus! A black wave, starred with blinding fireworks of pain, washed over him. The nail didn�t budge a centimeter. A faint, stifled sound, almost a gasp, escaped his lips as he hung shaking in the aftermath.

Marcus held very still until his vision cleared again, and then gritted his teeth and tested the nail in his left wrist, with the same agonizing results. He didn�t bother with his feet. Even if he�d been able to free them, they wouldn�t have been any real help. Clearly, he just didn't have the leverage to work the nails free in his present position. Giving up and hanging limply, Marcus assessed himself. His hunger was serious. He would need blood soon, or be unable to rouse himself from sleep when next he slept. The grinding pain was wearing on him, but not unendurable. At least, not yet. The pain in his back was unabated, flaring up with the passage of each current of air. He was weary yet, but his head was relatively clear. That, at least, was good news. He remembered having been able to reach Orpheus, at least briefly, just before dawn, but Marcus was not sure that he�d been able to convey much information. I was more addled than I thought, Marcus noted, thinking over his disjointed message.

He looked around the room, noting the glow of torches behind smoked glass, the deliberately dim and ominous cast of the room. Currently, he was alone, his feet hanging perhaps three feet off the ground. The cross he was nailed to had been pushed up against one wall, almost straight. His arms were stretched to full extension, throwing all his weight on his protesting shoulders. The antechamber through which they�d brought him was on his left and down the hall, the door closed. On his right, a low, vaguely altar-like table of black stone framed with beaten gold was visible, the black-stained stake torn from his heart lying atop it. An additional pulse of pain swelled in his chest as if in reminder. Marcus closed his eyes briefly, wondering if Orpheus would be awake yet, and if, were he so, if he himself would be able to reach him again. A moment later, his thoughts were interrupted by the antechamber door opening. Sariel walked in, a hungry anticipation on his thin, scarred face. He was wearing a long black robe very much like the one that Marcus had been dressed in and black boots, thudding on the stone floor. Marcus lifted his head and looked down at his chief tormenter as Sariel reached the foot of the cross and stood there, staring up at him with unreadable eyes.

�Just you and me, this early evening. But we don�t need the others for this, do we?� Sariel murmured, running a fingertip over Marcus�s foot. Marcus tensed slightly, feeling the touch so close to the bruised, burnt, and battered flesh around the nail.

�Just the two of us, for now.� Sariel breathed, laying a hand on Marcus�s calf and looking up at him. The dark chaos that was Sariel�s emotions resolved into a dripping, blood-red anticipation and a bruise-black need. Marcus shuddered at the sight, as he had not when Sariel laid a hand to his wounds. The infernalist�s touch was almost caressing, gentle as a lover�s, as he lightly traced the now- mostly-healed track of the bullet-wounds that had brought Marcus down.

�We mustn�t have you flawed for him, you know.� Sariel�s whisper was almost inaudible, insinuating. �A perfect offering for my Master.� Marcus felt sick, a wholly mortal reaction of revulsion briefly gripping him. You poor dupe. You deluded fool. I wonder what you were promised to win you so?

�You can do nothing to me.� Marcus�s voice wasn�t quite so firm as he would have preferred, after such long silence, but it was still calm, the gravely oratorical voice he�d practiced as a young man.

�You have misjudged your target badly.� Marcus looked down, brown eyes meeting Sariel�s black without apparent fear. �I shall not give you what you want from me, and I will die before I yield.� Sariel appeared briefly surprised that Marcus would speak, let alone defy him. Then that same hungry smile spread back over his thin lips again.

�Oh, but you will. No man endures forever, and we can visit agony beyond your most haunted nightmares upon you. You will welcome my Master when he comes, and give him flesh gladly, in exchange for oblivion.�

Marcus simply shook his head, not bothering to speak. He is mad, of course. A quiet analytical thought said. No less, this will be difficult. Sariel, not bothering to speak further with his captive, turned on his heel and left the room, door swinging shut behind him. Marcus shivered again, feeling his own savage hunger almost as a thing apart from the rest of himself. He was starving, swallowing down bestial instinctive need for every clear thought. Marcus was fairly sure that he would not be offered anything that he could actually drink, though, and he didn�t want to tell them he was Salubri if they didn�t already know. Not that it could make much of a difference, but secrecy had become second nature. Better to starve into torpor. Marcus wondered briefly if a torporous state would actually pose any obstacle to their intentions.

Sariel returned, and Marcus bowed his head in regret, seeing the hapless mortals the Baali was dragging with him and reading his intent. Would an admission of my clan save them? Surely it couldn�t make my condition any worse. Sariel caught one of them, a thin, fair-haired woman with a hopeless face and dragging steps, and pinned her, almost gently, against the wall for a moment, looking her over. Then he caught her hair and forced her down across the black stone altar, all but breaking her neck with the wrench. I had better decide NOW! Marcus thought, with building urgency, as Sariel drew a long knife from his belt. I may at least distract him.

�Sariel! Let her go.� Marcus commanded, gathering the tatters of his dignity about him. Even in this state, Marcus managed to look kingly. �It would be useless. As you should know.� Sariel let his knife hand hang at his side, turning to look up at Marcus without releasing the pale hair twisted about his other hand.

�What do you mean, old one?� Sariel�s tone was cool, almost mocking. �Do you not hunger for her? Do you not desire her blood? I can feel your hunger now.�

�It would be useless, Sariel. I am Salubri.� Marcus said, flatly. Sariel, for the first time, looked genuinely if briefly floored. His grasp loosened, and the terrified girl slid to the floor, huddling on the far side of the altar and hugging herself.

�Salubri? You?� Marcus inclined his head in assent. Sariel slowly rose, leaving the knife lying on the dull stone. His stunned look was fading into an expression of gloating exultation.

�Such perfection of coincidence! Truly this is destined. A most fitting and ironic offering we have found indeed.� Sariel was pacing back and forth below the cross, eyeing Marcus as if he were some exotic animal. "But we must be sure." Sariel abruptly swung up onto a flight of stone stairs beside the cross, bringing his head slightly higher than Marcus's. Lacing his fingers through Marcus's hair, he forced the old Salubri's head back, then whipped a second, smaller blade from his belt and touched the point to Marcus's brow. Marcus tried to pull his head away, but found himself without the leverage to match Sariel's strength, who simply tightened his grip. Sariel began to trace the blade lightly over Marcus's skin, delicately probing each fold and line. Marcus flinched, involuntarily, when the blade grazed his third eye, and, with a barking laugh, Sariel forced the eyelid up with a fingertip. He laid the knifepoint at the corner of the eye, and smiled with anticipation, seeing the mark of his clan's oldest enemies.

"And so you are, aren't you." Sariel whispered, almost to himself. He passed a featherlight finger over the folded skin above the opened eye.

"How perfect." Sariel flicked the blade, slitting the eyelid away. Marcus held grimly still through the bright flash of pain, not wishing to lose the eye as well in some heedless motion. A single drop of garnet-black blood welled up along the incision and trickled down along one corner of the exposed third eye, leaving a damply stained track behind it. Sariel dabbed it up on one fingertip and licked it from his finger with a snakelike flicker of tongue, looking over his hand at Marcus as he did so. Indifferently, Marcus looked away, down at the floor, concealing an instinctive flash of unease. Vampires were predators. It had always been so, in the deepest parts of their minds and in their blood. Now, that part of Marcus knew itself in the presence of another predator, and knew itself helpless. Even such a faint scent of blood shocked Marcus's hunger back to the forefront of his mind. He had centuries of training to resist it, and still it was difficult. He closed his eyes and let his head hang, fighting it down until it passed.

Upon hearing Sariel's movement, Marcus looked up again. The fanatical Baali was kneeling by the altar again, re-collecting his sacrificial dagger. For a second, Marcus thought he was about to put it away. Then, with a flick of his hand, Sariel buried it deep in the woman's breast. She jerked, once, her eyes going blank, and crumpled with a sound that was almost a sob. Marcus had recoiled as she did, then slumped back, feeling weary despair. It made no difference. I should have known.

Sariel wrapped his fist in her hair again, and dragged the limp corpse back across his knee, pulling her head back to bare her throat. With a move of horrible casualness, he ripped it open, blood spilling still warm across his face and hands as he drank. Marcus looked away, in mute grief, still fighting the hunger that followed the scent of blood on the air. That poor girl. With his undesirably sharp perceptions, Marcus could see a misty cloud of silver-gray drifting above the corpse. Her newly freed spirit, too confused to realize it was dead. Marcus hung silent and all but uncaring for several minutes, while Sariel finished his meal. Then the elder's attention was abruptly recalled when Sariel climbed the steps again and caught his hair, drawing Marcus's head back as he had the girl's. Marcus felt a moment of perverse relief, expecting death, then realized Sariel's actual intentions and began to struggle, trying to jerk his head free.

The Baali slashed his wrist and let a flow of thick blood splash down, not troubling overmuch about accuracy or neatness. The vitae splattered across Marcus's face. He fought a brief battle to refuse it, but found his mouth opening without his consent, and drinking with greed. Even the disgust Marcus felt at this involuntary surrender was submerged in the rush of feeding.

When the red haze cleared, Marcus slumped back again, exhausted and blood-spattered. His hunger was much lessened, but a measure of self-contempt was taking its place. It shamed him to have lost control so before an enemy, despite knowing very well that he had already held out as few vampires could. He could feel some of the day-old wounds closing as he hung helpless, sealing up along his ribs, back, and legs. The bands of acid-burn along his back were untouched, flaring up into renewed burning as he thought of them. Marcus was dazed by the intensity of the taste after two nights of such hunger. It was all but overwhelming and he fought to clear his head.

Then Marcus jerked upright hearing another scream from below. Sariel had just ripped out the throat of another slave, this one a young man. The slave�s dark eyes were open, empty, and glazed, a narrow trickle of blood running from the corner of his slack mouth. Sariel tossed him back to the floor as he stood.

Twice more, Sariel forced blood down Marcus's throat, against increased resistance, as Marcus had more self control in these later rounds. It took Sariel nearly five minutes to pin his head still the last time, but in the end, all the opposition Marcus raised was useless, and Sariel, still gloating, left the room. Marcus hung limply from the cruel nails in his wrists and tried, again, to assess his state. He was still in great pain, unable to heal several of the remaining wounds, still weary, and beginning to despair. The three drained bodies, sprawled awkwardly on the bare floor, were an enduring reproach to him. He was not the only one at risk here! If only it were so. His skin was faintly flushed and a thin thread of blood had began to trickle from one wrist, another from his pierced feet. His hunger was much alleviated, but he knew his captors' plans now, for all the good it did him, and knew death to be infinitely preferable to allowing their success. The horror they would unleash, granted the use of his body, as a vessel for it did not bear thought.

He was, Marcus realized, utterly dependent on Orpheus's ability to find him, and, if it was too late, destroy him and this _thing_ with him. It was not yet present with him, but he could 'hear', rooms away, the Baali opening a path for it to come. It's name he did not know, and he knew it's nature far better than he wished to already. Still in pain, Marcus slid in and out of an exhausted doze for some time. It might have been only minutes before he recollected himself. It might have been hours, and the sun almost upon them again, for all he could recall. For all that, he felt a little stronger again.

"Orpheus?" He called, reaching out.

"Father!" A world of concern and relief in that word.

"Still here, my son. I can't tell you, don't know, exactly where." The focus needed for speech was wearing on him a bit, but not so badly as he had feared.

"Baali. I told them. . . . what I was. . . . That's not why. . ." He was starting to break up a little, starting to ramble. Marcus paused for a second and collected himself for a new effort.

"They want a sacrifice to bring across. . . . .They must be stopped!. . . . I'm afraid it'll have to be you. . . . . Not sure how long I can hold it off. . . ." He stopped to gather strength again, then reeled with shock. A miasma of choking blackness engulfed him, cutting off his tenuous contact with his son. He could feel it like rotting mud on his skin, a reek of gloating hatred rising around him like the stench of putrid meat.

"No!" Marcus choked, unaware he spoke aloud. The unseen presence of the demonic Lord felt like ice, a cold so intense it burnt his skin, settling more closely about him. This vile thing was clinging to him, pushing at him, not physically at all, pushing and clawing and clutching at his mind. Marcus nearly panicked for a second, then realized with the last scrap of clarity he possessed that panic would be exactly what it wanted. He bit down hard instead, barely feeling his own fangs tear his lip, but using the pain as a reminder that he was still in control of this body.

"No you don't!" He gasped, 'pushing' it away with all the force he could muster. The nebulous haze of rage and loathing was briefly cast back, then swirled together and engulfed him again. Marcus closed his eyes, not wanting to see it anymore. As it anchored itself more tightly to him, through the ritual the Baali were casting, it was beginning to take on a more definite astral form. Marcus had never heard of Lovecraft, but it would have seemed rather familiar if he had. Wisps of 'fog' became cruelly barbed tentacles with sucking, fanged mouths along their length. The core of the cloud took on form as a knotted, misshapen gnarl of muscle and sinew covered with slick, slimy skin, and pierced with outcroppings of ragged bone. It had the look of a beast itself in incalculable pain, which sought gleefully to inflict that pain on others. Scattered blood-red eyes gleamed from various parts of the twisted mass, slit-pupiled and burning with hate and envy. A snapping maw, equipped with a long, slimy tongue and gaping mandibles, appeared in one of the deep central fissures, and was followed by a second mouth, and a third. Marcus swallowed hard, trying not to retch at the thing's proximity.

The demon still was not, could not be, physically present. It needed Marcus's body to grant it physical reality. It was psychically present, which was more than bad enough, for the psychically sensitive elder. He walled himself off as strongly as he could, all but shutting down even his normal senses, and prepared to sell himself dearly.

As soon as Orpheus awoke, he crawled back out of the chest and closed the car up. Within five minutes, he was back on his motorcycle and heading into Knoxville, while clutching his cell-phone against his ear to hear over the roaring wind. In his pocket, bouncing against his hip, was the gold clasp wrapped in a blood-smeared scrap of cloth. He had two calls to make. The first, to his childer, didn't take long. Julian answered the phone, and reacted with passionate relief to Orpheus's voice on the other end.

"Oh, thank goodness! Are you okay?"

"Yes. Listen carefully. There is a small white car, plate number NQE-9173, on the side of highway 121. I need you, or someone, to come, pick it up, remove the contents, and return it to the rental agency it came from. Do not tell Madam DeVries anything about this, and don't ask her for help." Orpheus paused, feeling the clasp in his pocket.

"Store the personal possessions in the car in the empty room across from yours, carefully. Hopefully, the owner will want them back."

"Uhhh. . . Okay. I don't. . ." Orpheus cut him off.

"I will explain later, but for now, it might be dangerous for you to know too much. None of you are to leave the haven alone, Julian! Don't take risks. And take Harry with you to get the car. You can leave the others with Father Leland while you're away." Orpheus clicked the phone off, then dialed another number one-handed. Shouting to make himself heard over the wind, Orpheus made arrangements to be on the next flight to Boston out of Knoxville, despite its 25-minute departure time. As soon as the reservations were made, Orpheus ditched the bike and brought the world to a halt.

Time thickened like molasses in snow, then froze solid. Standing by the road, Orpheus saw a bat, locked in time like a fly in amber, hanging motionless between wingbeats. He stuffed the phone back into a pocket and started walking. It would be a very long walk, for him, but in the perceptions of the rest of the world, he would be at the airport in seconds, with plenty of time to catch the plane. Orpheus pulled the cloak around him and walked. Past windblown trees caught in bonsai poses, past a squirrel held motionless between stuffing one nut in his cheek and reaching for the next, past a scattering of nighttime drivers, frozen in their bubbles of light and warmth. He walked briskly, but not so fast at to fatigue himself. In this non-time, between one instant and the next, he was safe from virtually all imaginable forms of harm, but he was unsure as to the conditions he might have to deal with upon emerging. It was a very long walk through the utter silence of stopped time, and Orpheus had a great deal of time to think in, as he walked. So, not unnaturally, as he walked he began to remember. . .

The last time he'd been to his father's haven had been nearly fifty years ago. For the last two centuries or so, Marcus had been slipping in and out of year-long torporous periods. His age was catching up with him a bit. The haven still looked the same, though. It was on a low hill, maybe 30 miles from London, on an estate that Marcus had owned since shortly before the fall of Rome. Orpheus shook his head, still faintly awed by the sheer age involved.

It was an ancient, classical building built to Marcus's own blueprints, and had some changes from the most traditional Roman pattern, mostly because of the climate there. England was much colder than Italy, and the traditional open-ceiled, cubicle-roomed villa would have been impractical. Mostly, what Orpheus remembered was the library. Low on the walls, niches were carved into the stone and held ranks of scrolls. Up and down the middle of the room, ranks of bookcases held the other texts. It was a long, 'L' shaped room, with Marcus's desk back in the corner of the short leg.

In most of Orpheus's memories, the long room was dimly but warmly lit with oil lamps or beeswax candles set in metal dishes. The flickering shadows cast across the walls made the procession of deeply carved faces and busts along the upper panels seem alive, as if smiling, winking, or sometimes sobbing. All around the room, the graven heads of Salubri, Brujah, and great thinkers from every era looked down in quiet watchfulness, ending with Rayzeel, Saulot's most beloved childe, and above, over the door, a boldly carved bust of Saulot, third eye barely visible as a faint ripple in the stone. His grave, wise eyes looked down over the library as if lost in contemplation. Once or twice, when Orpheus had been younger and more fanciful, the sculptures had struck him as distinctly morbid. Marcus, for reasons of safety, never displayed images of any Salubri he wasn't fairly sure was dead.

Marcus's 'study' corner, back in the short leg of the 'L', was slightly more classical in feel, with each wall decorated with a tile mosaic in shades of ivory, tan, dun, and chocolate. Each of the three walls had a different image. The one at the back of the leg was a rather melancholy reminder. On that wall, Marcus had arranged for a picture of his family, wife and children only. The wall was still crowded. Faustina, Marcus's long-dead mortal wife, was depicted with all of their thirteen children around her. On the two facing walls, Marcus has mosaics of two of the Roman Emperors in whos' reigns he'd lived, Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, each with their family around them. It was a friendly little room, bare stone floor warmed with a throw rug made from the tanned fleeces of several white sheep. On any given night, past about midnight, this was where one was most likely to find Marcus. Orpheus remembered it very fondly.

He had first been to Marcus's haven while he was a mortal student at Avignon. He and Marcus had met in one of the taverns near the university, and wound up spending half of that night debating philosophy back and forth. Orpheus had not realized for years afterwards that Marcus had been testing him. He must have passed the test regardless, though, because Marcus took a kindly interest in the fifteen-year-old scholar from that night on. Orpheus remembered that night very well. The college students had gone out in knots and clusters, five or six in a group, and had, by and large, all gotten utterly drunk. Orpheus, being a bit younger and less jaded, had been debating with one of his classmates to the exclusion of his drink until he realized that his fellow debater was too far gone to be coherent. While looking around for a new target, he had caught the eye of an older man sitting quietly back in a dim corner away from the hearth.

The old fellow had caught his attention briefly before when he came in, perhaps an hour after dark, and settled into his corner. His features were noble and his bearing was confident, but his clothing was a bit strange: a long, narrow robe of undyed wool, and a hooded mantle of brown homespun, which sorted very oddly with a heavy gold ring on one hand. Orpheus had noticed him and then dismissed him as being a pilgrim or mendicant monk, most likely. Now the old man was sitting up more attentively, dark eyes gleaming in the shadow of his hood. He pushed back his hood, baring short iron-gray hair, and beckoned to Orpheus.

"What your friend seems to have forgotten to point out is that Socrates never actually supported that issue." The elder said quietly. Orpheus blinked, delighted that a new challenger had taken up his gauntlet, and promptly moved to the old man's table, settling into the opposite chair.

"Well, yes, but if you take. . . "

The discussion lasted for hours. First in French, then, when Orpheus began quoting from his coveted copy of Plato, in Latin. The stranger's accent was excellent, although it had a faint, archaic accent to it, and he was amazingly fluent. More so than Orpheus, as the young man quickly realized. It finally ended in the small hours of the morning, when Orpheus dozed off between one word and the next. His new friend gently roused him.

"It is getting very late, and you very sleepy." Orpheus blinked and tried to focus on him.

"I never asked your name, sir. . . " He managed, recalling the omission.

"Mark." The stranger smiled gently.

"Of what family?"

"Just Mark. And I believe you had best be getting home, Orpheus, or you won't make it to classes." Blearily, Orpheus agreed and staggered off, only realizing later that he had never told Mark his own name.

He came back the next night, and the one after that, and became increasingly attached to his new friend. Mark's breadth and depth of knowledge was amazing, and his patience exceeded even that, although he almost never talked about himself or his past, even when Orpheus pressed him to do so. Finally, Orpheus, who had never gotten along well with his family, was delighted to receive an invitation to spend the Christmas season with his new patron and mentor. It meant a longer trip, across the Channel and into England, but it also meant not having to spend the next month sitting in the unlit, drafty, cold and damp excuse for a hall in his father's keep, while fighting off hunting hounds for the contents of every plate and enduring the incredible tedium of another round of stories about how his strapping, muscular half-brothers had bedded peasant girls and hunted deer and wolves in the mountains.

Orpheus knew very little about girls and less about hunting, lacked the strength to even heft his father's sword, and considered himself vastly more sophisticated than his illiterate half-siblings and drunken father. His mother, who he loved dearly, had almost died of bearing him, and had lived since then in a convent in Provence. He had only seen her three or four times, and her health was too delicate to admit of any more travel. Orpheus wrote her as frequently as he could find a messenger to carry the letters. Going home to his family, in their crumbling keep on a mountaintop so desolate that no other noble family had ever wanted it, was not the highlight of his holiday.

Resultantly, Orpheus was not exactly reluctant when Mark asked him if he would care to visit. Mark gave him money for his passage, and told him that he himself was going on ahead, as he had business to settle up before Orpheus arrived. During the last two weeks of his classes, Orpheus had trouble concentrating, he was so excited about the prospect of traveling.

And it had been a trip to remember, Orpheus thought, shaking his head. He could see the city lights glimmering through the night as he progressed. That other trip had been a very long time ago, and in the time since then, Marcus had earned and more than earned the innocent trust Orpheus's younger self had given him. And now, Marcus was waiting for him again, at the end of another journey, with far more at stake than a holiday vacation. Hold on, Father. I'm coming. . . .

Young Julian hung up the phone and stood frowning in confusion. What was Orpheus up to? He sounded even more cryptic than usual. And was someone really after them, or was Orpheus just being his regular paranoid self? A car on Highway 121. Julian shook his head, pulled on a Metallica tee-shirt, and went downstairs to find Harry. The slim, long-boned neonate poked his head around the kitchen door and found Harry slumped in a chair, munching on a thick ham sandwich. Even in human form, the Garou ate a lot of meat.

"Uh, Harry? That was Orpheus on the phone. He wants us all to be double careful, like always, but he needs the two of us to go get an abandoned car out on the highway." Harry blinked up at Julian in surprise. Julian shrugged.

"He didn't explain it. You know how he is. We're supposed to leave Jenny, Wraith, and the Ravnos with Father Leland while we're away. I don't think it'll be too long, though." Harry swallowed the last of his sandwich and stood up, stretching. He was absolutely huge. Harry stood almost seven feet tall, topped off with a shock of white-blond hair, and was impressively muscular. His faded blue-jeans were a few inches too short for him, baring his ankles above sneakers. Julian ran back upstairs to collect his 'siblings' while Harry went around to get the car.

"Jenny? Wraith? Come on, guys, we have to get moving! Ravnos! You up yet?" Wraith's door opened and the 12-year-old acrobat looked out, yawning and drowsy. Her short, silvery hair was tousled and stood on end as she ran her fingers through it. She had slept in her leotard and tights again, and was basically ready to go.

"Julian? What's. . ." Yawn. " . . . up?"

"Get your shoes, sis. Orpheus needs us to do something." Wraith vanished back into her room as Julian rapped on Jenny's door. He pushed it open a crack and peeked in. Jenny's room was an incredible confection of pink ruffles and lace. It was slightly overwhelming just to look at, and Julian sometimes wondered if Jenny's 'little-girl' act had come before or after Orpheus redecorated.

"Jenny, kiddo? Up and at 'em!" Jenny sat up in bed, blinking big dark eyes. "Daddy?" Julian shook his head sadly.

"He's not back yet." Jenny's face crumpled miserably. "He's coming back, he's coming back. He just called, Jenny." Julian sat down on her bed and took her hands.

"You get to go play with Uncle Leland, Jenny! I know he'll be glad to see you. . . " Julian tipped his head to look at her, letting a long lock of black hair fall into his dark-blue eyes. He shook it back and forth, it tickle her cheek. After a moment, Jenny giggled and batted at him, wiggling out of his arms and onto the floor. She grabbed a pale-pink gown from one closet and ducked into the next room to change, while Julian dug a pair of her patent-leather shoes out from under her bed and left them ready for her.

In the last room, the Ravnos griped about being gotten up early and about having to leave his Nintendo behind, but Julian still got the perpetually-pimply-faced 14-year-old out of bed and moving. Harry was waiting behind the wheel, and the girls were in the back. The Ravnos, still protesting, was frog-marched down the stairs and pushed into the back seat.

"Ouch! Ruffian! Have you no respect for my wardrobe? I get sick in the back!"

"Ravnos, you're a vampire. You can't get carsick. Sit down." Harry shook his head and hit the gas.

After dropping the three youngest off at Father Leland's church, and briefly explaining the little they knew to the older vampire-priest, Harry and Julian took off again, heading out of the city towards Highway 121.

As Julian had guessed, it wasn't a terribly long ride out along the silent night roads. Harry, being the silent type at best, wasn't making much conversation, and Julian was still trying to figure out what Orpheus was doing. It was a very quiet drive, with only the green glow of the dashboard lighting the inside of the car. Julian rode slumped deep in his seat, absently fingering a jade-and-opal pendant on a black cord around his neck. The eerie lighting did Julian's porcelain pallor an especial disservice, leaving him looking like a recently drowned corpse.

They almost passed the small white car slanted into the ditch. Julian's sharp sight picked it out at the last minute and he grabbed Harry's arm and told him to pull over.

"There it is! It's right there!" Harry grunted and slammed on the brakes, skidding for a second before pulling onto the shoulder and stopping. Julian scrambled out of the sedan and ran over, almost vanishing against the shadows in his black trenchcoat. He checked the plates, then opened the driver's door and looked around inside. The long, battered trunk in the back seat was probably the luggage Orpheus had referred to, Julian thought. There was a neat pile of folded cloth, probably clothing, beside it. Julian got Harry over and started piling things in the trunk. Halfway through the heap, Julian found something very odd wrapped in yet another piece of white wool. He tugged the corner and something heavy, angular, and metallic fell into his hands, hard to make out in the dim lights. Julian wiggled back to get better light, and then whistled under his breath. It was a heavy sheathed dagger, more than twice the length of his hand, with an odd, flared hilt and worn carvings on the sheath. The ridges of the hilt were smooth under his grip.

"Oh wow. This is gorgeous." Julian whispered, running a thumb lightly over the blade as he drew it. The edge was oddly rounded, as if sharpened so many times that a noticeable fraction of the blade had worn away, but there was still a cutting edge on the old steel. He squinted at the worn carvings on the scabbard and was able to make out reliefs of lions and eagles, set in squares on the burnished iron. In the deepest lines, worn threads of gold inlay gleamed here and there.

�This must be incredibly old, Harry. Just look at this! I wonder who owns it?� Julian held the blade out to Harry, tipping it so the moonlight ran down the blade in a liquid flash. Harry eyed it thoughtfully, then shrugged.

�Who knows? Is that everything?� Reluctantly, Julian sheathed the dagger and tucked it in with the folds of white and brown wool in the trunk. As he started to set it down, the young vampire had a sudden dizzying image of an old man�s face, looking across at him with a faint, kindly smile. He�d never seen that man before, but the image felt familiar, even reassuring. A short cap of iron-gray hair framed a pale, ascetic face set with warm brown eyes. A shudder twisted its way up Julian�s spine and the dagger slipped from his fingers, landing softly in the folded clothes. Julian blinked hard, clearing his vision, and took a deep, shaky breath.. Harry looked back up at him, mildly concerned.

�Hey, you okay up there? Don�t blank out on me, okay?�

�Uhh, yeah. I�m fine. Sorry. . . .� Julian shook his head, and gave Harry a hand with the trunk, scooting it out one door and then lugging it across to their car.

�Let me see if I can get this car started, and I�ll take it back to the lot. Follow me there? And I�ll ride back with you.� Julian suggested, opening the driver�s side door.

�Ooh, gosh. The key�s bent nearly in half. I don�t think I can get it out of there, let alone turn it. Harry, do you think you could. . . .� Harry shouldered in past Julian and pinched the bend in the key between finger and thumb, ironing it out flat. He was pretty strong even for a ghouled Lupine.

�Err, thanks.� Julian slid into the seat and tried the engine. It rumbled and choked for a moment, then caught and began to purr. He waved over his shoulder at Harry and threw the car in gear, pulling out carefully.

As he drove in the dark, Julian let his mind wander a bit. A faint, phantasmal reflection of his own face hung on the windshield in front of him, shadowed against the black night. Who had he seen, for that moment? It was too sharp, too vivid, to be just a daydream. But he would have sworn he�d never seen that man before. Orpheus had told him to pay attention to his guesses about people and places, but this went a bit beyond that. Maybe his Auspex was getting sharper. Or maybe he was just letting his imagination run away with him. After all, this whole situation was so strange to begin with. . . . Julian squinted at the road more intently, making a slow turn as it curved. He slumped a little deeper in the seat, looking up at his reflection. . . . And almost swerved off the road, seeing someone else�s face reflected in the glass! The same older man, gray hair, warm eyes, but with the features distorted into a look of sudden alarm, then rippling like water and vanishing, leaving only Julian�s badly startled reflection behind. A momentary soundless scream of alien rage wavered in the air.

Julian hit the brakes, veering wildly for a second, and brought the car to a crawl while he panted in shock. What was happening? Outside the car, the night was empty. Harry had slowed down fast and was now waving at him, looking concerned. Julian took one more deep breath and waved back, shrugging at Harry, then tapping the gas and moving on. This was getting incredibly weird. One-handed, Julian worked the jade pendant off and wrapped the cord around his hand, clutching the smooth, cool stone against his palm. Come on, Moira, help me with this. I need you. A momentary thickness caught in his throat, as a faint and familiar voice whispered in the back of his mind. Don�t be afraid, childe. It will do you no harm. You feel the echo of another�s pain. Julian swallowed hard, blinking back tears at the voice of his dead sire. Thank you, Moira. I still miss you. Faint affectionate warmth blossomed in the back of his mind and then was gone again. Julian bit his lip and concentrated on his driving for several minutes, blinking frequently to clear his eyes. It was a very long drive back.

Orpheus�s bones ached from sheer weariness as he entered the city proper and picked up the pace, dogtrotting along sidewalks towards the airport. The walk had been tedious beyond belief, but it had at least given him some �time� to organize his thoughts. Marcus was definitely being held somewhere, evidently in or near Boston, Massachusetts. His captors were a cipher, however. Marcus either did not know or had not been able to convey their intent or nature. Likewise for his exact location. There had been an. . . .unreliable tone to Marcus�s last communication with him. It had not sounded as if his father had been in full possession of his senses at the time. Therefore, he could not himself rely entirely on any information Marcus might be able to give him. It was quite possible, should sufficient damage have been done, that Marcus might not have been rational.

The old Salubri�s stamina was phenomenal, but Orpheus knew better than anyone that every man and woman born had a breaking point. Orpheus did feel, though, that he could safely discount the possibility of any deliberate deception. Marcus would simply order him to do as he said rather than lie to him, if it came to that. So, Marcus had probably believed what he said, but it might still not be accurate, or it might have been garbled in transmission. Orpheus decided to discount, carefully, Marcus�s statement that it was �too late�. If Marcus lived, it was possible that he might be rescued, and if he was dead, he might at least be avenged. Inaction would only insure Marcus�s destruction. The only possible risk that might be incurred was to his own person, and that he was utterly willing to disregard.

Orpheus paused to take a new bearing on the airport, and crossed a still-crowded street, slipping between frozen cars like a black shadow. His grim sense of urgency remained unabated, and it gnawed at him, even �now�, when no time was passing for the rest of the world. He was, of course, aware that his impulse to hurry through this not-time was irrational, even counterproductive, but it dogged him none the less.

Unconsciously, he let one hand rest lightly on the wrapped hilt of his rapier, and took cold comfort in the thought that someone would pay a high price for what had been done to Marcus. His flight would leave in minutes, but it could not be soon enough for him. When the flight finally took off, Orpheus remained tense and cold. It had taken only a bit of Dominate and Presence to convince security that it was perfectly all right for him to carry a sword on the plane, but the ease of the deception did not improve his mood.

The rising whine of the engines as the plane lifted, featherlight, into the air, intruded into his grim brooding where he sat, looking absently out at the light-starred city below him. The flight was quiet, seeming to drift slowly through the air over the turning world. It took two hours to reach Boston, and they crept like cold honey. Orpheus sat without fidgeting, motionless as a stone in his seat with his eyes downcast and lips set in a thin line. His long, dark hair hung in loose waves, half-hiding his pale, handsome features. Unconsciously, he had begun twisting a ring on his left hand, twisting the oddly blackened silver filigree band around and around his finger. It was the only ring he wore, on the third finger of his left hand. Once or twice, the stewardess came by, and the second time she briefly considered asking if he was all right, but something about the set of his features deterred her. She looked away again and hurried off, deciding that the silent black-clad man in row 15 gave her the creeps. It didn�t even look like he was breathing, but he was definitely awake, dark eyes staring at the back of the seat like he meant to bore holes through it by willpower alone. Gosh, he was eerie! She hurried off, pumps tapping lightly on the floor.

It was several minutes after the pilot announced that they would be landing shortly. Orpheus�s head snapped up suddenly, eyes unfocusing.

"Orpheus?" A psychic whisper, strengthening as he reached for it.

�Father!� Orpheus nearly cried it aloud, feeling a wholly unanticipated wave of relief. Marcus was still alive!

"Still here, my son. I can't tell you, don't know, exactly where." Orpheus closed his eyes, able almost to see Marcus�s face as his voice spoke softly into Orpheus�s mind. There was almost a smile in the words, but oh, how weary they were! Orpheus bit his lip and listened intently, not wanting to interrupt Marcus or make it any harder for him.

"Baali. I told them. . . . what I was. . . . That's not why. . ." Marcus�s voice trailed off weakly. Orpheus�s guts twisted in sudden, renewed dread. A coven of Baali had his father? They knew Marcus was Salubri? Oh, God, no! And what did Marcus mean, �that�s not why�? Why what? Orpheus bit his lip until it bled, forcing himself to wait for any other message from Marcus. The sense of his presence was still faintly there.

"They want a sacrifice to bring across. . . . .They must be stopped!. . . . I'm afraid it'll have to be you. . . . . Not sure how long I can hold it off. . . ." Marcus�s voice fell silent for a second, then a profound wave of reflected horror washed over Orpheus.

�No!� Orpheus choked on Marcus�s mental cry, almost voicing it himself. Orpheus had a momentary dizzying sense of a nauseating blackness and pain, then a split second of utterly alien hatred before the link broke with an almost audible snap! Wild-eyed, Orpheus dug his nails into the arms of his seat, not feeling the hard plastic splintering in his grip. What had just happened? He had to swallow hard, feeling a wholly uncharacteristic nausea wash over him.

�Marcus! Father!!� There was no answer, only the waiting silence inside his own skull.

�Father!�

Marcus was fairly sure that all the screaming was inside his head. He was fairly sure that the constant, nerve flaying shriek of rage and agony was something that only he could hear, that it was echoing off the walls of his own skull, not the walls around them. On the other hand, he couldn�t tell if he was the one screaming, or if it was the invading demon. He could no longer see anything around him, only the blackness and the hateful eyes of the vile, scrabbling creature invading his mind. He could not even tell if his outer eyes were open or shut now. He could hear other voices, but only faintly, as if over a distance of miles. Pain he felt, still, although from no particular source, only the searing fact of it without cessation. It was a constant struggle to maintain any awareness of his body apart from that pain, like thrusting one�s own hand into a flame and watching it char slowly through skin and flesh down to the blackened, staring bones. By earth and heaven, how long? How long? Marcus thought in distracted agony.

Sariel stood across the room, a hungry smile curving his thin lips. His Lord was present, felt but not seen as a curtain of shadow. And the sacrifice, ahh, the sacrifice was enduring nobly, but all resistance would soon fail. Watching Marcus writhe under the touch of the Demon Lord gave him an almost sensual pleasure. His eyes glittered in the torchlight, seeing the knotted muscles coated with bloodsweat. The agony graved on the Salubri�s face was lovely to behold. A most fitting sacrifice indeed! It would be a triumph worthy of notice when his master broke this one. And Sariel looked forward with hungry anticipation to watching every second of it. Very soon, it would be time for them to start the next invocation.

Briefly, Sariel glanced around the room, making sure all was ready. Hazriel, in her black veil, stood quietly by, and Yakob, that sniveler, was at the altar. The ancient text that they had all three devoted years to recovering lay proudly on the black stone. In that book were the lost formulae that permitted this summoning. It had been millennia since any member of their dark tribe had been able to grant such an offering to their Masters. A vessel for their will, a body to posses, flesh for their banished awarenesses. Sariel wrang his hands in maddened devotion. They would grant his Lord not just a gateway, but an incarnation! At the foot of the cross, like a parody of Mary, Hazriel knelt and traced a delicate finger up and down over Marcus�s ankle, teasing the seared flesh with cruel humor. Yakob, on the other hand, was looking carefully at the floor, and one hand was picking nervously at the folds of his robe.

It was almost time. That spineless coward Yakob, faithless though he was, had his uses. He had been the one who had translated the clues that led them to the text. This did not mean that Sariel did not hold him in the deepest contempt, it just meant that Sariel tolerated him. Sariel sank to his knees before the altar, gently opening the book. It was actually a collection of sections cut from a single great scroll at some point in the past, bound together in black metal. He turned the crackling pages to the correct section and propped it open, laying the blade of his dagger lightly on the worn parchment. It was a very long litany, of course. The three of them had to keep the gate open long enough for it to slip through, as they had done, but now it could not remain here for long without either a host, like the Salubri, or the energies of it�s worshippers. It was right, he could feel it, that his centuries of devotion should culminate in this chance to midwife this infernal fusion to birth. Of course, it was possible even now that his Master could cling long enough to overcome the sacrifice�s resistance without aid, but he would not miss such a chance to aid his Lord�s schemes. Sariel�s hands were shaking slightly as he tilted the book to catch the light and began to chant. . . .

Julian�s experiences that night had left him very quiet, so much so that Father Leland had stopped to ask if he was all right when he and Harry came in to pick up Orpheus�s other wards. The arching cathedral ceiling was dark, full of softly dancing shadows from the Presence light by the sacristy door. A bank of votive candles glowed warmly near the choir seats, and Julian could hear Jenny talking in the next room, beyond the sanctuary.

�Leland? We�re back. . . � Julian called, keeping his voice low to avoid disturbing any late-night devotionals that might be going on in the little chapel on the left. Father Leland came bustling out of his small suite of rooms, an old hymnal in one hand.

�Ah, Julian. Did everything go well?� Leland asked, setting the hymnal down on one of the pews and patting the younger vampire�s arm. �You look worried.�

�It was. . . . Some strange stuff happened.� Julian shivered suddenly, unable to stop it. �I really wish Orpheus had explained a little more about this.�

�Is it something you want to talk about?� The priest asked, sitting down and offering Julian the opposite seat as Harry brushed past them.

�Oh, I don�t even know. I don�t understand most of what�s going on, so I can�t really talk about that. But I saw something strange, not just once but twice tonight, and I don�t know who it was or what I should do.�

�Why don�t you start at the beginning, and see if any of it makes more sense as you go over it?� Leland asked, adjusting the glasses on the end of his nose. Julian sighed and sank onto the pew beside him, trying to think where to start his story.

�. . . .And then the face just vanished again, with this. . . . I don�t know. . . Almost a scream, but not out loud, silent.� Julian shrugged helplessly, his dark-blue eyes sadly downcast. His long, white hands knotted in his lap as he waited to hear what Leland had to say about that little tale. As for Leland, his lean, dark-bearded face was thoughtful, greenish eyes half-lidded as he thought it over.

�You�ve always been very sensitive, Julian. Between that and your lineage�s knack for Auspex, it�s not so terribly unlikely that you�ll continue to pick up flashes of other people�s lives and emotions.� He patted Julian consolingly on the shoulder, and Julian sighed and gripped his arm gratefully for a second.

�Further, it�s probably not dangerous, and it doesn�t mean that there�s anything wrong with you, or anything else like that. On the other hand, it probably does mean that whoever you saw is a real person, most likely that car�s last driver and the owner of the clothes and knife. I have no idea what the rest of it might mean. Perhaps something happened to them in the car, and you picked up a �memory� of it?� Julian nodded slowly, putting it together mentally.

�I wish. . . . I wish I knew who it was. He looked like he needed help. . . .� Julian said, almost to himself. Leland, well acquainted with Julian�s kind heart, simply smiled sadly to himself. The Ravnos, sticking his wildly tousled head in through the main doors abruptly broke the warmly shadowed peace of the sanctuary.

�Hey, slowpoke! You fall in, or what? We�re all waiting out here, and I for one want to get home before dawn. C�mon!� Julian blinked, shaken out of his reverie, and quickly said goodbye to Leland, clasping his hand an instant before turning to the door where the Ravnos impatiently waited, rocking from foot to foot. Outside, Jenny and Wraith were already bundled into the back of the car, and the Ravnos hurried ahead and hopped into the front passenger seat. Julian, too distracted to really care, slipped into the back next to his �sisters� and settled back into thought.

If the man he had seen in that little white car was a friend of Orpheus�s, and was now in trouble, that might explain what Orpheus was up to, running off like that. But that made Julian wonder why exactly Orpheus should have taken such especial care to warn them against asking Morgana for help. She was the most obvious, most powerful person to turn to! Julian smiled in spite of himself, thinking of her dark, curling hair and wicked, merry smile. Morgana DeVries was the most potent local ally Orpheus had. So why not go to her?

Julian had a sudden shocked thought and sat bolt upright, gripping the jade disk on its cord again. Orpheus wouldn�t trust her with one specific piece of information, and rightly so. The only reason Orpheus could have for not asking their city�s Tremere prince for help in finding someone would be if the person he was looking for were Salubri! Another Salubri, Julian amended mentally, feeling a sudden urge to duck a little lower in the seat and pull his loose black hair over his forehead. He couldn�t bring himself to believe that Morgana would ever hurt him, but still, she was Tremere. . . .

Julian shuddered, picking up wisps of half-recalled memories from his sire, and his sire�s sire. A split-second flicker of remembered torch-flame and a cruel, snarling face, and below, a silver medallion with the Tremere badge on it flashed across his mind�s eye. Sensitive, huh? Sometimes I wish I wasn�t. . . . Julian thought, hugging his trenchcoat tighter around his chest.

But, another Salubri? In need of help? What had happened in that forest? And who was that wise-eyed old man? A sudden, overwhelming wave of irrational dread gripped Julian�s unbeating heart and ran like ice through his veins. Please, let it be all right! Let everything be all right.

Orpheus stumbled off the plane in a daze, thinking frantically. Other passengers tended to get out of his way, promptly, after glancing at him once. His eyes were haunted, and his burgeoning rage was all but visible. He got out of the airport, found a rental car, and set off into the night more or less at random, still processing as quickly as possible. Despite all his calculations, he was keenly aware that unless Marcus could contact him again, his chances of ever finding the old Salubri were very, very slim. There was simply too much space, and not enough clues to follow. However, this conclusion did not mean that Orpheus had any intention of stopping his search. He drove out of the city of Boston and pulled off the road, fishing a map out of the glove compartment. Outside of Boston, Marcus had said. Orpheus had a sudden thought and called the airport back, asking for a rundown on all flights from Tennessee that had landed there the previous night, and when they had arrived. As he suspected, there hadn�t been many. Further, of those few, one had left Tennessee before Marcus had called for help, and therefore could not be relevant.

Orpheus calculated for a few minutes, and then began marking the map. By the end, he had a circle around Boston, covering all the places that Marcus�s captors could have reasonably gotten to in a car between the landing of the first plane and dawn. He spread the map across his knees and looked at the results. Somewhere in that ring, Marcus is waiting for help. But where? Orpheus passed his palm gently over the paper, swallowing back a sudden dread. He had failed to reach someone else in time, once. He couldn�t do that to his father now. But there was so much space to cover, and a deadline he couldn�t fix exactly. What were the Baali planning? And how long could Marcus hold out? Both unknowns tormented him. An image of flames curled in his mind�s eye, and Orpheus bit his lip until it bled, sharp-metal taste spreading over his tongue. Not again, not this time! Not this time! His nails dug deep into his knees, shaking with tension. He fought back the threatening darkness by force of will alone. Logic. Logic.

Logic dictated that he choose a course of action, promptly. Orpheus slowly uncurled his fingers, flattening his hands a millimeter at a time, as if they might somehow shatter if moved too abruptly. Reduce the situation to its elements, then. He wished to locate a party of unknown size, resident at some point within this circumference. It was most probable that they were no longer either within the city proper, or near any substantial settlement outside it. Most Baali rituals were not especially subtle, and most covens did not like visits from nosy neighbors or policemen. Orpheus�s hands moved to mark off Boston and it�s suburbs, almost without conscious volition as his analysis continued.

This party of persons was, additionally, transporting a noticeable burden, both unwieldy and attention-getting if uncovered. Not �burden�! Marcus! A small voice insisted hotly in the recesses of Orpheus�s thought. He suppressed it grimly. How had they gotten him from the airport to whatever destination they had in mind? Most likely, they had required the use of a vehicle, which might be rented, stolen, or owned by a compatriot at this end. The other portions of their plan, so far as he had been able to discern them, bespoke careful planning and preparation. It was unlikely that they would have stolen transportation, and somewhat unlikely that they would have rented it.

In any case, however, if they had a car, they would have to stick to the roads or abandon it. So? Be sure to look into any abandoned vehicles, but that is not of itself a solution. What else, then? Very little. In all honesty, Orpheus had to admit to himself that the problem was simply not amenable to analysis. They might have taken a car to a boat, and be on some outlying island. They might be still at sea, and Marcus below decks and out of sight. They might even have caught a second flight elsewhere. The only solution he could currently apply was a simple brute-force search, going over every inch of land from the city outwards. And hope that Marcus could reach him again. Orpheus pushed the map aside and started the engine again, not looking at anything but the road.

Sariel�s voice cut through Marcus�s mental cacophony like a razor wedge of black obsidian. His thoughts bled in its wake. And the oppressive, malign darkness held narrowly at bay began to seep in through the gashes, clawing deeper and deeper into Marcus�s shell of control. Sariel and Hazriel together chanted the demon�s name, and a hot pulse of pain lanced through Marcus�s palms and up to his brow, carving an inverted �T�. The old Salubri couldn�t see, still, could only hear the antiphonal chant as it wound around him like black ribbons, like snakes, like a tightening net of razor wire. Standing over the altar, Sariel spoke with impassioned command, beseeching, compelling, and beckoning his Master back to this earth. Hazriel, speaking softer and harsher, replied to every verse with the long-lost name of their demon patron.

Yakob had sunk to his knees, swallowing hard, as the reality of his actions overtook him. Of course he�d known, theoretically, what the formulae required and what the result would be. Unfortunately, theory had not been sufficient to prepare him for this. This was ghastly! Yakob glanced up at Sariel and momentarily gauged his chances of surviving an interruption at this point. Slim to none, he decided. Sariel wouldn�t listen anyway. Yakob knew, to the depths of his soul, that he was a cowardly man, but in this situation especially, his opinion was not wanted.

And Marcus, having no choice, gritted his teeth and endured, resisting with every shred of determination he possessed. The pain, now, was becoming a two-edged sword, both distracting and reminding him. He had lost track of time, was barely aware of his surroundings, and was striving to free enough of himself from the struggle to reach Orpheus again. The demon awareness was a hissing, snarling blackness, and more, a crushing weight of hatred and power. It felt like struggling to lift a mountain. His hands trembled, shaking uncontrollably against the rough wood, and beads of bloodsweat trickled down his face and shoulders, matting the black silk against his skin. The pain of pierced wrists, crushed feet, acid burns and broken bones was a tenuous tie to his body, holding mind to flesh as they held flesh and bone to wood. The past was gone and the future was a red haze. But even so, a fraction at a time, Marcus built a wall to guard his mind, forcing the invading fiend out of his inner verities and sealing them tight. He lost somewhat of himself in so doing, abandoning fragments of memory and control outside the wall. He lost his sight wholly, lost his ability to think with clarity, lost clear recollections of his history, but he kept his intent and enough of his powers to reach . . . .

Orpheus. . . . please, Orpheus. . . Here, this way. . . please. . . help. . .

�Father!� Roiling guilt and fear cloaked Orpheus�s thoughts. Having no time for care, Marcus thrust the awareness of his location into his son�s mind, unable to free it from his own sensations of pain and dread. He felt Orpheus flinch at the sudden impact of his mind, then grasp desperately at him, seizing every proffered scrap of information despite the searing carryover of sensation and emotion. Marcus found himself proud of his son, even in that brief and chaotic moment, and he let that bleed through as well, with the last of the strength he could spare. He cast a last wisp of thankful pride at Orpheus and then fell back down into himself as the demon ripped into the last of his passive defenses. Oh no you don�t! Marcus blocked it, thrusting it clawing and raging back, and he no longer had any time or strength for anything beyond his struggle.

In the small, dim-lit room, the three Baali had come to the end of one litany and were resting before the next. Yakob was sweating visibly, wiping a trembling hand over his broad face and whispering under his breath in Russian. Sariel was sitting calmly, cross-legged on the floor, with a terrible light in his eyes as he watched Marcus. The leader of the Baali coven was intensely pleased with things. His thin lips twitched constantly into a hungry smile.

Hazriel had slipped out of the room as the litany ended, apparently to fetch something. Yakob hadn�t heard what. His attention had been, understandably, somewhat distracted. We are all monsters. He thought grimly. Monsters! Beasts! He no less so than we. Yes, even you, old one! Yakob thought madly, turning away from the cross and resisting an urge to press his hands over his ears and flee the room. Ye gods, how have we come here? Sariel is a madman. We are all mad. I should never have listened to begin with. He bit his lip and began to wring a fold of his robe between his hands. But he would just have found another translator. . . I know, oh God I know how persuasive he can be. It wouldn�t have made any difference if I had refused. He�d have killed me and found someone else. I couldn�t have stopped it.

The tough silk tore under his fingers. Yakob jumped guiltily and turned back to the thick black book, pretending to read the inky scrawls intently. However, Sariel, across the room, had not paid any attention to him. The older Baali was watching their captive�s sufferings with avid interest, eyes glittering in the torchlight as the Salubri shuddered and bled. Actually, Marcus was almost totally immobile, but a slight, constant shivering of the muscles under his skin was visible. So was the trembling of his hands, crooked fingers twitching minutely. His eyes were closed, except for the third eye, which was slit open and stared blindly into the smoky air. His gray hair was streaked and matted with dark blood, and his head was thrown back against the wooden upright. His lips were slightly parted, and, irregularly, Yakob could hear a single harsh indrawn breath and a slow, shaking exhale.

Yakob turned sharply away again. I can�t do this. I can�t. I can�t. His hands curled into fists, hidden in the folds of his robe. I never wanted to get into this. God, I�m a coward!

The outer door swung open and shut again as Hazriel swept back in, black veils swirling behind her. And she�d brought her plaything, too. Yakob swallowed hard and tried to edge out the door himself, not wanting to wait here. Sariel�s voice stopped him within inches of escape.

�Where are you going, Yakob?� His tone was very soft, with profound menace in every word. Yakob flinched reflexively.

�I was. . . going to get some more fuel. We�ll need those torches a while longer, after all."� Damn him! Both of them! They like this! The ghoulish brutes!

Sariel smiled very slightly. �Why, how thoughtful of you. But I don�t think we�ll need that just yet, will we? Do come back.� Yakob bit his lip and quietly returned to the far corner, trying to look away. Hazriel, with fiendish glee, was unwrapping a long, five-tailed lash made of woven wires. Each tail trailed off into a tassel of loose strands, studded with metal beads here and there along the length of the lashes. It ended in a thick wooden handle. Hazriel shook it out, disentangling the strands, and then draped the tails over one of the coal-filled braziers. The thin wires heated quickly, individual strands starting to glow. She waited a moment longer, then flicked them out of the fire and spun lightly on one heel to face Marcus.

�Oh, yes. . .� She whispered. Then she slashed the heated whip across his shoulders, left and right. The thin silk charred away at the touch of hot metal, and long ugly weals appeared. Marcus started, attempting briefly to jerk away from the burning impact. He gasped in pain as the whip hit him across the chest.

Yakob stared intently at the wall in front of him. Long red burns appeared across Marcus�s pale skin, streaking unevenly from one shoulder to the opposite hip, crossing over the fan of burn weals laid on each shoulder. Hazriel licked her lips, dragging her lash through the coals again as she examined her handiwork. Yakob winced at the wet sound of the lash hitting flesh, and the almost inaudible hiss that followed. She began snapping the loose, cutting tips back and forth, digging bloody trails over Marcus�s arms and shoulders. The long, rectangular chamber echoed with the sound of the whip, and Hazriel�s laughter.

Yakob slumped against the wall behind the black altar, trying to close his ears to the sound. Sariel rose to his feet, and began pacing restlessly up and down the length of the room, eyes glittering in the flickering light. Several thin rags of torn, bloody silk were ripped from the captive�s robe with the next flurry of strokes, drifting to the stone floor like giant flakes of ash. Sariel fingered the long, slanting scars that ran down over his cheekbones, listening to the broken, intermittent gasps of their victim.

He was too excited to hold still, pacing from the lectern on the right back to the altar by the left wall, and waiting for the timepiece Yakob wore to mark the time of the next litany. The same formula would be repeated every two hours until their purpose was accomplished. Sariel briefly considered going to check the diagrams of the Gate, safely inscribed in a neighboring room, but decided not to leave. If the vessel�s focus broke at any time now, his Master would manifest, and Sariel did not want to miss that. And it would not be too much longer now.

Julian lugged his end of the chest up the narrow stairs to the spare attic rooms and dropped it with a thud, rubbing stiff hands. Harry elbowed him good-naturedly out of the way and heaved it up against the wall, one handed. Julian smiled ruefully. Downstairs, judging by the sounds, the Ravnos was playing Mortal Kombat again, thumping soundtrack overlaid with rending and clanging sounds. Jenny had probably gone back to her room, to chatter at her immense doll collection. Julian had occasionally wondered where Orpheus found all of them, especially the dozen or so that looked just like Jenny. Probably custom orders. Orpheus was ridiculously wealthy, and Jenny ridiculously spoiled.

After Harry ambled back down the stairs, Julian paused, and then sat down on the narrow cot and rested his head in his hands. Psychosomatic or not, vampires were still vulnerable to headaches, and Julian had one. He wanted to do something about this whole disturbing, mysterious situation, and his helplessness rankled. He kneaded his temples, flipping his long black hair out of his eyes. With a sigh, he settled cross-legged on the floor beside the long trunk, and lifted the lid slowly. The sheathed dagger glinted from its nest in a pile of folded wool. Beneath it, the polished wooden tubes of a set of shepherd�s pipes were visible, peeking out from the folds of creamy white cloth. Julian had never met another Salubri, other than his sire. Through her blood and from her stories, Julian knew a little about his grandsire and a handful of others, but almost all of them were dead, so far as he knew. Moira had been very, very careful about giving him information on living Salubri. Any record of their existence could be a risk. And so Julian had inherited long, fragmented, tangential chronicles and almost-illegible records of his deceased elders and their ill-fated childer, but knew almost nothing about his handful of peers. He did know that he wasn�t the only one, but that was very slight comfort some nights. Was this gray-haired stranger really another Salubri?

Julian lifted the dagger gently out of the chest and fingered the hilt, rubbing the timeworn carvings where they smoothed away into enigmatic lines and squiggles. What sort of a man was he, the owner of this dagger and this rough brown wrap? How about this white turtleneck, a bizarrely anachronistic addition to the trunk of woolen robes? Or the neatly tailored trousers beneath it? And what story was behind the massive, gleaming, razor-edged broadsword that lay at the bottom of the chest? Unlike the dagger, it looked as clean and new as if forged yesterday.

Julian settled on the edge of the bed, trailing the comforting brown wool mantle behind him, and half-drew the dagger, stroking the polished and shining blade. A sudden strange chill swept over him, leaving him huddling up in the rough mantle. He had a momentary feeling of something dark and angry looking at him, something utterly malevolent. And a triple flicker of hot pain flared on his chest and over his shoulders, coupled with a dizzying sense of vertigo and exhaustion.

Julian�s vision doubled and blurred, and a roaring like the sea sounded in his ears, coupled with a remembered whisper in his sire�s voice. Blood of my blood, childe, and blood will tell. But the voice was changing, not Moira�s at all, the deeper tones of his grandsire, and yet different again. . . And then through it all, another voice, his own, perhaps, shouting Put it down! Put it down, you fool! Put it down! Pain flashed searing through his arms and in his feet, and the dagger fell from his suddenly nerveless hands as he toppled sideways onto the bed, gasping and shaking with pain. Julian crawled trembling out from under the mantle as soon as his vision started to clear, and slumped against the wall beside the door.

�That was stupid. Really, really stupid.� Julian muttered to himself, voice shaking. �Of all the times to get Auspex, and not be able to turn it off. But what�s going on?� He fell silent, but his thoughts continued. Orpheus, please come home! As soon as the shaky Salubri neonate was able to control his legs properly, he got to his feet and stumbled downstairs. The Ravnos was too involved in his video explosions to wonder why his �older brother� was so pale and quiet.

Orpheus was driving blindly down a road, randomly chosen, when a sudden shiver hit him. It was just enough warning for him to hit the brakes before a tidal wave of blackness blotted out his sight and hearing. The space was black, and empty, and choked with the smell and sound of fire, and a horrible pressure. Marcus. Orpheus realized, and did not push the intruding sensations away.

�Orpheus. . . . please, Orpheus. . . Here, this way. . . please. . . help. . .� Orpheus grabbed mentally for the flood of directional images that fell into his mind. Father! He tried to reach out to Marcus, but got only a lingering wash of love and pride as the contact weakened and broke. An unnoticed pain persisted, throbbing sharply in Orpheus�s wrists, and in his feet, and the hot burning across his back flared up briefly. Just like last time. Injuries? Father, what have they done to you? For a moment, Orpheus felt as helpless as before, but then he noticed a subtle tugging sensation. That way. . .

A moment later, Orpheus drove off, having scrawled a single line on the map, running almost due north from his position. Every road that crossed that line within his circle would be explored, but there were only a handful of them. A profound panic was swimming just under the level of his thoughts, multiplying on the echoes of Marcus�s voice. �. . . please, Orpheus. . .�. Gravel spun out from under his tires as he doubled back the way he�d come, speeding towards the first junction with the line. Orpheus could not recall ever having heard Marcus sound so desperate, not in the 600 years that they had known each other. He had never heard Marcus beg for anything. The first road went on past the line without any noticeable structures, in a cranberry bog stretching to the rocky shore, heathered black and faded gray in the moonlight. Doubling back and going to the second, nearly half an hour farther on, Orpheus drove as fast as he dared, trying to ignore the passage of time and quell his increasing dread.

On the second road, the car dipped in and out of passing tree-shadows striping black and silver-pale over the uneven asphalt. Tall, shivering trees loomed on either side. As the invisible line drew closer, Orpheus began looking very carefully, slowing down to just over 20 miles an hour. Of all the things that could go wrong tonight, he was determined at least not to miss whatever building Marcus was being held in. And just as the thought crossed his mind, he felt a sudden backwards tug on his awareness, a sort of psychic whiplash that snapped his head around and left him staring at an almost-invisible low shed, set back against a crumbling hillside. Orpheus hit the brakes, skidding to a halt fifty feet further down the road and shutting the engine off. Then, for a moment, he sat silently in the car, waiting for the last echoes of his engine�s noise to fade before slipping silently from his seat and moving into the woods. And there it was. A dark, windowless van, flecked here and there with duller rust, was pulled off the road behind a screen of bushes. Orpheus glided closer, moving from one patch of shadow to the next, dark eyes flicking over the surrounding forest. A momentary glow of hot red-orange caught his attention, shining brightly for an instant before fading again. Then the light came again, and this time Orpheus could see the source. Human guards, two that he could see, standing between the tail of the van and the far wall of the shed. One of them was smoking a cigarette, the coal on the end glowing bright as he inhaled. Orpheus very quietly settled his broad hat more securely on his head and drew his cape closely around him, circling around the shed towards the van. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he crept closer, weighing options. Then he closed his eyes and thought for a moment, and time stood still.

Orpheus crossed the gap between the shed and the van, moving through his frozen instant, and stationed himself carefully between the two guardsmen, placing a hand lightly on each throat. Time came unkinked, and the two men had just enough time to blink in surprise before Orpheus crushed their windpipes, stifling any possible outcry at the source. The little French vampire tightened his grip even further, and lifted the panicking guards off their feet, straight-arming them so their kicking feet could not quite brush the ground. Orpheus held on grimly, counting seconds off in his head as their struggles weakened and their faces darkened with suffused blood. First one and then the other went finally limp, but as he lowered them to the ground, a final spasm wracked the smoking man, who�s body fell back against the van doors before sliding to the ground.

�Hey, what was that? Joey, did you hear that thump?� Orpheus raised an eyebrow at the voices and promptly flattened himself against the back of the van, waiting for the other guards to appear. The white plume on his hat trembled briefly in the night breeze, only part of his attire distinguishable from the shadows. After a momentary delay, Joey and his ill-fated companion stepped around the corner from the far side of the van, eyes wide and wary and guns raised. As the first one passed the corner, Orpheus reached out and caught the back of his head, snapping his neck in a single twist. The dead man fell to the ground in a graceless slump, while his partner recoiled in shock and swung his gun around. Orpheus broke his arm left-handed, the deadwood snap! echoing through the quiet forest, and grabbed his throat with his other hand, silencing him like the first two. The guard struggled and gagged, clawing at Orpheus�s arm with his good hand. Orpheus brushed his hand aside and sank sharp fangs into his neck, where it joined the shoulder. The man jerked once and sharply, a long shudder, and then hung limply as a child in Orpheus�s hands, while he drank. The blood was sharp with distress, heart racing and stifled for lack of air, faint sharp tang of sweat on the man�s skin adding to its heat.

Orpheus drained him dry and let the body fall to lie with its fellows on the leaf-strewn ground. With perfect, indifferent calm, Orpheus carefully checked the blades he wore, and moved silently towards the low shed, listening intently for any sound within. And indeed, as he came to the slanting, ill-hung door, he heard a movement of feet inside, a soft shuffle. Feeling the faint hot pain-echo pulsing sharper in his wrists and across his back, Orpheus listened a second longer and then kicked the door from it�s hinges, ducking in as it spun wide across the floor.

Startled exclamations rose from the pair of men sitting on a broad chest in the corner as they jumped to their feet in alarm. Orpheus hit the first one without pausing, hearing the bones in his shoulder and jaw break at the impact. The other one had managed to snap his gun up into line, but hesitated just that split second to fire, and Orpheus wrenched it out of his fingers and cast it aside, knocking him back against the wall as he kicked the first man aside. The man he held hit the wall and reeled, stunned, and the other, still on the ground, was choking for breath through the hot pain of broken ribs and collarbone.

Pinning his captive strongly, Orpheus looked about the room, half-lit by a single dimly glowing lightbulb hanging from a low beam. A broad steel-topped table was pushed back against one wall, and the crate that the guards had been sitting on was against the other wall, almost beside him. Almost absently, Orpheus knocked the last man out, dropping him against the wall as he checked the place with care. In the back, behind the table, a locked door was barely visible. Beneath and beside the table, a mass of stiff blue canvas lay in a rude bundle.

Orpheus bent and shook it out. A blood-stained tarpaulin, and under it, the bloodied and tattered remains of Marcus�s clothing, white wool rent and reddened. Beside the rags, a pair of familiar leather sandals, and a wink of light from the ruby eye of a gold ring, wrought in the shape of a lion�s head and dropped carelessly in the dust. He has been here, he has! Orpheus lifted the ring and turned it over, gold bright against his pale fingers. He slipped it on the forefinger of his right hand, for safekeeping, finding it still slightly loose on the finger. Marcus�s hands were bigger than his own.

Then he folded that hand shut for a moment before whipping a dagger from his belt and twisting the lock off its hasp, on the door. It hit the floor as two shards of ringing metal, bouncing once before falling silent in the restless dust. As soon as the door came open, Orpheus could hear voices and other things as well. A long, narrow hall sloped down into murky darkness, and from somewhere along it�s length, a murmur of irritated speech sounded, punctuated with sharp cracks!, like something flexible hitting flesh. The pull was tugging almost painfully at him, like some magnetic weight buried in his forehead and dragging him onwards. Orpheus didn�t bother to look back as he darted into the hall and was lost in the darkness.

All despite himself, Leland had felt a disquieting chill at Julian�s tale. He had tried hard to keep it from the dear boy�s sight, and he did believe he�d succeeded, but he had never been able to hide it from himself. Now, back in his monastically bare rooms, he sat and shivered slightly. This feeling was deeply irrational, but he was unable to wholly check it. Something very dark was coming, and his friends, his allies and parishioners, were in its path. He was fond of Orpheus, but he could not find it in him to wholly trust him. There was a darkness like a poisoned wound in him. For all his perception, this was a thing that Julian had not yet seen about his protector.

Leland got up and went around the church, succumbing to a nervous urge to see to the security of the windows and doors. Only the broad front doors into the sanctuary were still unlocked. Leland would not suffer the haven of the church to be unavailable to any that sought it, regardless of the hour. As he paused by the tall doors, he could hear the wind rising outside. It was going to be a very stormy night, wearing on till morning. Leland bowed deeply to the reassuring ruby glow of the Presence light that swung by the altar as he passed. Sitting back in his cell again, he listened to the rain lashing against the walls, and shuddered, for no reason that he could have named.

The hall was dark, and it was so narrow that, with hands outheld, Orpheus could have traced both walls at once. However, rather than doing so, he drew his sword, long slender blade shining blue-black in the wan light from the upper door, and continued downwards. The voices formerly heard had paused briefly, then taken up again, with a rhythmic pattern to them, still broken by the periodic sound of blows. Ahead, in the dark, two narrow lines of light appeared on either side of the hall. A warm reddish light on the right, and a pale fluorescent glow on the left hand side. Between them, Orpheus paused and listened, unconsciously balancing his blade in guard. The voices, louder now, were definitely coming from the red-tinged right-hand room, and more, in a pause between two phrases; Orpheus heard a harsh gasp of exertion or pain. With such long familiarity, there could be no mistaking it; it was Marcus�s breath.

Almost casually, Orpheus flicked his blade up and slammed a booted heel against the door, shattering the wood around the latch. The voices inside broke off in a ragged chorus as he leapt through, into the torchlit chamber. In the first second after his arrival, Orpheus scanned the long, rectangular room from end to end; a shortish, dark man who had recoiled into a corner as he burst in, a taller, lean, scarred man with long dark hair and a wild look who had turned sharply to face him, and a tall woman, wrapped in black veils, who turned with blinding speed, something flickering from her hand for an instant before she struck at him with it.

Orpheus raised his hand reflexively, and felt searing bands of agony twine around his forearm as the whip entangled his swordarm. The dark woman snarled and yanked back, almost pulling him off his feet for an instant. Then he ducked under the lash and pulled likewise, ripping the plaited strands from his arm and leaving a tracery of blood behind on his white skin. Only half his attention was on the fight, this instant. The rest was fixed on the painful spectacle before him. He had guessed right, he had! A crudely hewn cross of dark wood, some nine feet tall, was leaned against the wall. On it, like a tortured mockery of a crucifix, Marcus hung from iron spikes in his wrists and feet. Blood stained his hands, his feet, was smeared on face and shoulders, and spilled in single drops down his chest, crossed and recrossed with savage charring burns.

The old Salubri was insensible of his surroundings, but not, evidently, in anything so merciful as a faint. Every muscle under his pale skin was tensed to breaking, standing out like twisted cords across his shoulders beneath the seared whip scores. His lips were drawn back, grimacing, over his fangs. Very clearly, he was suffering from something far more than his physical hurts, brutal though they were.

Orpheus, looking on, could feel nothing but a deep, sick guilt and a growing icy fury. Of all the people in the world that he would have had spared this, Marcus was amongst the foremost. Somehow, all the brutal, dirty, necessary things he had done in his life came back to him, recollection almost accusing. Everything he had done, he had done to protect the innocent and righteous from the same necessities. And now, despite this, here was Marcus, wise, kindly, noble soul, fallen into the very worst of this ugly little war through no fault of his own. This was intolerable!

In a cold rage, Orpheus lashed back at Hazriel, driving her away from Marcus and back towards the other two vampires. Hazriel ducked and swung her lash up, setting the frayed wire tails whirring in the air as she slashed at him, frothing rage on her veiled features. Sariel, with a coldly fanatical cast to his features, snatched a long blade from his belt and advanced on the intruder, sword glittering in the bloody light. Orpheus ducked in turn, evading Sariel�s first blow, and then stumbled when Hazriel swung at him again. Her aim was good, and the lash tails snarled themselves around his blade and right hand, leaving him open to Sariel�s next slash.

That might have been better executed. Orpheus thought wryly as he snatched a dagger from his belt to parry Sariel left-handed. The blades locked, Orpheus pinning the hilts at an angle, and then he used the second gained to kick Sariel back and disengage from him. Sariel stumbled, almost falling, and had to catch his balance. Meanwhile, Orpheus turned on Hazriel, closing the gap between them with a single yank on the braided lash, and driving the dagger into her hand. The white tendons parted under his blade, and Hazriel shrieked in pain and fury as the whip fell from her blood-slicked fingers. A mad light filled her eyes and she spat at him like a snake, tearing at him with clawed fingers.

Orpheus struggled briefly with her, holding her at arm�s length, as he shook her whip loose from his blade. Hazriel shrieked again, raging, and tore at him as he knocked her back. Madwoman. Orpheus noted in the coldly analytical facet of his mind that planned his strategies. Probably useless to question. I don�t need her.

Dodging away from Sariel�s swift advance, Orpheus swept his blade up again and flicked it twice, feather-light movements. Hazriel screamed and fell back, clutching at her blinded eye and clawing blood away from the other one. Then he leapt aside, barely avoiding Sariel�s controlled stab. The Baali recovered with scarcely a fumble and closed the distance between them with a leap, pressing Orpheus back towards one of the glowing braziers. Orpheus feinted twice, rapier moving like an extension of his arm. Then, ducking aside, he looped a booted foot around one leg of the brazier and overturned it, glowing coals bouncing, rolling, breaking in showers of sparks, and splashing in a flaming shower onto Hazriel�s gown.

One down. Orpheus noted, as he watched the ruby-gold flames catch. Hazriel, shrieking and wailing like a tortured soul, clawed at the burning cloth even as her hair and skin caught and began to crackle and blacken. Sariel threw himself aside, dodging her lurching form and kicking the coals aside as he slashed at Orpheus, once, twice, and again, shining arc of blade glinting. There was a flurry of movements almost like dance steps, Orpheus and Sariel feinting, sidestepping, parrying and advancing with almost equal precision. The blades rang against one another, harsh bells chiming. Yakob cowered with a look of utter horror on his features, pressed against the wall as if he wished to melt into it and vanish. Much as he had been afraid of Sariel, this new invader was an unexpected menace.

Another harsh, grating gasp from Marcus fell into the pause as Sariel backed off and circled, swaying slightly as he measured Orpheus�s guard. Orpheus, feeling that he had sufficient of Sariel�s measure, feinted sharply and rushed him, snapping his black blade up under the Baali�s guard and cutting him deeply. Sariel leapt back, snarling with anger, as his dark blood spilled from the slanted gash and soaked into the black silk. Orpheus allowed himself the slightest possible sliver of icy smile, and did it again, feinting low and whipping the razor point across Sariel�s left shoulder. It would have been his throat, save for a last minute sidestep which failed to wholly save him. And Orpheus was still unmarked, save for the weals of Hazriel�s lash on his arm.

Pace by pace, he backed Sariel against the wall, starting the process of cutting the other vampire to pieces behind his own guard. A well-aimed slash cut Sariel�s arm to the bone, and his saber fell clattering to the stony, ember-strewn floor. Orpheus lifted his blade, preparing to pin Sariel to the wall for questioning, and then froze, hearing a sudden rending sound behind him, wood creaking and splitting under irresistible force.

�Master!� Sariel cried, staring in rapture over Orpheus�s shoulder. Orpheus spun away, dropping into guard as a second flurry of rending cracks echoed off the walls. On the cross, the thing which had been Marcus was slowly and powerfully ripping the second of the iron spikes out of the wood, floating now in the air before it as the creature freed its left wrist, final point of attachment. Its feet hung free, blackened nail protruding obscenely from one foot, bloody hole in the other. With an eerie floating movement, it drifted forwards into the center of the room, and then lifted its head. A mad red light shone behind Marcus�s quiet brown eyes, and his facial features were twisted into a wholly alien expression of gloating, ugly triumph. ,p>On the instant, Orpheus dove for it. Sorry, Father. . . His first move was an attempt to knock it out of the air, rather than stab or slash. Whatever this was in Marcus�s flesh, it was still his father�s body it was wearing. It�s head lolled sickeningly as it oriented on his movement. With a flick of its borrowed hand, Orpheus was slammed back against the unyielding wall with bonecrushing force. He could hear his ribs break on impact, the arches of his ribcage flattening and splintering beneath the invisible hammer of force that had struck him. Orpheus managed only a stifled wheeze as he slumped to the ground, clutching white-knuckled to his blade as he struggled to rise again. Ouch. Perhaps that was an error. Almost absently, he ducked Sariel�s left-handed attack. Stiff as a mishandled marionette, the infernal visitor turned towards him again, lips working silently for moment before it�s harsh, breaking voice emerged.

�I. . .have returned!� Its tones leapt from guttural to falsetto, wavering and choking as it gained finer control. �How dare. . . you . . .defy me!� The voice settled into an approximation of Marcus�s vocal range, but still harsh and thick. Orpheus felt his shattered ribs start to knit as he got to his feet finally, keeping a wary eye on Sariel. He might be able to kill this thing, battered and injured as it already was, but then Marcus. . . Only as a last resort.

Behind Sariel, on the low stone slab, a blackened stake was lying. Orpheus got an idea. He feinted several times, letting the demon-thing sway and lurch as it tried to orient on him again. Then, sweeping Sariel aside and ignoring the stinging slash he received across his shoulder, he dove for the stake. Yakob, still in the back corner, froze against the wall in paralyzing dread. Orpheus hit the floor, rolled, and came up with the stake in his left hand, quickly flipping it present the pointed end. Now. . . how do I get that close to it? It had wheeled in the air again, starting to move more rapidly now. It still moved stiffly, jerking and over-correcting, but the speed was picking up.

�Oh, no...� Yakob whispered softly.

�Damn you, you sniveling coward! Kill him! Do it now!� Sariel snapped, struggling back to his feet. Orpheus ducked smoothly, edging far enough away to be able to watch all three opponents at once, leaving the rough cross at his back. His boot slid, for a second, in a smear of Marcus�s blood by the foot. They will die for this. For what they�ve done to him. All of them will die. Orpheus thought grimly, eyes flicking from one to the next as he weighed his options. The demon floated lightly as a ghost in the air, slowly flexing it�s crooked and stiffened fingers. It�s features twisted again, settling into a poor imitation of Marcus�s grave concern.

�Why, Orpheus, my son, what are you doing? Stop that and come to me.� It commanded, in a parody of Marcus�s voice. Orpheus looked coldly at it. You are not Marcus. He thought, with loathing. Sariel was starting to move towards him, gripping his saber uncertainly in his left hand. Yakob was unmoving, huddled against the wall like a trapped rabbit and seemingly oblivious to Sariel�s venomous glances in his direction. Orpheus lifted his blade slightly.

�You will come to me!� The demon snarled, abandoning the fatherly pose. Orpheus felt a sudden icy fear as Marcus�s lidless third eye slowly began to glimmer with a sickly light, burning red through its veil of blood. This was a dire threat indeed, if it could twist Marcus�s abilities to it�s own uses. With nothing else to hand, he snatched a dagger from his belt, dropping the stake to do it, and flung the blade with hasty aim. It saw the knife, surely, but the clumsy bob it did to dodge it was useless. The demon shrieked in rage and pain, as the cast dagger blinded its third eye. It clawed at its forehead, dislodging the blade and slinging it to the ground with a look of increasing, insane fury on its stolen features. Orpheus grabbed the stake and dove out of the way as it snarled and flung a bolt of sullen flame at him. The red-black fire burst against the wall and died, leaving a seared black line on the blocks. Damn. Orpheus thought, almost absently, as he rolled to his feet and prepared to dodge again.

If I can stake it again, I can bring it down without harming Marcus any further. Unfortunately, that may not be possible by now. Orpheus weighed the stake thoughtfully in his hand, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he watched it intently. After a momentary pause, it swung it�s stiffened hands up, nails protruding grotesquely from it�s pierced wrists, and cast fire at him again, bolts splattering hotter and hotter against the wall as he sidestepped it�s aim. Orpheus ducked again and attempted to close with it, threatening with his blade. It spun sharply in midair, long black claws sprouting from its fingertips. Their icy, razor tips raked across Orpheus�s face, barely missing his eyes as he leapt back and knocked its hands aside with the flat of his blade. Blood spilled bright over Orpheus�s pale, grave features, and he shook his head to clear his eyes of the haze. Scratches only, but they stung like fire. Is Marcus even there anymore? The demon feinted again, and Orpheus dodged its claws, then hissed in pain as Sariel�s sword sank into his right shoulder.

The Baali�s aim was off, surely, but the wound was damaging regardless. Sariel yanked the blade free and struck again, his saber ringing against Orpheus�s sword as the French vampire blocked. Orpheus winced slightly as he flicked the point. The rent muscles in his arm did not respond well to the movement. This fight was getting progressively worse. Ducking another burst of firebolts, Orpheus decided to sacrifice his sword, and pinned Sariel to the wall with a carefully aimed thrust. The Baali shrieked in shock and pain as the blade slid through his chest and half a foot deep into the wall, with a grating sound. As Orpheus turned away to deal with the demon again, it repeated it�s careless flick, throwing him through the air again. This time, when he hit the stone, he could hear his back break. Pain shot up and down his spine, and then vanished below his waist, leaving an agonized knot in the middle of his back. Orpheus struggled to rise, scrabbling at the stone, but was unable to do more than drag himself a few inches. He could heal it, certainly, but that took time he didn�t have just then. Dark fire crackled menacingly across its shoulders and sheeted down to its long claws, gathering like water in its hands. I�m going to die. Orpheus thought grimly, tightening his fingers around the stake and considering throwing it. It bent over him, gloating at his sudden helplessness, and cupped it�s hands mockingly together, fire beginning to brim and spill over the edges in searing runnels. A single drop spattered onto Orpheus�s chest as he hitched himself backward, searing through cloth and skin with a hiss and a wisp of sickly black smoke. And it bent closer still, fingers beginning to part .... And then froze, with a look of shock on it�s face. It stumbled backwards, jerking convulsively.

�No!� And it was Marcus�s voice, truly his, for that one second before the composite entity collapsed to the floor, muscles knotting with the strain of internal conflict. Sariel was raging, clutching futilely with blood-slicked hands at the blade in his chest as he strove to wrench it loose. Orpheus slumped limply to the ground, healing the shattered bone in his spine as quickly as possible. Whatever that final effort had cost Marcus, he would not have it wasted. Momentary pain flared up and down his back again as the nerves knit and he rose to his feet. He was gasping between his teeth as he drove the stake through Marcus�s heart again, aiming for the visible reddened pit of its previous entry. The recoil hurt his arm as the dulled point stubbed against the stone floor and grounded in a spill of dark blood.

�I�m sorry, Father.� Orpheus murmured, rocking back on his heels as he let his hand fall. Then he slowly got to his feet, scanning the room again.

Yakob was still behind the altar, evidently not having moved so much as an inch during the fight. He had gone past mere pallor into ashen gray, and was shaking visibly. So was Sariel, but in the latter�s case, it was with unconcealed rage and bitter frustration. The older Baali was still struggling with the black sword that pinned him to the stones, cutting his hands to bloody shreds as he fought the razor-sharp, unyielding metal. Now, I deal with them. Orpheus turned slowly back towards Sariel, dismissing Yakob as a negligible threat for the time being. It was not impossible that he was feigning his panic, but he was too far away to approach silently regardless. Besides, Sariel had rather clearly been in charge of the whole operation, and might therefore be more informative, if properly questioned. Leaving Marcus where he had fallen, Orpheus calmly wiped runnels of blood from his face and dusted his hands off, rescuing his hat from the corner where it had fallen. He tucked the hat under his arm, and crossed the floor, standing just out of Sariel�s reach and weighing a spare dagger in one hand. The blade winked in casual menace as Orpheus turned it over in his fingers. Sariel glared at him with pure hatred.

�What were you trying to do, and how do I reverse it?� Orpheus asked, coldly. Sariel wrenched at the sword again, and then drew himself up and spat blood in Orpheus�s face. Orpheus ignored it, and turned to lift a torch from its bracket on the wall. He swung it carefully back and forth, brightening the low flame while holding it away from his body.

�What were you trying to do?� He repeated. Sariel glared at him with passionate loathing. Orpheus caught his free hand, gripping the Baali�s bloodspattered wrist with crushing force, and held it beside the torch. Then, after a momentary pause, Orpheus shrugged an eyebrow in resignation and forced Sariel�s hand into the flames. He snarled in outraged pain and thrashed, trying to pull away from the angry Brujah. Orpheus was immovable, holding hand and torch as still as stone. An appalling stench smoked from the flames as Sariel�s skin began to blacken and catch, tiny embers starting to glow along the edges of the cuts on his palm. Sariel was panting through his teeth, head arched back against the stone. Yakob�s gasp ended as a stifled squeak as he realized that any sound might recall Orpheus�s attention to him. Then he made the mistake of edging towards the door.

Orpheus beat him to it. Not running. One moment, the compact, black-clad man was beside the farthest wall. The next, he was standing calmly in front of the doorway. Yakob nearly fell over, he stopped so abruptly. He was shaking like a leaf, but had the wits not to ask for mercy. Neither the Baali nor their nearest enemies dealt in such things, anymore, and Yakob was not such a fool as to have forgotten that particular lesson. The stocky, dark-haired Russian nervously licked his lips, holding very, very still and eyeing Orpheus like a bird looking at a snake. He could feel an endless spill of fatuous, empty words trembling in his mouth, and bit them back with difficulty. There could be no excuses here, true or false. Words were pointless, and they were still all Yakob had to offer. All he had ever had to offer, really. Only the translator. Not that it would matter to this iron-eyed little man who had so easily destroyed them.

Yakob swallowed with palpable difficulty and very slowly let his hands fall to his sides, giving up his first defensive huddle. It wouldn�t have helped. A failure to resist might at least buy him a faster death. Or a very, very slow one. But there was one thing maybe more important than that, even. Yakob�s dark eyes slid to the demon-thing, now sprawled in a limp, bloody huddle on the floor.

�Please. Don�t let it go. Kill it now, while it�s helpless. You don�t know what it�s capable of.� Yakob begged, trying to keep his voice from cracking.

�Yakob, you miserable sniveling traitor!� Sariel screamed in fury. �How dare you! I promise you pain beyond your imaginings for this, you wretched coward! I should never have used you!� Yakob, still shaking, looked at Sariel in utter dread, but still turned back to Orpheus.

�Please don�t let it go.� Orpheus raised an eyebrow. Now here was a pretty picture. A set display? Meant to ingratiate the survivor to him? Or was the shorter one, Yakob, actually trying to change sides? Either way . . . This promised a degree of utility.

�I�ll see you burn for this, Yakob. For centuries, I�ll see you burn! I�ll . . .�

�You will do nothing.� Orpheus�s sword, pulled from the wall, flashed once, and Sariel crumbled to the floor, already dissolving into floating gray dust. Yakob, equally ashen, sank to the ground and knelt shakily, swaying a bit.

�You.� Orpheus pointed, needlessly, with his sword. �Get up. You are going to tell me everything you know about this.� Yakob promptly struggled to his feet.

�How do I get rid of it?�

�Kill the host.� Yakob shrugged very slightly. �Anything that would kill a vampire will kill the host body right now. Hopefully, it�ll be weakened enough by the fight to be unable to remain on this plane for more than a few seconds without its anchor.� Yakob nodded at Marcus�s awkward sprawl. The Baali twisted his hands together, trying to still the tremors that wracked them.

�Not acceptable.� Orpheus said flatly. Yakob winced at the words. Orpheus briefly considered telling him just who their �host� was, then decided against it. This particular vampire appeared to be on the verge of panic anyway.

�How do I get rid of it without harming the �host�?� Yakob swallowed hard, looking down at his feet for a moment. �I . . . I don�t know. For certain. I don�t . . . know if it can be.�

�But you have a guess?�

�Seal the Gate.� Yakob glanced up once, briefly, at Orpheus, then looked away again. �It has . . . reserves of energy, power, from the other plane. Close the Gate, and it�s cut off. But that won�t do more than weaken it.�

�Do it. And keep thinking, hard.�

�It�s in another room. I can�t do anything from here.� Yakob said tentatively, nodding at the door.

�Go. Slowly.� Orpheus stepped behind Yakob as he turned, letting the point of his sword hover within inches of his captive�s back. Slowly, indeed, Yakob edged to the door, and carefully opened it, trying to keep one eye on Orpheus for any signs of displeasure. The pair went; pace by pace, into the narrow hall, and down it for several yards, to where it dead-ended in a broad, closed door. Yakob started to reach for the handle, when Orpheus stopped him.

�Against the wall.� Orpheus pressed the blade against the back of Yakob�s neck, flattening him against the side of the passage. Then he leaned over slightly and flicked the door open, scanning the dim chamber as it swung wide. Empty. Wide, spacious floor with strange, half-familiar symbols scrawled in blood, ink, and chalk around a huge, irregular, nine-pointed star.

�In.� Orpheus prodded Yakob again. The Baali inched sideways and through the door. He swallowed hard again before speaking.

�I�m going to erase the sigils. I�ll need to move around the room. . ..� Orpheus nodded curtly and stepped back. Yakob, stiffly, knelt on the floor and began scrubbing at the marks with the hem of his robe. A feel of humming, silent tension in the air pulsed and shivered like a struck bell as the first clump of symbols were obliterated. The dim, sourceless red glow in the air flickered, suddenly shot through with streaks of darkness. Yakob crawled from one point to the next, erasing the complex diagrams and replacing them with a single, stark scrawl in chalk. Orpheus recognized it as a rather elemental binding rune, slightly distorted from the Enochian he knew, but near enough to be effective. He could do better himself, and intended to, as soon as he finished dealing with Yakob. As the last point was wiped clean, the red light flashed briefly and went out, leaving only the wan light of a single incandescent bulb swinging from the ceiling. Dim or not, it felt infinitely cleaner than that hot glow. There was, however, still an almost sub-sonic hum of pent power. Yakob slowly rose.

�It�s.. Ah, still there. You realize. The Gate, that is. It�s closed, not gone.� He rubbed his hands clean on a fold of his robe, twisting and pulling it between them.

�What else?� Orpheus asked, tapping his sword lightly against his booted ankle. �I told you to think of another solution.�

Yakob licked his lips tensely. �There are some formulae on the vessel�s body. They should probably be erased. It will break the bond, but it won�t drive it off. Really, all that�s been done so far is to make it impossible for it to come back, if it loses its grip on him now.� Orpheus looked dissatisfied, but nodded.

�Show me.� Yakob led the way back into the first room and knelt beside Marcus. He started to reach for his arm when Orpheus grabbed his wrist.

�You don�t touch him. Just point.� Yakob swallowed and rocked back on his heels, giving Orpheus more space.

�There. And there, on the palms. Also across his back. There was some on the feet, but that�s been obliterated, I think.�

Orpheus shooed Yakob into the back corner again, so he could keep an eye on him while carefully washing the inky inscriptions away. Then, in an effort made awkward by Marcus�s height, Orpheus moved him onto his side, so that his back was exposed. A broad strip of black silk came away under Orpheus�s knife, leaving the acid-burned letters visible. His eyes narrowed in bitter anger at the sight. Orpheus paused briefly, then laid the knife to the marked skin. It took him only a second to neatly excise the narrow rectangle and discard it, leaving a long, flayed patch of red flesh. Marcus shuddered, muscles tensing as the operation was performed.

In his corner, Yakob had to swallow hard again, studying the bricks intently until Orpheus was done and had rolled Marcus back onto his back, carefully covering the wound with the strip of silk. A second wracking shudder shook him as he lay flat. Orpheus paused for a moment, gently touching Marcus�s hand and feeling the minute twitches and tremors of the muscles beneath the white skin. That was all wrong. A staked vampire should be limp, tensionless, incapable of any movement. A special case. Orpheus thought, bitterly, as he gently laid Marcus�s hand back down on the stones of the floor, and watched the fingers crook and tremble momentarily.

�What else?� Orpheus demanded of Yakob.

�Ah. . . Holy ground? Some location not. . . congenial. . . to it�s presence.� Yakob shrugged again, fractionally.

�And then?�

�Just wait. I don�t know what else to do. . . . It�ll eventually run out of strength, theoretically speaking. If it tires before he does,� With another nod at Marcus. �It�ll fall away and be expelled from this plane of energy. It�s not native to this level, it can�t remain here without a host of some sort.� Yakob twisted his hands together again.

�If he breaks first, though, it�ll simply take over, staked or not. He, ah. . . Sariel was amazed he held out as long as he did already.�

Orpheus glanced over at the sifting pile of ashes beneath the torch socket in the far wall. Amazed, was he? . . . Still not good enough, though. I�m so sorry, Marcus. He shook his head. The little fellow clearly doesn�t know too much about this, and far too much about the rest of it. He�s not skilled enough to be a competent thaumaturge by himself, but he knows how to repeat this ritual. I shall have to either kill him or take him with me. He�s too knowledgeable and too weak to be left behind.

Yakob�s voice broke into his thoughts. �The book. Ah, on the altar. That�s where the formulae are. First the original manuscripts, then my translations bound into the back. Perhaps. . . Something there might be more informative?� Yakob was still scrubbing his hands nervously against his sides, scuffing up the black cloth.

�Quite possibly. Anything else?� Yakob paused for a long moment, and then took a deep breath and let his hands hang loosely. He�s going to kill me now.

�No. That�s all.� Orpheus nodded. Yakob saw a tiny flick of movement, and had just time to think, at least it�s finally over, before a feeling like a thin cold wind brushed his throat, and the world went out for good.

Orpheus watched as Yakob fell, skin drying and drawing tight over his bones as he hit the floor. The head, which had landed on it�s side, looked at him with a curious glazed calm. Almost a welcoming look. Then the dry, mummified skin, dead for thirty years, began to crack and flake away from the yellowed bone here and there, and the eyes sank and clouded over into blank, yellow-gray pits. Orpheus shook a thin glaze of liquid blood off his razor-sharp blade, and wiped it carefully on the hem of his cloak before sheathing it.

He took the iron-bound book up to the car first, scanning the woods for any sign that someone else was still in the area. But all was quiet, only a few sad late crickets singing in the light frost. The moon had set, and the sky was dark, with a faint, ominous light just beginning to suggest itself in the east. False dawn, Orpheus knew, but the real one would follow shortly. Too far, to drive anywhere else for shelter. He decided, reluctantly, to pass the day here. He locked the book in the trunk of the car, and returned underground to finish arranging his plans before the approaching day could reach him.

Just before dawn, the phone rang loudly by Julian�s ear. The young vampire had dozed off, hoping to hold his anxieties at bay in sleep and now startled awake, hyperventilating. His first clumsy swipe at the phone had knocked it off the little table, and he fumbled to pick up the earpiece.

�Hello? Hello? Orpheus! Oh, thank goodness! We were so worried . . . I should what? Okay . . .. okay. .. At midnight? You need what? I�ll tell him, I guess, but what is . . .? Hello?� Julian blinked at the receiver as it started to hum a dial tone at him.

�Huh. Guess he hung up.� Julian slumped back into his bed, rubbing his eyes and flipping his long black hair off his face. �Wonder what�s up with him . . . anyway?� He muttered, around a huge yawn. �Hope everything�s . . .. okay�� The Salubri neonate was asleep slightly before his head actually made it all the way back to his pillow.

Fortunately, he still remembered the message when he awoke the next evening. Julian woke up, yawned, more or less out of habit, and dragged a comb off his dresser to remove the tangles in his hair. Then he stretched and went downstairs, looking for Harry and the others. Orpheus had given him very specific instructions about who was to be where, and how much to tell them. Not that Orpheus had told him all that much, but then, the old vampire was usually kind of secretive. It was probably second nature by now.

As usual, Harry was in the kitchen, taking bites out of a sandwich roughly the size of a Oxford Standard Dictionary. Julian smelled the ham and felt faintly ill for a moment. It was too early in the night for food smells, really.

�Harry? Could you stop molesting that pig for a moment and help me in here?� The Ravnos yelled from the next room. �The TV�s on the fritz again!� Harry sniffed, looked over, and went to check it out, leaving the gargantu-sandwich on his plate. Julian held his breath and followed him into the family room. Harry fixed the TV by the simple expedient of clouting it on the side, which caused it to crackle with static for a second and then snap back into focus. The Ravnos, satisfied, slumped back against the couch and continued watching late-night cartoons.

�What�s up, little bro?� Harry asked, flopping comfortably on the sofa and thumping Julian gently on the back. �You look all bothered again.�

�Orpheus called, really late last night.�

�He did? Why don�t you tell me these things? What�s up with the old man?� Harry demanded.

�I am telling you. I fell asleep as soon as he hung up, anyway. He said he was okay, and that he�d be here by midnight, and he wants us to call Father Leland and ask him if he can use the church for something really important tonight. He said he wanted Leland�s help for somebody.� Julian shrugged. �And you�re still supposed to keep a heel-and-toe watch over us small fry until he�s home.� Harry rolled his eyes and grinned.

�Donch�a just love paranoid elders? Everybody should have one. Then we could all lurk in the basement together.� He shook his head in amusement. �How about you, little bro?� Julian sighed, looking pensive.

�I think I�ll visit Leland. I could just go over and ask him for Orpheus, instead of calling. I�d like to talk to him, anyway. He�s good for that. And if I�m not allowed to talk to Morgana unless Orpheus is at home, there�s not that many other people for me to talk with.� Julian made slight attempt to hide his unhappiness with that last restriction.

�Okay, but be careful, okay? Like always? No talking to strange vampires?� Harry said, arching his eyebrows at Julian.

�I�m careful, I�m careful! Everybody here thinks I�m either a Malk or a Caitiff anyway . . .� Even Morgana, Julian thought, then shook his head as he grabbed a tan trenchcoat and his loaded backpack from the hall closet and jogged out the door.

He sprinted casually through the dark, cold streets, more for the feel of the night wind catching at his hair than because he was in a hurry. At least he didn�t have to worry about being too early. Leland always got up as soon as the sun set and sometimes a little before.

Far down the street, Julian�s heightened hearing could just pick out the thumping dance music spilling from a brightly-lit dance club, and see the changing, distant glow of the stoplights on the hill. He skidded to a halt at the corner to let a solitary car rumble on down the street, then nipped across the street himself and continued on. Leland�s church was a great, shadowy haven from the orange glow of the streetlights, with it�s tall wooden doors closed but unlocked, and it�s tall, four-sided bell tower shining a faint beacon into the night. Julian leaned his weight on one of the ironbound doors, easing it open far enough to slip quietly in.

If Leland was up and about, Julian knew he�d be out in the sanctuary shortly. Julian himself settled down in the choir rows to go over a book Orpheus had left him to study. Orpheus was a kindly guardian, but a rather demanding tutor and Julian occasionally fretted under the load of dead languages and ancient history Orpheus insisted on teaching him. Granted, some of it was interesting, bits very much so, but a great bulk was simply dull. One of the good things about talking with Leland was that it gave Julian a chance to practice his Latin on the elderly priest. Father Leland was very patient with his fumbles.

When Leland did emerge quietly from his little set of rooms behind the sacristy, he smiled to see Julian bent over his dusty book, long black hair trailing repeatedly into his eyes and being brushed back out, more or less reflexively. Leland touched him lightly on the shoulder, stepping back as Julian started up in surprise.

�Oh! I�m sorry, I didn�t hear you.� Julian slumped back against the pew in a dramatic gesture of relief. �I wanted to talk for a bit, I suppose, and I had a message from Orpheus . . .� which he duly gave. Leland, no more comprehending it than Julian, frowned over it somewhat, but shrugged and said that Orpheus was welcome to any aid he could give, of course. Julian had to admit, at least to himself, that curiosity was at least part of his reason for wanting to stay.

Even on a winter night, midnight was not so very long after sunset, and Julian had proven able to quite lose himself in a conversation about Roman philosophy. Orpheus�s library was well stocked on the topic, and Julian�s long-abandoned college major had been philosophy. Given that and a willing fellow debator, he could have occupied himself for far longer than the needed four hours.

Despite having been half-waiting for it, Julian was still startled when he heard a car pull up in the parking lot outside. It pulled in fast, tires squealing through the turn, and footsteps sounded as soon as the engine fell silent. Leland had risen, a troubled look on his face, and was walking towards the main doors. Julian got up and hurried after him, hearing Orpheus cross the lot and climb the steps. Both of them were surprised when the short, stocky man appeared through the doorway with a great, canvas-wrapped bundle in his arms. It was larger than he was, Julian saw, and bulky, for all that Orpheus was carrying it easily. A terrible intensity of purpose was on Orpheus�s face. Suddenly apprehensive, Julian stepped quickly out of his way.

With only a nod to Father Leland, Orpheus strode up the aisle to the wider open space of worn flagstones before the communion rail, and there laid down his load, settling it gently to the floor. The thick, clumsily folded canvas slid back at one corner as Orpheus let go and rose. A thin, pale, blood-spattered hand fell limply atop the stained cloth, with a thick iron spike piercing the distorted wrist. Leland drew back in shock briefly, one hand going to the heavy crucifix around his neck. Things must have gone very, very ill indeed. A momentary sick feeling knotted in his guts at the sight of that pathetic crippled arm. Then he swallowed it back down.

�What can I do?� Orpheus, kneeling beside the bundle and undoing the knots in a length of rope that held it together, looked up at him briefly.

�That remains to be seen.� The knot came loose, and the dropcloth fell away from the body it contained. A tall, lean, gray-haired man, unclad except for the canvas wrap, pierced through the wrists and feet with heavy nails, and through the heart with a blackened stake. His bare chest was hideously scarred with long burns, cutting deep through skin and muscle to show the terrible white gleam of bone over his ribs. A faint, sick scent of charred flesh hung on the air.

Julian had sunk to his knees and was staring at the body in horrified awe, seeing the face of his visions before him. The features were twisted with pain and smeared with blood, but unmistakable, even to the scarred bloody socket of the third eye.

�Oh my God. . .� Julian whispered, unaware that he was speaking. He stumbled closer, wincing in empathy as knelt to touch the twisted hand. Orpheus grabbed his wrist and jerked him backwards without warning.

�No!� Orpheus snapped, tension breaking into something close to anger. �Do not touch him. Do not go near him.�

�But Orpheus, look at him! I could help, you know I could! And he�s so badly hurt. . .�

�There is much more here than is visible, Julian. Stay away from him, as you value your sanity.� Orpheus thrust Julian back, sending the younger vampire stumbling against a pew. Leland gently caught Julian�s shoulder and eased him into a seat.

�What is wrong? What happened to him, Orpheus?� Leland demanded, still flanking Julian.

�Baali happened. I suspect demonic possession.� Orpheus said tersely, turning back to the body for a moment. Outside, lighting flashed behind the dark, jewel-toned windows, sending a lurid glare of colors across the church.

�Oh, Orpheus, that�s. . ..� Julian started, looking at him in surprised disbelief. Leland cut him off halfway through his sentence.

�Why? What are the signs?� The priest was already reaching for the bowl of holy water beside the font as he spoke.

�The Baali held him for several nights before I was able to locate them. Shortly after my arrival, he displayed a number of abilities I know he should not have, including throwing fire and levitating, attacked me when I brought the coven leader down, and appeared physically incapable of normal physical movement and speech for several moments, �relearning� how to walk and speak.�

Leland nodded, scooping a heavy book up from his seat and depositing it on the altar.

�Further, a Baali that I was able to question confirmed that the intent of their ritual was to permit a Demon Lord to manifest through a physical �host�. He was unable to suggest any specific countermeasures.�

�In your estimation, would it be dangerous to attempt to awaken him? Ideally, the subject should be cooperating.� Leland flipped through the pages, laying a thick ribbon down to mark his place when he found the correct section. The mangled form stretched on the floor still distressed him, but to be able to plan a course of action was greatly relieving.

�Extremely so. He cannot be unstaked, and is not himself aware of his surroundings, I fear.� Orpheus said. Leland nodded, making decisions quickly.

�All right, then. Orpheus, please get rid of that cloth, for now. Julian, look in the vestry for a choir robe about the right size for him. I�ll need a few minutes to prepare.� Carrying the book, Leland settled onto a prie-dieu and folded his hands in prayer. After a moment of lingering shocked paralysis, Julian got up and hurried towards the vestry. White robes hung in ranks, beside the red altar boys� tunics and the deacon�s black robe. More or less at random, Julian pulled one of the longer choir robes from its hanger in a swish of fabric and started back out. They�re going to exorcise him? He�s hurt! This is preposterous! Falling in beside Orpheus on his return from the back door, Julian caught his arm.

�Orpheus, this is ridiculous. There�re no such things as demons.� He whispered urgently. Orpheus arched an eyebrow coolly. �Indeed? You have enough Auspex to see it, I suspect. Although I most certainly do not recommend that course of action.�

Orpheus lifted the robe from Julian�s hands and turned away, leaving Julian gaping after him. They�re crazy! I thought they were more rational than this. Julian shook his head, hurrying after Orpheus again. See what, anyway? Perhaps I can at least see how badly off the poor guy is. . . Julian squinted slightly, trying to focus his Auspex. Then he clapped his hands over his mouth and retched. A thick, slimy-seeming cloud of roiling darkness was wrapped and twisted around the unconscious man, and his �normal� aura was almost gone. A thin, pale, dimming shaft of light hung in the center of the cloud, and the vile darkness seemed to be trying to extinguish it. Even as Julian watched, a sliver of silver-gray radiance was peeled away and engulfed by the dark. Julian fell back with a cry of horror.

�It�s eating him!� The cloud boiled and twisted, and a single glaring blood red eye opened in its shadowy crevices and looked at Julian with incredible hatred. The young Salubri stared back, petrified by the sheer malignancy of the creature�s gaze. It seemed to swell larger as he watched, swelling and rippling, a multitude of smaller hot-coal eyes appearing in it�s mass. Then the sight was mercifully cut off when Orpheus covered his eyes and pulled him away. Julian stumbled blindly under the guiding pressure of Orpheus�s hands as he was led to a window. The night beyond was dark, storm-ridden, but still infinitely cleaner than that loathsome mass. A dazzling spear of lightning pierced the turbulent clouds and vanished, followed by a low growl of thunder. Julian was shaking.

�That�s a demon?!� Orpheus nodded.

�I hate it. It�s horrible!� Julian said passionately. �It doesn�t belong here.� He shuddered and gripped the high, deep windowsill to keep his hands from trembling.

�We shall endeavor to dispose of it. Are you able to assist Father Leland with the responses, or do you need to wait in another room?� Orpheus asked, taking one of Julian�s hands and holding it reassuringly. Julian swallowed hard at the idea of remaining in the presence of that thing.

�I want to get rid of it. Let me help, please.� Orpheus hesitated, then nodded again.

�Do not use your Auspex again, if you can help it, and do not touch him. There is no need to present it with another possible host.� Julian shuddered again, but agreed.

�Further, there is no need to attempt healing at this point. Marcus can deal with physical pain far better than it can, I am convinced.�

�Marcus? Is that his name?� Julian asked, following Orpheus back into the central aisle. He was trying not to think about what he knew was there.

�Yes. He is very old.� Orpheus answered, steering Julian into position facing the altar and across from Leland. The priest�s initial shock and alarm had resolved themselves into dedication, and his face was fearless as he looked down at Marcus, now clad in a loose white choir robe. He passed Orpheus a second breviary to share with Julian, tapping the correct page at the start of the section.

�We are undertaking a very serious service, my friends. I would like both of you to focus, sincerely, on the prayers within the text, and to repeat the responses as we come to them. With God�s help, we shall triumph yet.� Leland knelt to lay a plain gold cross on Marcus�s chest, draping the chain over his head. A visible shudder gripped his motionless body. Leland crossed himself and rose, picking up a shallow silver bowl and dipping his fingers into it. Orpheus closed his eyes calmly as Leland sprinkled the water over him, then on Julian and himself, and finally over Marcus�s prostrate body. Marcus�s lips curled back in a silent snarl as the droplets hit him.

Orpheus could feel Julian tense beside him, and gripped the neonate�s arm more firmly for a moment, reassuring him. Leland set the bowl aside and knelt, reciting the litany of the saints in a clear voice. Julian followed in the text, responding shakily at first and then with more confidence as they continued. At the end of the litany, Leland stopped briefly and turned to the next ribbon, several chapters further on. He cleared his throat.

�Lead us not into temptation. . .�

�But deliver us from evil.� Julian and Orpheus replied.

�Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy steadfast love; according to thy abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! . . . . Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. . .�

Julian felt badly out of place, listening to Leland pray. The sincerity and emotion in his voice made Julian feel as if he were intruding on something very private, and the formula seemed strange and out of date to his agnostic, humanistic perceptions. He looked briefly down at Marcus, and saw the older vampire�s fingers hooked into claws and quivering slightly. The torn, bloody flesh around the nails made his stomach turn over when he looked at it. What kind of person could do this to someone?

Orpheus nudged Julian lightly and Julian guiltily turned back to the book as Leland came to the next antiphonal section.

�Save your servant. . .�

�Who trusts in You, O God.�

�Let him find in You, O Lord, a fortified tower. . .�

�In the face of the enemy.� The prayers went on for a long time, Leland periodically reading from various gospels or reciting Psalms. Orpheus�s attention was only half on the words he spoke and heard spoken. A grim certainty was overcoming him, as more and more time passed without any visible change in Marcus�s state. I will have to kill him. This is not going to work, and I will have to destroy him. Marcus looked so utterly defenseless, lying like a discarded doll on the smooth flags. Only the tremors of his hands and the brief, passing, pain-filled grimaces on his face gave any suggestion that he was not already dead, cold as the stones he lay on. I�m sorry, Father. I failed you again. You saved me, and I failed you. The bitterness of the thought lay heavy and tangible in his mouth. He recited blindly, looking at the text without really seeing it.

�Lord, heed my prayer.�

�And let my cry be heard by You.� Yes, let it! Julian thought, feeling a terrible burning compassion for the pain he had seen. Beside him, Orpheus was speaking grimly, cold despair heavy on his features. Julian was surprised to see such a look on his guardian�s face. Orpheus never gave up! And this poor man, Marcus, must mean more to him than he was saying, for him to be so upset. Maybe to me, too. Why did I see him? Julian wanted so badly to be able to set things right. Marcus was in such obvious pain that it hurt Julian to look at him, and worse, he could still feel the nebulous presence of the demon. It was an oppressive, darkening weight on the air, like the atmosphere before a storm, but multiplied a hundred times. He hated it more than he�d ever hated anything, looking up to meet Leland�s eyes as the white-clad priest knelt at Marcus�s head and signed a cross over him. Leland draped the end of his stole over Marcus�s neck and gently laid a hand on his forehead.

Marcus jerked convulsively at the touch, lips curling away from his fangs in silent menace. Leland didn�t flinch.

�See the cross of the Lord; begone, you hostile powers!�

�The stem of David, the lion of Juda�s tribe has conquered.� Leland felt a faint satisfaction at the rising confidence of Julian�s voice. The demon was resisting, but he could feel the tension of the struggle rising. Please, God, Your mercy is infinite. Do not withhold it from this suffering soul. Let him be delivered. Thunder cracked outside, rattling the stained-glass windows. A gust of wind left the candles guttering low for a moment.

He traced crosses on Marcus�s brow, ignoring the jerks and shudders of his body. A bittersweet smell of incense drifted from the hanging censer. Another splash of holy water left glistening drops in Marcus�s iron-gray hair. The oppressive tension grew higher, seeming almost to thicken the air. Leland had not the slightest intention of giving up. Hearing his own voice as if from a great distance, he continued his prayers, moving to kneel beside Marcus. As he started the first of three crosses on his chest, dark blood began to well up around the stake, first seeping then bubbling thickly up, soaking the white cloth and spreading down his sides. Leland narrowed his eyes and spoke slightly louder, continuing to sign crosses.

�I adjure you, ancient serpent, by the judge of the living and the dead, by your Creator, by the Creator of the whole universe, by Him who has the power to consign you to hell, to depart forthwith in fear!� Marcus shuddered again, and blood began spilling from the wounds in his wrists and feet, pooling red-black on the stone. Leland lifted the bowl and tipped splashes of holy water over the bleeding wounds. A sharp hiss came as the water washed the blood away, and no more followed.

Julian�s eyes were wide with awe at these manifestations as the exorcism proceeded. This was for real! At least, maybe if there were demons, there could be angels too. Lighting blazed with incandescent brilliance again and again outside the glass images of staring saints, but no rain fell. The blood and water mingled into a cloudy red mirror-pool, reflecting the dancing candlelight. As Leland laid his hand on Marcus�s forehead again, and began to trace a cross, the pale skin reddened and peeled back where his fingers touched, leaving a cross seemingly burnt into the flesh. Leland winced slightly in sympathy but did not pause.

�For it is the power of Christ that compels you, who brought you low by His cross. Tremble before that mighty arm that broke asunder the dark prison walls and led souls forth to light!�

Marcus�s shuddering increased, muscles cording beneath his pale skin in agonizing strain. His dark eyes were half-open, staring blind and glazed upwards. Julian angrily hoped that the demon was hurting as badly as Marcus seemed to be. The horrible, vicious thing! Julian was unconsciously clutching the small silver cross Leland had insisted he wear. It felt like ice, even against Julian�s perpetually cold hands. Orpheus appeared almost impassive, but Julian could see hints of his guardian�s misery. Dull despair shadowed his eyes and marked more deeply the lines of his mouth. Why does he look like that? We�re winning! Julian thought, briefly reaching to touch Orpheus�s hand.

Leland�s voice was growing in power and force, rhythmic words falling like hammer-blows upon the struggling demon. The chant ran on and on, and it�s constrained thrashing grew more violent, muscles jerking and heaving.

�Depart, transgressor! Depart, seducer, full of lies and cunning, foe of virtue, persecutor of the innocent. Give place, abominable creature, give way, you monster, give way to Christ, in whom you found none of your works!�

A broken moan, interrupted by spasms, came from Marcus�s throat. As Leland continued, it rose, becoming a shriek of intolerable agony and rage. Julian refused to cover his ears, even as a barrage of thunderclaps sounded directly overhead. The shriek became disembodied, emanating from the air above Marcus�s body, and then broke into a despairing wail as it fled, trailing off through an unimaginable distance. Marcus went limp, slumping helplessly on the stones as the lines of strain vanished from his face. His eyes were closed as in a deep sleep, all the tension gone.

�Yes! It�s gone!� Julian cried, using Auspex to confirm it. �It�s gone, but he�s so weakened.� The wavering shaft of light was no longer shadow-dimmed, but still faint, pale, flickering like a dying candle.

�His aura looks like a candle-flame about to burn out.� Julian knelt beside Marcus, automatically reaching for his hand before catching himself and looking at Orpheus for permission. Orpheus nodded. Julian carefully lifted the slack, marble-white hand and gripped it gently, studying Marcus�s face with fascinated intensity.

�Can you hear me?� He said softly. �It�s okay now. . .� Leland, who had sat down with a sigh of relief, suddenly lifted his head attentively.

�Listen! It�s raining outside.� A soft, muffled rush of raindrops coursed down over the windows, washing away the other sounds of the city.

�We shall take him home now. And I am eternally in your debt, Leland.� Orpheus knelt to grip Marcus�s shoulders.

Julian crept quietly into the room, peeking around the edge of the door before coming in on tiptoes. Orpheus had shooed everyone out of his way upon his arrival home, barely sparing time to hug and reassure Jenny before going upstairs with his burden. Now, the Salubri elder was sleeping deeply, laid at length on a narrow cot in the third-story attic room where his chest of belongings had been stored. Julian had done his best to repair the burns, cuts, and broken bones, and Orpheus had washed away the blood and dressed Marcus in his own clean clothing from the trunk. He appeared almost completely recovered, but he slept on, unresponsive.

The smallish room was mostly empty, lit with the soft, golden glow of a standing lamp at the head of the bed. The only window was thickly curtained, and the heavy cloth tacked to the walls around the edges. A chair was at one side of the cot, and the trunk on the other. Marcus lay in seeming peace, the folds of a white woolen robe and toga arranged neatly around him. The lion ring was back on his finger, the gold clasp pinned the toga to his shoulder, and a pair of plain leather sandals had been strapped to his feet, fitting exactly. His features had a cast of weary nobility and dignity. Without quite knowing why, Julian felt an awe-tinged reverence as he tiptoed to the chest and sat gingerly on its lid. Across the bed, Orpheus sat in the chair, holding one of Marcus�s hands in both of his own. He looked up as Julian came in, and offered him a faint, sad smile.

�How is he?� Julian whispered.

�It will not disturb him to speak normally, Julian.� Orpheus said, calmly. �I am not certain. I do not believe he will wake this night, however. Possibly not for some nights to come.�

Orpheus gently laid Marcus�s hand back on his chest, folding it over it�s twin. For a moment, he touched the deep, cratered scar that remained on his father�s wrist, and then stood, picking up his hat from the back of the chair. The white plume nodded and bobbed against the black velvet as he put it on.

�It will do no harm if you wish to remain, or to speak to him. Indeed, I would suggest it. He is more than sufficiently perceptive to sense the emotional tone of his surroundings, and it would be well to have friends around him.� Julian nodded, scootching forward until he sat on the very edge of the trunk.

�Orpheus?� Orpheus stopped and turned back, in the doorway. He arched an eyebrow questioningly.

�He�s a good friend of yours, isn�t he? How old is he?� Julian gestured at the Roman clothing. A momentary sad, abstracted look crossed Orpheus�s face.

�He has been a very good friend to me, Julian. I am proud to call him Father.� Julian�s eyes widened in surprise. �And he is very nearly two thousand years old now.�

�Oh!� Julian stared, openmouthed, from Orpheus to Marcus and back. �And he�s really a. . .� Julian looked up and saw that Orpheus had already gone. �. . . Salubri?� He finished, speaking to the empty air. Gently, he turned back and brushed a lock of iron-gray hair aside, revealing the thin �scar� of the third eye, also healed now. A two-thousand-year-old Salubri! I thought Moira was one of the oldest left! And she was just over three hundred! Julian shook his head in awe.

�Please get better soon. I really want to talk with you.� Feeling suddenly embarrased once the words were said, Julian flushed slightly and slipped back out of the room as quietly as he had come, carefully shutting the door behind him. ~The End. (For now.)