The match flickered closer to her fingers. The head turned slowly towards her. Eyes were somehow operating beneath the dirt which encased it. Then the dirt fell away and Adrienne was left staring at a man's slug white face with eyes like black wounds untreated for days. And a gaping, sucking mouth that had fangs- The match went out. Dead against the blistered skin of her thumb and forefinger.

She screamed then and flung herself headlong toward where she thought the ladder should be. In the darkness, she missed it, and collapsed into the clinging mud. Her screams turned to gurgling. She waved her arms frantically in front of her. She hit something solid. It was the ladder.

Instantly she was crawling up it. The mud had soaked into her uniform and had weighted her down, making each movement seem ten times slower as if in a bad dream when she just couldn't move fast enough. Her head banged against the solid trapdoor. Her grip slipped and she nearly slid back down. She threw up her hand and grabbed at the end of the knotted rope. It steadied her. She pushed her forearm against the trapdoor. It creaked slowly open. Too slowly.

Adrienne gave it one last push and it swung up and over, crashing into the floor. Her head was above the level of the floor. Her waist. The hand grabbed her by the ankle and pulled.

She screamed, shrieked, thought left her. She shook her leg, savagely kicked and connected, and was free.

She jumped up from the ladder, cracking both shins against the hard edge of the trapdoor opening and rolled across the floor, sobbing hysterically.

It was night. Moonlight cast soft shadows through the unshuttered windows. The interior of the farmhouse glowed faintly. The head appeared above the level of the floor. It saw her. And smiled. The fangs glistened in the moonlight.

He rose slowly, smoothly, as if his body were not touching the ladder at all. He continued upward, hands by his side, until his foot stepped onto the floor and he walked toward her. His footsteps made no hollow echo on the wooden floors. She felt weightless in his arms as he lifted her. Her voice was gone from the moment he had stared at her in the moonlight. Her body would not move to protect her.

Adrienne's mind was like a person trapped on the bridge of a sinking ship. Everything was clear. The outcome was inevitable. And there was nothing to be done.

In her mind she screamed, long and hard. But it did not drown out the ripping sound his teeth made as they sliced into her neck.

She felt him nurse from her torn artery. Felt the insistence of his lips as they ringed the wound, slowly sucking up the flesh around it, then relaxing, letting the surface of her soft, white neck fall back. His tongue felt smooth as it swirled around the hole he had made, coaxing the blood out in its rhythmic spurts. The pain of the bite gradually eased. The warmth of her body slowly faded from her arms and legs, concentrating in the warmth which grew in her neck. She could feel the strong contractions of his throat as he drank from her. She felt herself spinning, round and round. The only focus was her neck where he sucked on her. She was melting, flowing into him. Faster. Faster. The swallowing stronger, the contractions of his throat more intense. Her vision fell away into tunnels of shifting sparks.

One red point was fixed in the swirls. And it grew. Pulsating over everything else. She wanted it to come closer, to swallow her completely. Closer and- The spiralling was real. He had thrown her through the air to land limply near the trapdoor. Dimly she saw that the farmhouse door had burst open. Men in grey uniforms, moonlight glinting off the barrels of their weapons, talked in German. Their voices were slow and far away.

One of them swept a light through the farmhouse. She saw him stop it suddenly, his face twisting into an expression of horror. The three other men raised their weapons and smoke and fire flared through the farmhouse.

Adrienne pushed herself over to look toward the other side of the room. The thing that had fed from her was pinned against the stone wall. Chips of stone and clouds of dust leapt from the wall behind him. His mud-stained, already ruined clothing danced around him with the bullets' impact. But when the weapons clicked on empty, he attacked.

His body, pockmarked with small dark punctures where bullets had entered and left, glistened with a white shiny liquid that seemed to coat his skin like the gelatinous slime of snails. It highlighted the rippling of his lean muscles as he leapt fifteen feet across the farmhouse and onto the soldiers.

Adrienne watched the butchery in slow motion. With her own blood streaming from his howling mouth, the creature tore into the soldiers as if they were no more than the rotting doll in the cellar chest. Arms and heads flew.

Three were dismembered almost instantly. The fourth, the one who had stood well back with the flashlight, ran screaming from the farmhouse.

The creature did not give chase. Instead he gathered the pieces of the first three soldiers and carried them, oozing and dripping, to the trapdoor. Vaguely, Adrienne was aware of the sound and vibrations of approaching tanks. She wondered if this thing knew about tanks. Then he picked her up, again without the slightest strain, and threw her down into the pit of the cellar. Adrienne felt herself float through the damp cellar air. She had no sensation of impact.

The bodies of the dismembered soldiers had cushioned her.

She lay on her back, staring up into the farmhouse through the trapdoor. The creature stood at the edge. He looked down at her. His mouth working like a fish. Gaping, sucking. Adrienne wanted him to come and finish her. He looked away. The tank noises were louder, then gone, swallowed by the thunderous crash that roared through the farmhouse, turning the moonlit interior into brilliant day.

The shell must have entered through the door or window and exploded on the far wall. Jagged stones ripped through the air. The creature was impaled upon them, caught by the explosive wind, and blasted down the hole in the floor. Adrienne watched him fall toward her. In the half second more that he existed she saw his body ripped and split by shards of stone. She tried desperately to raise her arms to him, to welcome him to her. But he was gone. Dissolved.

Dust in the sunlight. The rocks fell lightly around her. Their velocity absorbed by their impact with the creature's body. And Adrienne was covered with the thick cascade of what was left of him. The white blood of life. The blood of yber.

It smeared across her face, dripped into her mouth and she came alive. Movement returned to her limp arms. The taste of the thick liquid was indescribable and made her ravenous. She trembled with the touch of it on her tongue. She wiped it off her face into her mouth, off her hands and arms and body. From the ladder rungs. And then, it led her to something even more wonderful, more satisfying, where it had dripped from her to what lay below.

It led her to the soldiers' bodies. And their blood. This was Adrienne St. Clair's Communion. Three Helman was silent. The creature who sat across from him-the undead, the nosferatu, all the names he could remember from the stories-trembled with the telling of her story. She stared at the floor of the hotel room. Her shaking hands clasping each other on her knees. Helman reached out as if to take her hands, as if to comfort her. But he hesitated, and she looked up, and the moment was gone.

"More than thirty years ago that happened. Sometimes when I wake up, it still feels as though it happened just the night before, and if I open my eyes I'll see nothing but darkness, and feel the bodies of those soldiers beneath me." She looked away from him, staring into the darkness of that long ago cellar.

"What happened to the thing, the yber that attacked you?"

She took a deep breath. "The stone shards from the exploding wall acted like a stake through the chest. One of them must have penetrated his heart. It was the Final Death for him. The First Death for me. His body dissolved. Just like in the movies, Granger. Upon the Final Death an yber's body decays incredibly rapidly. The longer we are yber, the faster the decay is. Had I been given the Final Death the next night, my body would have looked like any human's body. If it happened today, I'd be gone in seconds." She shrugged. The personal part of her story which had been exposed in her as she told it, had dropped beneath the surface again. It was now a technical discussion. Helman regretted not taking her hand when the moment had seemed right.

"What did happen the next night?" Perhaps by going back to the story, the personal side would surface again. A key to understanding her.

"I'm not sure. I think I stayed in the cellar for several nights, I was very weak. Human blood does not sustain us if it has been dead for more than a few hours. But I didn't know that then."

"Did you know what had happened to you?"

"Oh yes. Most certainly. I was a vampire. I had heard the stories. Stories for children and make-believe, but I knew them. It was quite obvious. I had had my blood drunk by a thing with fangs that couldn't be killed by bullets. I was a vampire. Or I was insane."

"You don't feel insane now?"

"Not for a long time, Granger." Finally she smiled at him. "This is my life." Helman could not share in what she thought was the humour of the statement.

"How did you meet with the Conclave? You said they wanted to get rid of you."

"Long after I left the cellar. In the beginning, we are protected from our ignorance by a set of strong new urges and drives. We become sluggish as morning approaches. Our minds fill with thoughts of darkness and refuge from the light. Our self-protection is like a new set of instincts. We follow them blindly. Later, as we mature, the drives lessen.

But our intellect has taken over for us by then. Anyway, I roamed the front lines looking for bodies of the newly dead.

I sickened myself many times feeding from blood gone bad, but I could not bring myself to feed from the living.

"I tried the blood of animals, also. For a time, it worked. But the nutrient composition is different. After a month or so, human blood is necessary or starvation will follow.

"On one foray, months afterward, I met another yber. He was experienced in the Ways and knew another had been hunting in his territory. He said later he was prepared to kill me to defend it. But he followed me for several nights and decided I was infringing by ignorance and not design. He became my mentor, as the yber in the farmhouse should have been."

"Mentor. The yber who would teach you in the Ways?"

"That's right. He helped me develop my new senses, my new powers. Taught me to be undetectable by humans and identify other yber at great distances.

"He took me to Geneva as the war was ending. That was where the Conclave based itself, until the reconstruction. They were alarmed that there were so many like me; the Unbidden, they called us. Many yber were created without agreement from a governing group or Meeting during the war years. Many were given the Final Death. I was protected because I had a mentor. He saved me more than once." Her voice sounded wistful, caught up in pleasant memories.

"Were you in love with him?" Helman was at the point where he did not think it odd to ask this creature who could not be killed if she could love.

"Yes, I was in love with him. I do love, Granger. That's the whole conflict. The Conclave says we are the children of demons. Devil's spawn. They rule the yber with the old superstitions of damnation and the fight against God and the Church. And they're wrong! I am yber, yes. But I am also human. There is nothing evil about me. I am not cursed by Heaven." She leaned forward, staring intently into Helman's eyes. "Granger, all that is different about me is that I have a disease."

Immediately everything became acceptable for Helman. What he had witnessed had been presented to him in terms of the supernatural. Vampires. Night creatures. Things that his rational mind could not accept, even though the evidence had played itself out before his eyes. But a disease. That was rational. No matter that the evidence presented was the same. A disease spoke of medicine, of science. A disease he could accept. Science was his modern superstition, and when the proper words were said, Granger Helman could believe.

"A rare disease," Adrienne continued. "Communicable only by ingesting the living blood of one who is infected and only then when your body is in a state of massive shock. A disease that alters the nutritive needs of the body, speeds the metabolism incredibly, and does away with the side effects of aging. I've studied it for years. Chris Leung was going to help me. Had helped already in letters and research he'd conducted on his own. Vampirism is a disease. It can be controlled."

"And that's why the Conclave want you dead. Because if it is a disease, their supernatural hold over the yber is without basis. They lose all their power."

"Exactly, Granger, exactly. They knew I thought these things long ago. Because I wasn't chosen as the others had been? Because I had had medical training in my first life? Who knows? But I was warned not to discuss those things. I was a heretic they said. I risked the Final Death if I continued."

"But you do continue."

"I must continue." She looked away. "For Jeffery's sake. As well as my own."

Helman looked puzzled at the mention of Jeffery.

"He was my mentor, Granger. The man I loved."

"What happened to him?"

He saw the answer in her eyes before she spoke.

"Six months ago, they came for me. Emissaries from the Conclave. Jeffery protected me. Just as he had helped me in my research." Her voice became tight and strained. "To teach me a lesson, they took him instead. They chained him to an outcropping of rock near the villa which held our sanctuary." She whispered, her voice barely audible. Helman could see tears. "They faced him to the east. To the sunrise..."

Helman reached out and this time did not hesitate. He took her hands in his to try and comfort her. They were like ice, like death. But the cold air through the broken glass door had chilled his fingers and he did not notice.

Adrienne took a deep breath and sat up. She squeezed Helman's hands a moment, as if to thank him, then moved them from him.

"That night I went to the outcropping. The chains were loose around the rocks. His clothes scattered around the ground, blown by the wind, like Jeffery. The ring I had given him lay buried beneath the chains. Can you know what it's like, Granger? Humans may fall in love and have decades at most. Death takes mere years away from you. But for yber, the Final Death takes centuries, eternity away. Not even his body to kiss goodbye..."

Memories of love lost, decades stolen, rose up in Helman. Is this what it comes to? he thought. Roselynne Delvecchio was dead from the moment she met Helman in the parking lot, so long ago. In her last moments, he had given her new life. A mistake had been made, he had told her. And life had flowed into her seconds before Helman took it all away forever. It had cost him, that final closing. And now he was faced with the same situation. The woman before him was already dead, a vampire, an yber, but Helman once again could act and give her new life. He could offer her protection. Perhaps it could be a way to make up for the past? But there was no making up for the past. It was gone. His rational mind had no superstition of godly retribution for past sins. He had only the superstition of science, and the far more powerful one of conscience. When she first had made her offer to him, that he be her familiar, he knew he would accept, if only to prevent his immediate death; to preserve himself so that he might still save Miriam and her children. But now he knew he would accept Adrienne's offer for a new reason, a stronger reason. Finally, he would act.

He would accept her offer because he wanted to. For Helman, the difference was enormous.

"Adrienne, I will help you, be your familiar, whatever you need. I'll do it."

"The Conclave will do everything they can to stop us."

"They'd do that anyway."

Adrienne checked the sky again through the fluttering drapes. It was growing lighter. How was her knowledge of the Ways going to serve her if she found herself talking like this? Of things best hidden away from her heart.

"What should we do first?" Helman asked. She was the one with the experience. He would trust the opening moves to her.

"First I must get to my sanctuary. It is almost dawn. The sun is deadly." Helman nodded, thinking of Jeffery.

"But you can't go back to the townhouse, your people didn't defend it from the priests, it's not-"

Adrienne's face went rigid. "What do you mean, 'my people'? My last familiars were butchered by the Conclave at Heathrow. I have no 'people'. And what do you mean by 'priests'?"

"The Jesuits with crossbows. Your people with guns. It was a bloodbath. It started at the lab after the explosion and by the time I got to your townhouse, it was all up and down the street. The leader of the people fighting the priests was 'Maker One'."

"Jesuits of the Seventh Grade." Her eyes were wide, her nostrils flared. "I thought I had eluded them long before I reached England. Their sources are better than I had thought."

"Why are they after you?"

"They're after all yber. They're as caught up in superstition as the Conclave. Who knows why they're after me."

"But the people who fought the Jesuits..." Helman suddenly realised what he had said. "Jesuits? How can Jesuits do those things? Killing? It's ridiculous."

"They're Jesuits of the Seventh Grade, Granger. I don't have time to explain. The sky is getting lighter. I don't know who it could be who was fighting with them. The Conclave has skirmishes with them from time to time but I don't see why they'd be trying to protect me from the Jesuits. Find out for me before this evening." Adrienne got up and moved to the balcony door.

"But what if the Conclave contact me? What about my sister and her kids? What should I tell them?" Helman reached out to touch her arm. She pulled away.

"Tell them what happened to my first mentor, in the cellar, happened to me. They'll accept that for now. As long as they believe it, your family will be safe. I must go, Granger. This evening I'll come back. Be ready to travel."

She walked out to the balcony. He came after her. "Where will you go? Wouldn't you be safer in a closet or something here?"

The wind pushed at their hair. Helman saw that when he spoke, his breath condensed and swirled away. Nothing swirled away from Adrienne.

"I have other sanctuaries they won't know about. I'll be safer at one of them than here. NOW go inside. Rest for this evening."

She turned from him and slid over the balcony railing, headfirst.

Helman gasped her name and ran to reach after her. His hand held empty air. He leaned over and saw nothing. Her voice came to him through the cold air.

"Go inside. Rest."

He peered in the direction of the voice. Perhaps there was a shadow moving down by the pool. Perhaps it was the wind rustling the tarpaulin, Adrienne was gone.

Helman stepped back into the room. He straightened up the evidence of the initial fight and then phoned the front desk to tell them that a sheet of ice, or something, had just shattered his balcony door. There was glass all over the inside of his room and he wanted to be moved.

When he was in his new room, a duplicate of the first, but without a balcony and sliding doors, Helman collapsed on the bed. He would sleep through the morning. This time by choice and not by accident as he had the day Max had been killed by the Jesuits. Oh God, had they killed Max because of his connection with Helman? Then the Jesuits must have known about Helman's contract on Adrienne days ago. And who had said "Nothing to worry about on this end?"

Were familiars of the Conclave told to kill Max disguised as priests? Then dispose of witnesses? To ensure Helman could work for them?

No, the Jesuit on the driveway by the townhouse had recognised Helman. That's why the dying priest had tired to strangle him. But for what purpose? Because he was working for the Conclave, trying to Kill the woman?

Circles wheeled within circles, none would interconnect. There was not enough information for him to follow it any longer. He must sleep. He must be rested for the first part of the bargain with Adrienne.

Who were the people who had tried to protect her from the Jesuits? And who was Marker One?

That morning, as Helman slept, there were no dreams. The basement was far from empty, but it was well lit.

Four.

It was an abomination.

The doctor had dealt with the bodies of those who had died by fire and violent car crashes. He had performed autopsies on bodies of the drowned which had been recovered days afterward, swollen with the gases of decay, flesh puffed and stretched from bones no longer held by cartilage and tendons. He had cut into those bodies, explored the unrecognisable dark masses of rotted organs, felt the liquids which were not blood ooze up around the hands as his knife delved deeper, and he had not been as affected as he was now. The body before him had not achieved this form by chance and the inevitable corruption of nature. This body had been made this way; a will and conscious thought were behind its destruction. And his scalpel trembled in his hands as he contemplated such a will, and the creature who would exercise it thus.

New York, January 18 Outside the doctor's surgery, Father Clement sat and brooded in the darkness. The outrage that had seared through him earlier was now subdued. Once before, long ago in the time of the suppression, the officers of the Society had felt such outrage, and had decided that there was a time when prayer and Holy guidance were not enough. At such times there must be actions. Those officers, tricked by the Enemy into the near destruction of their order, had taken the Fifth Vow of the Society of Jesus. And action had been taken. A Pope lay dead. Another learned the lesson. The Society was restored.

Since that time, the Fifth Vow, unknown to the world, save by rumour, unknown to all but the very select of the Society itself, had existed. Those who professed it were those who took action. Action that was necessary in extraordinary times. Such as now. When the Realm of Darkness and the power of America were to join as an unholy prelude to the End Days. When ten feet away from him a doctor probed the last remains of what had been his brother in the Holy Cause: Father Benedict.

The phone call had come late that evening; the whispered voice had been explicit. A message from Helman could be found in the garden of the Holy Father's house. The Society was to see the price of interference with the woman, St.