Helman felt that this was going beyond the realm of science. "Or maybe even turn into bats or clouds of dust?" he asked sarcastically. He had accepted the yber as a natural phenomenon. There was no room left in him to accept things even more fantastic.

But Adrienne's expression stayed serious.

"Though I know of none personally, the legends of shape-changers still live within the Ways. Who knows what further powers there are still to experience?"

Helman took Adrienne's hand. "You seem very human to me," he said.

She squeezed back. "I feel very human with you."

The doors from the entranceway swung open. A familiar, an older woman of about fifty wearing a simple white smock, with a high, tightly fitting collar, smiled at them. Behind her stood two other familiars, similarly clothed.

Behind them was a tall, white figure that Helman's eyes refused to focus on.

"The Father will see you now," the familiar said. The Father must be even more altered, Adrienne had said. And she had been right. Both of them had been totally unprepared for the sight of him as he entered the room, Adrienne adjusted to him first. Helman took far longer.

The Father was grotesque. Not that he was misshapen or twisted in bizarre and unimaginable forms, rather, there were so many small deviations from the ordinary that the overall impression was that of a figure seen in the darkness of a still room. From the corners of the eyes, the figure was acceptable. But if you dared look for detail, horror began.

The Father was well over six feet tall. He wore a simple white kaftan, similar to the robes his familiars wore. The three of them in the room gazed upon the Father with adulation.

His feet and ankles were bare and visible beneath the hem of the kaftan, as were his hands and forearms in the loose sleeves. No musculature seemed to exist upon his body. Thin, dull, white skin clung to his bones like vacuum-wrapped plastic. Each joint and rigid tendon was clearly visible. In less than bright light, the Father might appear transparent, or melted.

His face was the same.

No muscles seemed to fill up the deep hollows where the skin sucked in closely to the skull. He had no lips. His teeth, all of them stark white serrated fangs, emerged abruptly from the slug-white gums visible directly below the one nostril. The Father's nose had long since been absorbed back into his body and a single gaping hole burrowed deep within his death's-head face. Something else that was also black flicked within his mouth.

His ears were little more than small bumps that partially hid the network of tendons, veins and nerves that were visible at the hinge of his jaw.

He was completely hairless. Completely shrunken. And his eyes made him completely inhuman.

They were flat black. No iris, no pupil, no moisture. Just black like dry, dead stones. They could look directly at Helman and Adrienne and all the others in the room without moving. They saw everything at once. They saw many things that no one else could see.

Helman was drawn hopelessly into them, totally repulsed at the incomplete monster before him.

The Father held his gaze as he walked effortlessly to a chair in the middle of the room across from his two visitors.

Helman had the impression that gravity was not working on the nine-hundred-year-old creature. He might have walked through a pile of crisp autumn leaves and not crushed one of them.

The Father smiled at Helman by turning two tiny corners of flesh at the edges of his mouth upright. His tongue emerged from between his fangs, flicking like a lizard's. It was shrivelled and tubular and ended in what looked to be a conical scab that resembled a bee's stinger.

"You are new to such as ourselves," the Father said.

It took a moment for Helman to realise he had spoken. No lips were there to move. The voice had sounded dry and whispery like soft winds through deserts. A voice that whispered your name in the night when you knew there was no one else there.

Helman could not reply.

The Father turned to Adrienne. In his movement, the front of his kaftan spread open. Helman stared in shock. The Father was wearing a string of rosary beads that ended in a silver crucifix.

"You seek sanctuary here," the Father whispered to Adrienne.

"From the Conclave," she said. "I would like a chance to explain why."

The Father shook his head once. Slowly and ponderously as if some sudden movement might snap it free and it would float away.

"There is no need," the delicate, breathless whisper said. "Sanctuary is granted."

Adrienne could not keep the look of surprise from her face.

"I have known you were coming," he explained gently. "I was given a sign. From God."

"From God?" Adrienne repeated doubtfully. She had had her suspicions that Diego might not have entirely believed in the Devil worship of the Ways, but she had never heard of an yber turning to the religion of the Kingdom of Light.

The Father tilted his head upward. Helman saw that he had no eyelids. He never blinked.

"Our sweet Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, has come to me in my dreams and shown me that the end of my punishment is at hand. Praise God."

"What punishment is that, Father?" Adrienne felt a tiny tremor of panic grow in her. Had the Jesuits contacted, converted, the Father?

"For seven centuries I swept the earth as an agent of death." The familiars closed their eyes and nodded, as though listening to a sermon they had heard countless times before. "Thousands of innocents were consumed by my bloodthirst. Millions suffered because of me. I served the demons of the Pit. But the Lord came to me and directed me and I turned away from the evil of those I had gathered to me. They formed their unholy Conclave. I undertook the life of a pilgrim, to repent, though I knew I would never meet my Lord."

The Jesuits could be in the hallways even now. Cross-bows cocked. What unfathomable senility had struck at what was once the greatest of yber?

"Why is that, Father?" Adrienne asked. She calculated the movements she would have to make to drop the three familiars in the room with them. Mentally she measured the distance she would have to cover to get back to the car.

Undoubtedly there would be pursuit. It would be fester if she carried Helman. She shifted her position, preparing herself for the flight.

"All of us," the Father whispered, sweeping his ivory-chiselled hand and claws across the room. "All of us must serve God in whatever way we can. Then, when we die, we may be transfigured and ascend to Heaven. But our kind, Adrienne St. Clair, can never die. Were we to stand before the rising sun or refuse to partake of the living blood, we would be killing ourselves by our own hands and we would once again belong to the Pit. It is our punishment for our curse."

Adrienne leaned forward, one eye on the door to the entrance hall. Who knew how many scholastics were waiting there?

"Is that what the Jesuits told you?" she asked. His answer would determine her actions. She could see Helman bracing himself. He had put it together too.

"The Church is in the grip of Satan Himself," said the Father. "Please sit back. You are safe here. I am content to let each of you come to the Lord in your own time. What is of first importance is that you have rejected the Ways. You search for better methods for our kind."

"Your dreams told you that?" Adrienne settled back into the chair. Perhaps they would be safe after all.

"No, Adrienne St. Clair. You have come to this place before in the presence of a Lord of the Conclave. Familiars will talk. I will listen. I know many things without having to have learned them in dreams. But now you must teach me of your work. And your human companion will have to leave."

Adrienne reacted immediately. "He can't go. He's in as great a danger as I. He must have sanctuary too."

The father rose, ending the discussion.

"He is not yber. He is not familiar. He does not belong here. It is necessary that he go."

"But he's risked so much to get me here."

"He has risked nothing. Since the first I have known he was coming. And now it is necessary for him to go. There is only risk when the outcome is uncertain. The outcome of what we face is already decided." The Father turned to Helman. "Leave us now, human. You know to whom you must go. There is no uncertainty. No risk."

Helman stood. He didn't understand what the Father was talking about.

"I have no one to go to," he said.

"Then they shall go to you. You may return when night falls again if that is what you wish to hear. Now go."

Two familiars, muscular beneath their kaftans, gripped Helman by his arms and led him out of the room. He and Adrienne could only look apprehensively into each other's eyes for a moment before he was removed from her presence.

The familiars kept their grip upon him until he had reached the car outside the gates.

Sunrise was less than an hour away. Helman drove toward the town centre of Nacimiento to call Weston. He had to be somewhere in the area. Helman would be safe with the Nevada Project team during the day. He would also find out about his sister. Weston's ambiguous message that all was as they had anticipated still angered him.

By now the Conclave would have realised that he had not returned to West Heparton. He would not be surprised if the Conclave could manage to trace him and Adrienne to Nacimiento in a matter of days. Or nights as they thought of it. He would have to force a definite commitment out of Weston about just what it was Nevada wanted from Adrienne.

A car pulled out from some bushes behind Helman. The sudden flash of the other vehicle's headlights in the rearview mirror startled him. Out over the hills to the east, the sky was beginning to lighten. The headlights blinked at him, signalling to him.

Helman pulled over to the side of the narrow road. Finally Weston had come to him.

The other car pulled up beside him. The power window hummed down. The figure inside was in shadows.

"It's about time," said Helman. "She's been given sanctuary, what do we-"

The figure turned out of the shadows.

It had fangs.

"You have betrayed us," the vampire spat.

Helman jumped back.

"So nervous, are you, human? I don't think your nephews would be very impressed if they saw the way you looked now. But then, I'm sure you would be quite impressed by the way they look now." The creature laughed hideously. Helman was frozen in helpless anger.

"Lord Diego will meet with you all tonight, human. For the last time."

The car squealed away in a spray of gravel, The chilling laughter still echoed in Helman's ears.

He realised that the Conclave must have always known where he and Adrienne would head. This last vampire had followed him only to make sure that Adrienne hadn't left the Father's sanctuary with him. They knew where she was.

They knew where he was. And it seemed to be too late for his sister and her children.

The sun was coming up. Its light was the only thing that had prevented them from killing him here on the road. It would protect him for only twelve hours more. Tears of frustration grew in his eyes.

He screamed out Weston's name to the empty hills.

Weston was going to tell him everything about what was going on or Weston wasn't going to be alive to see Helman's last sunset.

The twelve final hours would not be wasted.

Ten.

The two men accompanying Weston had made the mistake of treating Helman as an ally. Both were now unconscious. Helman pressed his forearm against Weston's larynx. Part of him hoped that Weston would say nothing so that he could have the excuse to crush the man's neck and leave him there to suffocate. But Weston had information.

Weston had power. Helman wanted both.

He didn't care that he would never make it out of the front door of the Santa Barbara motel room without Weston.

He was facing certain death by sunset anyway. He wouldn't let the loss of a few hours interfere with what small revenge he could get.

Santa Barbara, January 20 Weston began choking and gasping for breath. Helman slapped his free hand over Weston's mouth.

"The Conclave know where she is. They know where I am. We haven't been dodging them at all. You and they all knew we'd end up at the Father's. I want the truth. I don't want any bullshit or stories about the end of the world. All I want is a way out of this alive. With St. Clair. And with Miriam and the kids. Nod once if you understand."

Weston nodded. His chest was heaving in a desperate attempt for air.

"When I take my hand away you can call out if you want to, but before they get that door half open I'll have crushed both temples and severed the spinal cord in your neck. Here goes."

Helman lifted his hand and forearm away from Weston. Weston slapped both his own hands to his mouth and wheezed gratingly. He pointed to a suitcase sitting by the door to the room. He gasped the word "Oxygen".

Helman looked suspiciously from Weston to the suitcase.

"Or I'll start to cough," Weston whispered hoarsely. He squeezed both his hands tightly over his mouth and nose.

His body convulsed and sweat sprung out over his face, Helman risked it. It's too good an act. He got the suitcase and removed the small oxygen tank and soft plastic mask connected to it. Weston held it to his face like a drowning man. He coughed into the mask once or twice, but he seemed to have whatever it was under control.

Helman watched impassively. "Hurry up and start talking," he said.

Weston gestured for Helman to help him up from the floor where he had been thrown when Helman had burst into a frenzy. One surprised agent had been kicked in the head while the other got a slashing elbow across the fax. There was blood dripping out of that agent's nose as he lay spread-eagled across the bed. Neither had had a chance to draw their weapons.

Helman pushed Weston into a fake colonial chair by a writing desk. Weston seemed to be breathing easier. If he hadn't gotten the oxygen and a coughing spell had begun, the agents waiting outside would have rushed in and splattered Helman against all four walls. He couldn't let this end in a cheap Santa Barbara motel.

He took the mask from his face. Helman was tying up and gagging the two unconscious agents with their belts and ripped bed sheets.

"How do you know?" Weston asked.

"That the Conclave know where we are?"

"Yes."

"After I left the Father's estate, a car started following me. I thought it was you. Or at least your men. It was one of the Conclave. A vampire. He said something about my nephews and then told me that Diego would meet with us all tonight."

"What exactly did he say about your nephews?" Helman felt chilled. Weston's message to him had been a lie.

"He said I wouldn't like the way they looked. What's happened to them? Why didn't you send your men?"