

Secrets

Book I: A Vampire Mermaid Trilogy

Sno McLaine

Copyrighted Material

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Names, characters, organizations, places, events and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

Produced in the United States of America

# Chapter 1

1848

He was almost there. He could feel it, much different than before. The strands of the web had weakened. There was a pulse of excitement which he quickly suppressed. Morcant knew better than to allow emotion to enter the void. The huge black abdomen of the spider protruded above and he could see the red hourglass on it's belly bob up and down as thin threads were ejected, then carefully knit by long writhing legs, each with an apparent life and will of it's own.

Morcant worked with the strands as they spat forward, diluting them with this new rare power. He could feel them quiver, and then reshape themselves in the complicated and dangerous matrix.

After all of these years. The many times he had traveled here, to this place. He looked down at the dark and nearly invisible patterns beneath him. Complex and layered, the unwoven world had a kind of immeasurable intelligence that challenged even his own mind. It never ceased to amaze him.

Carefully, meticulously, he found the strand and then pulled it, gently but with force, finally snapping it at its roots. As expected, another sprang forth like a snake made of coarse rope, twisting upward in a knarled embrace. It burned his skin like acid and coiled around his legs squeezing its prey.

He ignored the pain; merged with it, his energy joining with its very composition. At first it seemed that the web would repulse him, as it had done so many times before; but today the strand felt different, began to lose it's stickiness, seemed to melt with him. It recognized something, some faint part of him.

The blood of the Pure.

He felt his heart pound in anticipation as the web thinned, and he calmed himself instantly. Suddenly the coiled snake vanished, like cotton candy doused with water, and the other strands seemed to follow. The protector, the mother creature who had nearly cost him his life many many times before cried out in the matrix; he could feel her weaving shatter as she fell.

He was in.

\-------

There was a great surge from the sea and something dark seem to impregnate the fog, thick and palpable, it held a heavy danger that Father Lucrose couldn't make sense of. Not, what he considered a good day to gather clams. He called to one of the Indians by Brother Antonio who was crouched and using a digging stick in the sand. "El clima se ha cambiado", he shouted, "we must return to the Mission".

Brother Antonio was used to the Father's unpredictable ways. He had, after all, convinced the small band of religious leaders to embark on a dangerous journey west, to battle the Devil's army. The Father seemed more familiar with the tactics of Satan than any of his kind, and some of the Modoc savages knew this well, in the form of the repentance whip that occasionally lit their backs and kept them from what had once been their seaside home.

Though the Mission had long been the center of Bahia de San Francisco de Assis, or San Francisco as the residents had come to call it, the land remained a wild and uncivilized place. The military presence at Point Reyes and The Presidio created a surplus of men and after hours debauchery that were a constant danger to the already loosely defined morality of the native population. The Father believed that only the strictness of religion and the defined standards of God could deter Satan's strong grip. "Vamonos!" he called, uneasiness growing thicker around them.

Brother Antonio rounded up the Indian converts, and tried to see the pathway through the haze. The air was a mixture of fog and thick sea spray blown by the wind. It seemed as if a storm had collected itself on the waters of the ocean and then struck out like a hand to squeeze itself around the small group of missionaries.

"Padre!" Antonio shouted, "I cannot see you?!"

Father Lucrose turned to respond, but stumbled over a large object and fell. He reached out and his hand touched something. It felt soft and silky beneath his fingers. Suddenly there was a strange kind of opening in the fog and he could see the object, which was no object but rather a body, white skin, the color of fresh snow, red lips, black hair long and curly, covering some but not all of a woman's body, a woman's nakedness. The Father's eyes grew wide, he took in the lush contours of the creature's breasts beneath the strands of coal black hair. He stood and his body cast a shadow over her.

Was she dead? He wondered, and felt a pull inside of him, "he hoped not." He reached down, moving the strands of hair away from her face and gasped. She was stunning! Cheeks that looked to be carved out of fine porcelain, long black lashes, lips flushed red by the wind and the sea. Unusual features set her apart from most of the women he had seen in this rugged land.

He felt something sinful rise up, a stirring in his loins. The same lust that he felt when one of the native women tempted him, forcing him to do a dance with Satan. He reached out; he wanted to feel her, to touch the soft skin of her perfect breasts, rose-colored nipples peaked and hardened by the cold.

How he hoped she was not dead.

"Father?" Brother Antonio's voice interrupted his thoughts; he could feel the course fabric of his robe beside him. "What is it?" When he saw the woman he startled.

Brother Antonio took off his cloak and bent down to drape it over her nakedness. As he did so he felt her move, and then she moaned softly. "She is alive!" He exclaimed, and called out to the Indians to help them.

They lifted her, Brother Antonio's cloak still draped around her, and started up the hillside. As soon as her body left the ground, the fog seemed to thin and then dissipated entirely.

He watched as the savages carried the girl up the little hillside trail on the beach. His stomach clenched with a kind of envy, and he wished it were his own hands curled under the cloak and around the smooth white skin.

How did such a woman come to be washed up on the beach, not a scrap of clothing on her? It had to be the work of Satan. Only the devil could concoct such a scheme, breed such delightful darkness and lay it before him.

A secret pleasure grew inside of him, anticipation of the work before him. If the woman should survive, a delicious task belonged to him to see what Satan had dared to taunt him with this time. What evil the girl was assigned to bring to the strictness of their impenetrable Holy fortress.

Brother Antonio nervously hovered behind the Indian carrying the girl. He glanced back only for a quick moment at Father Lucrose and did not like what he saw. The Father had his own ways of interpreting God's work, and the rest of the Brother's did not always agree. He moved ahead of the group and hurried along the path. He would need to make sure proper arrangements were made for the girl. A doctor brought. Until they knew the situation, he would try to find some kind of distraction for Father Lucrose.

Erechtheus Maldaiv sat at the old wooden table. He saw that the finish was wearing on one corner, the same place where Mozart had once injured himself when he slammed down his cup and proclaimed the musical poverty of the then modern world.

"You are not listening to me". The Prince sounded annoyed.

"Of course I am listening." Erech flashed him one of his winning smiles. He reached up and brushed away a blonde streaked strand of hair that looked like it had been kissed by the light of a sun it had never seen."

Ianuarius eyes were narrow slits. "What has happened to you Erech?" He moved from the corner of the lavishly decorated flat. "What is it you have become?" The Prince glanced at one of the huge oil paintings on the wall. A well-endowed nude woman stared seductively out at him from the glittering gold frame. Her sister, who had at least some scant amount of clothing draped across her bosoms, seemed to snicker in amusement from her own adjacent place on the wall. Ian's lips were a thin line, pressed together in undisguised disdain, and he turned to look out the window. The city loomed above the cobblestone streets, back lit by the flickering torches and winking candlelight illuminating some of the windows.

"I did not ask you to come here Ian." Erech dropped the niceties. "And what I have become is what I now am." He picked up a sheet of music and seemed to study it for a moment. "In this moment."

Frustrated, Ian grabbed the music from Erech's hand, "You have no idea what she has done. What she will do!" He crumpled the sheet and threw it at one of the sisters, hitting a rosy cheek on her painted behind. "Do you think my father deserves this? That his kingdom, his life should be so defiled!" He looked at Erech, his eyes scouring his face, searching for the man, for the warrior he remembered so well.

Erech lifted his head and met his gaze unwavering. His eyes were a rich amber color with little sparkles that glittered in the candlelight. A deep alluring warmth seemed to pull Ian in and then rudely bash him with a thicker layer that he could not penetrate. He tried to push further, deeper into his mind, but Erech had long ago mastered the void, and easily deflected him.

"I need you Erech. My father needs you."

Erech stood from his chair. He brushed his fingers over the long velvet coat he wore, lingering along the creases of the colorful patches stitched together by one of the traveling minstrels. He reached up and straightened the lace at his throat carefully. "Your father is dead Ian. Isolde rules our kind now. What you are seeking, I cannot be a part of. I do not know why you have come here. It has been so long since I have held a sword I don't even remember the feel of it. " He picked up his violin, his beloved Stradivarius from the table and held it in his hands gently. "This is what I wield now."

He set the instrument back down and poured some wine into one of the glasses on the table, sliding it toward the Prince. "Drink my friend. You will like this." He smiled and his eyes sparkled again in the light. "You have come a long way, and I would not want your journey to be for naught." Erech poured himself some of the wine. Though most of what humans consumed was painfully unpalatable, there were some things that his people could enjoy. This wine was a special variety, discovered by his brother some century ago.

"Berengar will be back soon, he will be pleased to see you. And honored that you have graced our household. Like me, he does not fault you for your revolution and remembers your father well."

The Prince picked up the wine. The dark skin of his hand seemed to merge with the rich red color. He swirled the reddish purple liquid around the glass, then set it back onto the table without drinking. "I did not come here to see your halfling brother. I came to see the man who is a legend in our world. Who saved the lives of the ancients and has reveled in a thousand human wars."

"You will not find that man here." Erech drained his glass and poured himself another.

Ian stood tall at the edge of the table. He was dressed in fitted black trousers and a tailored blue velvet waistcoat. His jacket had a turnover collar and he wore a subdued square necktie folded in a knot. Erech thought he resembled a darker version of his father, King Achaikos, as he stood there, his chocolate skin, framed by a mass of styled curls curving into a tail in the back below his neckline. His face remained serious and implacable. On the surface he looked to be a man in his mid 30s, but Erech knew him to be one of the few who could claim to be born of an ancient.

"It was no hunter that killed my father." Ian's voice was quiet, serious. "I know the lies she has spread. The songs she sings to keep the allegiance of the Modhai." His eyes were piercing, "There are those who know the truth. Wulfric, who saw what I saw in Morcant's dungeon. It was he who turned first against my sister when I could not."

Ian leaned back and sat down across the table. He picked up the glass of wine and seemed to study the contours on the outside for a moment. "You cannot know what she has done." His voice was quiet, serious, "What they have created in the bowels of my father's castle." He looked back at Erech with sorrow in his eyes. "What they have done to my own father. To your King Erech."

"She is your sister. . . "

Ian slammed his cup down splattering wine across the table. "Whatever good blood flowed through her veins has been overshadowed by disease!

Erech said nothing, but took another drink.

Ian took a handkerchief from his pocket and laid it across some of the wine splatters. The white fabric was soon stained a blotchy blood red. "You cannot understand Erech, what she is. If you did, you would not sit here so complacently."

Erech frowned. Ian seemed genuinely disturbed, something that defied the many rumors he had heard about the power hungry rebellion led by the Queen's brother.

Real worry marked Ian's face. He lifted the cup and took a sip of wine. For a moment he registered pleasure from the taste of it, but it flickered across his features and was gone. "How did they turn them?" He looked at Erech, as if he could answer. "How could they turn them? Only the ancients can turn a human."

Erech let out a long sigh. "These are wonderful stories Ian", his voice was distant and accommodating. As if he were speaking to one of the minstrels between rounds and when the music had stopped. "I have heard them before -the Queen's undead soldiers and the bastard child of her Egyptian prophecy. Pontificated at various dinners by unwanted visitors from my father's house." He winked sardonically.

"Whatever your sister is or is not, is of little concern to me." He went on, "I lost interest in politics and your father's kingdom long ago. And I am no more interested in it now that it belongs to someone else." He swept his hand outward at the surroundings "I live in my own world, and it is as far from Court as would be possible."

Ian stared at him from across the table. His face intense, his strange silver eyes boring into him. Suddenly, he broke the gaze and glanced again around the room. Little trinkets lined the top of the piano, and a lady's colorful costume had been tossed carelessly on one of the pretty little couches.

"War is coming Erech, and you will not be able to hide forever."

"It's not my war Ian" Erech put down his glass and sat back in his chair.

Ian's face was stoic, and his years seemed suddenly seemed show. "Of all the wars you have fought Erech, this one is the most yours. " He glanced at the pink and yellow fabric of the costume on the couch. "What a coward you have become." Ian stood up and collected his hat from the credenza by the door. "I never expected it."

"You will not goad me into your war Ian. I know what I am," He too stood from his chair, and at 6 feet 4, towered over Ian by several inches,

"And what I am not." Hard muscles rippled underneath his clothing as he moved to stand by the doorway. "Out of respect for you, I will not share with others your visit here. I wish only well for you my friend."

Ian said nothing, but slipped quietly out and into the night.

She could hear him coming, the sound of his footsteps, the way the walls seem to shudder when he walked. She sat up in the narrow bed of the monk's cell they had placed her in. The coarse stone walls seemed to expand inward, and she felt as if she were in the belly of a beast who suffocated her in the dank darkness.

There was nowhere to run. Nowhere for her to hide. He was coming for her again, and she felt sick inside, a kind of revulsion that she had never known.

Her long black hair fell in curls around her shoulders and down her back as she tossed the wool blanket aside. She felt the abrasiveness of the over starched fabric of the nightdress given to her by Margarita, one of the Indian converts who had been renamed and re schooled by the Spaniards.

She scratched at the stiff fabric that continuously irritated her skin. She did not like clothes. She was so certain of this that it had left her unsure if she had ever worn them.

It was hard to remember things, though the brother's had asked, but it was hard to remember, who she was, where she came from, why she was on the beach. She could not remember. Her mind was like a sticky web of thoughts, one led to another that seemed to lead nowhere, and the more she searched the more entangled and confused she became. It hurt even, sometimes to try.

She touched the black book on the simple wooden night table. The Holy Bible, it was called. But she did not know how to read. The little letters were blurry, something she wasn't able to understand. The Brother's told her that the answer to everything was in this book, but she couldn't read it, and he was coming for her again.

She reached behind and touched her back, and as she moved felt the rest of her body protest. She was still sore from where he had beaten her. Torn at her. Torn into her! There was a little mirror on the wall, and she could see that the wounds had healed much faster than she was told they would. Margarita had said it was the Father's way, to "investigate Satan". That he believed all women were born from evil, and the evil had to come out to be seen for him to get rid of it.

But her body still hurt. She hurt. What he was, what he had done to her, she did not understand. Her fingers brushed the book, and then the table. She felt the grain of the wood and traced the bulky square shape. Everything was heavy here, solid. The walls, the objects, the air itself seemed to weight her down. It was hard to move. Easier today, than yesterday. But still. . . .

The footsteps were closer. She heard them, her ears so sensitive, reaching through the thickness of this world with more ease than her physical form was able. She thought that she heard things more intensely than Margarita, and the Brothers. Sometimes she could hear people talking even though they were far away.

The footsteps slowed, grew more cautious and crept ever closer.

She looked at the walls of the room, dull grey stone with no windows. Like a prison.

Something began to gather then in her center, collecting itself in her groin and rising upward. It wasn't fear, or the grief she had felt yesterday, something else, something different. Like the Sea when the storms came, and it swirled and crashed against itself..

A scuffing sound now, right outside her door, and jingling, rustling of keys. Then the handle turned and the door groaned as it inched open.

Father Lucrose stood in the doorway. His body was wrinkled and heavy like the rest of this world, rolls of fat on his stomach covered up by the coarse fabric of his ugly brown clothing. He closed the door behind him and turned to her, his small brown eyes ran up and down her body hungrily. She saw a thin line of sweat beneath the top of his shiny bald head.

He set the keys down on the table. "Well," he said, his voice saturated with a kind of desire she didn't fully comprehend, "I see you have been waiting for me." As he turned toward her, she could see that he had brought the whip with him; it hung from the belt on his garment. "Good." He said and smiled at her.

"You know that I do not enjoy this." He told her, and began to unfasten the belt from his robe. "It is something I have been tasked to do." The long belt swung from his waist like a snake and he caught the braided leather whip in his hands before it fell. He fingered it like an old friend and moved closer.

She put her hand on the black book that was on the table. "I don't understand."

He paused, and seemed startled. She was a vision standing there, one hand on the Bible, her long black hair spilling out over her shoulders, a look of unbridled innocence on her stunning face. The Father swallowed hard. For a moment he doubted himself. Doubted his mission. Then he saw the shape of her breasts under the garment. He remembered what it felt like to have her beneath him, confused and weak. He felt lust rise up inside of him. He wanted to have her again, to hurt her, to possess her.

He had felt these things before, with others, but never so strongly. It was Satan reaching out, reaching from these women to seize his faith and his purpose. He clenched the whip in his hands. "You will soon understand child." He told her and lunged.

She jumped back and avoided his reach, darting around him to the door. Her fingers curled around the handle and she felt the breath of freedom in the narrow opening. Suddenly he was there, his large body banging the sliver of the outside world closed. He threw her against the bed. "Devil's whore!" he spat.

The storm built up inside of her. She could feel it as if it were the wind or the strong currents of the sea, churning, foaming, and then railing against itself. Her body felt consumed by it, the composition of her blood, her flesh seemed to change, and she felt pinpricks in her mouth. Her eyes, her vision blurred. She heard the beating of his heart; she felt the call of blood in his veins. The storm reached her heart, her mind, her innocence toward the world she had been spit out into.

"I will show you what you are daughter of Satan," His hot heavy breath filled her nostrils, she felt it on her skin, felt him as he put his mouth on her, wet rank saliva slithered down her throat. He thrust against her, licking his lips and lifting his robe as he descended on her in the bed.

His voice pierced her eardrum, sharp and invasive, the words were indecipherable. She squinted but could not really see him. His shape was twisted and contorted in the light; for a moment she thought she could see beneath his skin, the flesh and blood and bone, and then his spirit and the dark shapes that were there. There was a pulsing then a pounding sensation in her abdomen it pounded her insides before taking her completely

Father Lucrose threw his weight onto her, and grunted as he felt something pierce his neck and then rip into it. He cried out, but her hand smothered his lips. With unbelievable strength she spun his body backward and then onto the floor. He choked and sputtered and sat up. The woman flung herself into the air like a wild cat and then on top of him. Sharp pointy teeth sprung from her mouth and his blood dripped from her lips like wine.

"Satan!" He screamed, and would have said more but she shut his mouth with nails that tore into his lips. He gurgled. His blood poured out onto the floor. She was on him again, and turned his head so that he could see her. Fear pulsed inside of him. Her eyes were liquid and the color of the sea, with dark deep flecks that seemed to lead somewhere dangerous.

"My name is Thalassa!" She hissed, and then cracked his neck as if it were a stick of candy. His body slumped on the floor.

The storm subsided as the Father's life drained from him, it retreated like waves on the shore.

She stood in a daze.

Her hands lifted and she saw that they were covered with blood. Suddenly she caught a glance of herself in the mirror. Razor fangs protruded from her mouth, absorbing the blood. She felt an intense hunger and her heart pounded loudly.

Footsteps, and someone was at the door. It was Margarita's voice calling through the keyhole. There was a scratching clinking noise and then the door opened.

Margarita's mouth dropped open in horror and then she bit her tongue to stop her from screaming. "Dios Mio," she stared in shock at the Father's body on the floor "Oh My God. . "What have you done."? She looked up then and saw her face, the blood. . . the fangs. Margarita was unable to speak.

"I remember," she whispered, her eyes pleading with the Indian woman who had become her friend these last few days. "My name." Suddenly she crumbled in a heap and began sobbing.

Margarita nervously crept forward. Then with more courage reached out and put a trembling hand on her shoulder. She knew what the Father was, what he did to the women here. She felt little pity for him. But the child seemed possessed, was some kind of a . . . .

"Help me!" the girl sobbed. She looked up, her face was still covered in blood, but the pointed fangs were retreating, shrinking inward before her very eyes.

"What am I?" she pleaded, her eyes filled with tears. She was begging for her friend to help her. She felt pain as the salty tears rolled down her cheeks, they seemed to burn her, marking her skin with a red line. She ran her hands over her own face, her teeth, feeling the dissolving nubs that had been weapons only moments before. She could still taste the Father's blood in her mouth, and it made her hungry, she wanted more, felt a rising need in her body for more.

"Help me," her voice was a whisper, "please!"

Margarita didn't answer, but put her arms around the girl, held her as she cried. She did not want to say it, did not want to think it. But the answer hung in the air, as if it had already been spoken, as if it had been said the moment the girl had looked in the mirror and saw herself. The moment Margarita opened the door to look upon the scene.

She did not say it, but it rattled through her mind. This girl so lovely, so slender, so seemingly an ethereal gift from God, had an infection of sin. She was inexplicably the thing that Father Lucrose had been searching for his whole life.

She was a demon!

\--

It was raining, which was unusual for this time of year. The water splattered from cracks in the layers of earth and onto Eadgarr's cloak as he made his way down the long twisted stairwell that took him deeper and deeper into the earth. Soon he would reach the gates, where Morcant's hounds would greet him. The parchment had come to him from Cerdic. She was calling them to court, one by one they were coming home, or rather to the place they had once called home, when Achaikos lived.

It had been a month long journey for him to Astrakhan, the tiny city in Russia, and then another few days to the hidden portal which led to the palace. Protected by a series of underground tunnels and sorcery, it was Eadgarr's age and experience that allowed him to easily navigate the passages.

The deeper he descended into the bowels of their kingdom the more he began to dread the destination. Their world was not as it had been when Achaikos was king. Isolde's small circle of secrecy and her reliance on the dark magician had caused a worrisome division in the House of the Modhai.

He reached the bottom and after short examination, located the wheel that when turned correctly, opened the chamber leading to the gate. He could feel the presence of the hounds and hoped that the guards had been alerted of his arrival.

The Prince's uprising was growing, and with it more danger. His position, his family, and his own lands were at risk, and though he did not like it, he knew when Isolde had called on him that he had to come. Despite his reservations he understood what decision he would be forced to make. The Prince was not strong enough to overtake his sister, and Eadgarr could not bet his position and fortune on a losing horse.

The gates were open when he arrived, and though he could smell the hounds, they had clearly been tethered. Two guards positioned at the front beckoned him forward.

He paused and gave himself a moment to be nostalgic, admiring the castle. Torches had been lit along the high ledges and crevices, as far up as his eyes could see. They cast an ethereal glow on the soaring towers and gilded arched windows of the underground fortress. White against the soft light, the pointed stone on the top of the keeps stood out and the carved figures reaching out along the arches created a mystical other worldly visage. A trickling stream wound its way through the underground canyon and was shadowed by a drawbridge leading to the castle's entrance. He knew from experience what weird and twisted creatures swam there, and elected instead to walk on the narrow stones beside it rather than risk his boots to the treacherous waters.

They gave him his usual wing in the palace, and it was near sunrise when the guards came to escort him to dinner. It was a long walk to the dining hall through carved stone corridors that time had changed little despite the king's absence. Torches highlighted the marbled texture of the corridor, and caused the shadows to dance, until they finally entered into a high wide archway that marked the entrance of the dining hall.

A huge mahogany table adorned the center of the room accented by high backed yellow and gold velvet covered chairs. The servants had lit candles and set sparkling crystal glasses on the table in front of each chair. A small little plate was adjacent the glasses which tradition dictated would be used for Acacia root.

At the head of the table was a particularly large chair, with a round high back that was elevated on a platform so that it loomed above the table itself. There was a crank wheel at the side and it could be pivoted right or left. There was also a lever used to move the platform up or down. He recalled the many meals he had eaten at there when Achaikos had ruled, and he felt a pang in chest. He ignored it.

One of the guards hastened him forward. There was a great noise and the scuffing of wood against stone as the wide doors to the left of the room groaned open, exposing a huge and gaping hole. Two servants came forward, each holding a flickering torch and positioned themselves by the doorway. Eadgarr could hear the whooshing of fabric and light delicate footsteps. There was a flash of glittering gold and then the servants stepped aside to allow Queen Isolde to enter the room.

She moved gracefully, careful and quiet. Her body was covered with woven gold. A bustier pushed her breasts upward, exposing soft chocolate skin to the torchlight. Her waist was cinched and then widened at the hips in a river of gold that seemed to stretch like a waterfall around her. Several of her human pets could be seen in the hallway adjusting the garment's massive train, which trailed behind her as she moved.

"Eadgarr," her voice seemed falsely pleasant, and when she smiled her eyes looked orange and catlike in the light. "How kind of you to come, and so quickly". Her voice transformed into a low seductive whisper that reminded him of her mother's Egyptian priestess whom he had once drunk from in Cairo.

"Your grace," He kneeled and as custom dictated waited until she beckoned to him before standing. "It has been too long." He stood to the side as the Queen and her dress continued to fill the room.

She was a surprisingly small woman, with skin that was the color of dawn and dusk together. An elaborate headdress gave her the illusion of height, with a bedazzled center that looked like the sun must look, with rays of rubies and yellow diamonds extending in geometric lines outward and across the top. Her lips were carefully lined and painted a burnt orange color to match her eyes.

It took a while for the servants to situate her on the tall throne at the head of the table. They positioned the fabric delicately around her and used the lever on the chair to extend it upward. Of course it was Achaikos who had build the contraption. One more way to distinguish himself as king in the kingdom he had created. Finally she seemed comfortable, and looked down from her perch at Eadgarr.

"Please." She smiled and motioned for him to sit.

As he took his seat, a servant quickly appeared and used finely polished silver to serve the Bolivar. The traditional blood and mineral cake was browned just on top and had the customary crosshatch pattern on the sides. It emulated a pungent toasty aroma that reminded him he was hungry. Thick sweet wine was poured by another servant from a tall glass bottle, first for her majesty and then for Eadgarr.

"Please," she motioned toward his plate, giving him permission to eat. A small emotionless smile lifted the edges of her lips, which seemed intended to put him at ease, but had the opposite effect.

Eadgarr took a piece of Acacia root and chewed the coarse plant to clean his palate. He spit the pulp into a small dish next to him, before sinking his utensils into the crisp surface of the Bolivar.

The Queen looked expectantly at him.

"Very nice," he commented and nodded his approval before taking another bite.

"Mmm," she murmured, "I am pleased, courtesy of Morcant's new chef from the East."

He tried to pretend that hearing Morcant's name did not send unpleasant shivers down his spine. He lifted his glass and took a long drink of the wine. "I am honored to share this with you my Queen." Eadgarr was no stranger to court, and ass kissing was just part of the job.

"And I am honored to have you." She took a knife from the table and cut off a tiny piece of the Acacia root, then put it delicately in her mouth. "Of course you know why I have called you?" She looked carefully at him while she chewed the tiny piece of root.

"I can only assume it has something to do with the uprising."

She picked up her napkin and spit the pulp of the root into it then let it fall to the floor. A servant swooshed down and picked it up, then darted back into the background. "My brother's army grows stronger, I am told." She picked up her glass, admiring the cut crystal shapes along the edges, "The House of Modhai continues to divide itself. Only today I have received word that Evaria has gone silent." She put down the glass without drinking.

"Yes, I had heard." Eadgarr looked worried. "that is four houses now."

She studied him carefully. Eadgarr appeared to be a man in his 40's, with brown hair peppered with gray streaks on the sides. Small lines marked his years as a human before Ivaar had turned him.

"And what else might you have heard Eadgarr?" She picked up the glass, this time taking a small sip and rolling the liquid in her mouth lovingly before swallowing it. "Perhaps something from Erechantheus?"

Eadgarr paused, his glass poised in mid air. He heard his heart thumping in his chest. "Erech?" he frowned. "What do you mean?"

The Queen set her glass on the table and leaned forward, the fabric of her dress making a rustling noise. Her large diamond ring winked at him in the light. "I am aware that Ian has been to visit your son." Her eyes were no longer accommodating, but like daggers that sliced through Eadgarr's head, surging into his mind for answers. He felt the pain, but allowed the intrusion.

"I have heard nothing of this." He managed to speak, "Erech would not involve himself, I can assure you. . . " It seemed like a long time before he felt her leave his mind. The pain subsided.

She picked up her knife and it scraped against the plate as she cut into the Bolivar. The silence between them made the sounds seem more prominent. "Your son would be a dangerous enemy to me Eadgarr." her voice flickered like a snakes tongue. "He was seen in Paris-my brother-coming out of your son's flat."

"They must be mistaken. . . "

"They do not make mistakes." She used the knife to slice off another small piece of the mineral cake. "I can feel," her voice was cold but she managed to give him a slim smile, "that you are truthful. But why Erech would not mention it, that my brother had come to see him, I cannot know." She chewed thoughtfully and the jewels on her crown glimmered strangely.

"Erech wants nothing of politics or court," Eadgarr sat up in his seat, "he seldom comes to see me, I must go to him, and when I do he spends his days playing music with clowns and enjoying long hours of hopeless frivolity. He is not the warrior you and others once knew."

Again, he felt Isolde pushing at his mind, and he let her in gladly this time, he wanted her to see. She stayed for a while, then seemed satisfied. She resumed chewing, then took another careful sip from her glass.

"Whatever he has become, Eadgarr, I know what he is capable of. I would not want to see him join forces with my brother."

She looked at him, her eyes warming like little flames, "Think of what that would do to the kingdom. To everything that took so long for us to build. It was my father's wish that I should succeed him. He must have known of my brother's unfortunate character. How he would poison the Modhai to satiate his hunger for the throne." She motioned to one of the servants who cranked the lever on the chair, bringing it down slightly, and her closer to Eadgarr.

"I have called the others even as I called you." She was close enough to him now that he could smell her perfume, it was the sweet and heavy spices of the desert, the sand and the wind and the Egyptian sun. "They will be here by the third moon." Her eyes fell, and seriousness penetrated the quiet melody, "We have to protect what is ours. This kingdom cannot become any further divided. Ian's army will fall, and with it the Modhai who have betrayed me." She leaned forward and Eadgarr could feel the power radiating from her. "My brother has no destiny here. You understand Eadgarr? My father chose me."

Eadarr looked at her squarely, earnestly. "I will honor my vow to you and your father Isolde," he pledged. "You have searched the void, what I have woven, there is no betrayal here. My son is wayward, on a road away from us, but he is no traitor." He leaned closer to her, "I will not risk my House for Ian's vendetta. Nor will my family. You have my word."

She looked at him for a long moment, then let out a long breath. He thought by the ease that she sank back into her throne that she believed him. "We will meet Cerdic on the next moon, and the others will follow, and it begins." There was a grim look on her face.

"What begins, your highness?" He frowned.

She looked at the wall, at the framed papyrus, her mother's painting. The hieroglyphs mapped out by generations of temple priestesses. They knew, they had seen what dark storm would come. How Achaikos could reach out, even through the barrier of his own death. Her mother had painted it, gifted it to her so that she knew the way. What had to be done.

"Your majesty?" Eadgarr became nervous. Isolde had a strange look in her eyes, as if she had lost herself.

"We have an army of our own," she said quietly, dragging her eyes away from the painting, "An army that is like no other. They will hunt for us, and squelch this uprising." Isolde lifted her glass in a mock toast and took a long drink afterward. A tiny drop of red hung at the corner of her mouth and she dabbed at it with a napkin.

She allowed an unexpected surge of happiness to distract from the anxiety surrounding her. Despite what she told Eadgarr, Morcant had deployed the first soldiers far away from her brother's growing army, to the west, across the ocean, where he had shattered the bastard's protection in the void. Morcant had found a way in. Added to that there were more soldiers being born in the dungeon, and with the remaining Modhai, she would work to unravel the prophecy and destroy her brother and his uprising.

Margarita had one of the brothers take the small carpetbag to the horse drawn buggy waiting in front of the mission. It was time. She searched the long courtyard of the Mission and then found her where she expected to, in the cemetery by the little grave. Putting some flowers there, little daisies this time.

Now that the miners were pouring into town, San Francisco had become an even bigger haven of debauchery and mayhem, or so the Brother's liked to tell them at their Sunday sermons. But the Mission was no place for a lady, and especially not one with looks as fine as Sister Anne.

"There now Sister," Margarita tried to soothe but ended up instead startling her as she came up from behind. "Don't fret, you always can come back here for a visit."

The Sister looked up, and though her thick black hair was hidden behind a nun's veil, her features were still remarkable, high cheekbones and a natural blush on her skin, her eyes an odd and alluring color of turquoise in the sunlight. Though in that moment they reflected back a deep sadness.

"Come now Sister Anne, the convent is very nice. You will take your orders there, and learn to overcome. . . er. . . life's uncertainties".

The girl frowned at the name. Still so new, it had been given to her only a few weeks ago when she had taken her vows.

Thalassa. That had been her name. It was one of the few things she could remember about her past. But these people wanted to call her Anne, and she thought that after a while she might get used to it.

They were moving her now, to the convent some miles away. It was not proper the Brothers had said, for a Sister to live amongst them. It would look especially bad, given her looks and the eroding condition of the outside world, with saloons on every corner and a constant flow of fortune seekers migrating to California for gold.

Thalassa looked down at the little tombstone. Small and unpolished, even the engraving made it seem like an afterthought. "Infant child" it said. No name, no care to see that the letters were even. Just crudely carved words on a stone that marked the passing of an innocent.

The grave had come to symbolize some big part of the world that she had been spit out into. A world of sorrow. Death. People died, humans died. Children died. Even the son of God had died.

She had gotten more used to the heaviness. To the way her body felt as she moved, her feet trudging on ground where gravity kept them anchored. She had gotten used to some of the pain. And the hunger. Sometimes she was so hungry; she did not know what to eat to take away the pangs and the pain in the pit of her stomach. All of this she had begun to accept, but the other, she looked at the little grave. Touched the flowers that she had laid there, their delicate petals already fading in the hot sun. Death was final. The end. And in this muddy and undeveloped land, it seemed that the end came often.

"Sister," Margarita's voice was gentle, but firm. "The driver is waiting for you."

"Yes of course," she said quietly. Her fingers brushed across the coarse and unfinished edges of the little stone, "Goodbye," she thought she said it aloud, but her voice was barely a whisper.

She followed Margarita down the walkway to the place where the buggy was waiting. Father Antonio was there. He gave Thalassa a hug and then draped a long wooden cross around her neck. "For you," he said, and kissed her forehead though she did not want him to. "I made it myself, for your protection."

The Father felt a tug at his heart as the Sister looked up at him, her eyes large and sad. It had been two years since they had found her, washed up on the beach. Around the same time they had lost father Lucrose to a wild animal that had broken through the mission gates. Two years and the girl was as much a mystery to him now, as she had been when she first arrived.

"My child," he said to Thalassa, "You must continue your work against this evil." She looked at him, her face pale and thin in the daylight, much thinner he thought than when she had first come to them. Her body looked weak, sickly even, and he worried for her. "The devil is strong in the hearts of human beings, and the sisters will help you with your struggles. They are part of an ancient covenant who have come to these wild lands to do God's work, and they are closer to Him than you or I will ever be."

"Of course father," she nodded, "thank you for the gift." Her fingers curled tightly around the cross.

"With hard work and discipline, you can overcome every evil of this world." He counseled. "Remember sister, sin lives in the heart of every person, and it is Christ who will deliver us." He reached out and gave her a hug goodbye, withdrawing as he felt her body stiffen. Sister Anne seemed to trust no one, but at least, in his mind, she had learned to put her faith in a path of righteousness.

The driver helped first Thalassa and then Margarita into the buggy "Now you see," she tried to comfort her, "everything will be just fine."

The carriage bounced and jostled over the bumpy road, dust and grime an inevitable bi-product of poorly managed roads. The driver had to stop several times to adjust the harnesses on the horses. On one unfortunate turn one of the wheels cracked when it hit a large stone and the buggy flipped up sideways.

Margarita let out a squeal and clung to the sideboards. As the carriage ground to a halt, Thalassa used her body to thrust open the jammed side door and jumped out to see if she could help the driver.

"Damnit!" he swore and then realizing who was standing next to him gave a remorseful look. "Sorry. " He wiped his brow. "It looks busted. I don't have another one."

"What!?" Margarita bustled out of the buggy, her long skirt catching on the handle for a moment, until she was able to reach around and free the fabric. "What do you mean you don't have another one?"

"Jus whut I said mam, I don't have one. Looks like I'mma haf to unhitch the horse and try and find something or someone up the road who can help."

Margarita was visibly upset, and struggled to keep her composure. "You can't just leave us here? I mean it is going to be dark soon. We are two women alone. That is simply not acceptable."

The driver looked perturbed. "I don't have no choice," he sounded annoyed. He opened a box in the back of the buggy and brought out a long slender shotgun. "Take this." He tried to hand it to Margarita, but she cringed.

"You can't be serious?!" She was incredulous.

"Well isn't you an Injun?" he looked annoyed, "don't you know how ta shoot." His voice slurred a little as he shifted a large wad of chew that was in his mouth.

Margarita was spitting fire. "I am a woman of the convent yo yaou. . ." she sputtered, and looked like she was going to hit him.

Thalassa moved forward and took the gun. "Thank you." She said, her voice calm and unaffected. "Please hurry back to us with the wheel. We do not want to spend the night here."

"A course." The driver said, and quickly unhitched the horse from the buggy. Thalassa barely noticed him as he rode off into the dusk.

Margarita was visibly upset. "What a big. . . oaf!" she exclaimed, then looked guilty and crossed herself. "I'm sorry, I didn't' mean it." She looked at the buggy tipped upward on its broken wheel. "I take that back. I did mean it." And she went around the back to see if there was a blanket they could use. The sun was quickly fading and she was getting cold.

"Here," she handed Thalassa one of the blankets she had found. And then spread another out on the ground and sat down. She put a little bundle down and unwrapped some food she had brought along. "Good thing I thought to pack this, I am getting hungry."

Thalassa sat down beside her. She draped some of the blanket around her friend and stared down at the food. Margarita had packed a half loaf of bread and some cheese, an apple and a slab of partially dried meat. She cut some of the bread and handed it over.

Thalassa felt her stomach clench. "Just the apple for me I think." She reached out and took the fruit, using the knife to cut off a little slice.

"Goodness," Margarita lectured, "you hardly eat a thing I swear. I don't see how you manage to stay alive."

Thalassa took a bite of the apple slice. It felt cool and palatable in her throat, something that she wouldn't later regret eating. It was so hard for her to find things to eat. Some of the foods that people ate made her sick, caused her abdominal pain. She had found, through a process of trial and error, just a few things that she could keep down. Fortunately apples were one of them. She picked up another slice and crunched on it.

It was dark now, the shadows crept across the land and seem to consume it. The wagon had been stopped near an old redwood tree and there was a fresh wet smell of fog and damp bark around them. The mist rolled in from the ocean and clung to the leaves and vegetation around them. The ice plants and aloe seemed to rise to attention as their primary source of water enveloped the land.

"I'm cold," Margarita shuddered and moved closer.

Thalassa's sensitive ears picked up a sound, far off, the repetitive pounding of hooves. Then footsteps crunching on the ground, but treading carefully, picking their way toward them. Margarita did not seem to notice, but then Thalassa was used to that.

"Someone is coming." She whispered, and picked up the shotgun.

Margarita barely looked up. "I don't hear anything." She sounded tired, and pulled the blanket tighter around her to keep out the cold.

Thalassa moved backward quietly behind the thick base of a tree. She could feel something unpleasant creeping up the base of her spine. A churning energy swirled in her stomach and a kind of coldness crept in. Something was wrong. She could feel a dark presence, a rift in the normalcy things.

A twig snapped.

This time Margarita heard it and she lifted her head in alarm. In her bundle was a small candle and match and she quickly lit it so that she could see. "Who is it?" she called out, "who is there?"

Another snapping sound and then someone emerged from the darkness. The candle emulated a soft glow. Margarita looked around, searching for Thalassa but didn't see her. She stood up from the ground, holding the candle out in front of her so she could see. "Wh . . . who are you?" She sounded afraid.

A man moved closer. She could see that he was dressed in riding boots with dark velvet trousers. He had on a long jacket with a white shirt underneath and reflected the light Margarita held. His hair was long and tied back in the customary style. She moved the candle upwards and saw his face. Pale and eery in the light, his eyes seemed strangely empty, but she thought perhaps it was the darkness that made them appear so.

"I apologize," his voice was soft and alluring. "I did not mean to scare you." He moved closer, turning to look at the overturned buggy. "I see you are in distress, I thought perhaps I could help." His eyes scanned the surroundings, then turned back to her. "Are you alone?" He smiled. "I thought perhaps I heard someone else."

His head turned and he again seemed to scan the area, though it was dark and hard to see anything, Margarita felt that he was taking in more that she could ever in the poor lighting.

"Our driver has gone for help." She managed to blurt out. She wasn't sure why, but something about this man did not feel right. "Thank you for your concern."

There was a small clicking sound, the cocking of a gun. The man's head turned toward the tree. "Ah," he sounded relieved, "I understand." He smoothed his jacket slightly. "But perhaps you would like me to wait with you. For your driver."

Thalassa moved from behind the tree. Aware that she had been discovered. The gun barrel winked as the candlelight caught it in the shadows. "That isn't necessary," she told him, her voice unwavering. "We are comfortable waiting alone." She held the gun on him, a clear warning.

He smiled, and there was a slight bit of laughter in his cold voice. "As you like," he motioned eloquently with his hand. He looked down at the small picnic spread out on the blanket. "But I see you are in the middle of dinner," His smile grew wider, ". . . and I am hungry." He turned to Margarita. "I'm sure you wouldn't deny a weary traveler a meal?"

Margarita opened her mouth to speak but before a word escaped he was on her. Moving like lightening, he lifted her with one hand into the air and then drug her down to bite viciously into her flesh.

Thalassa's eyes widened in shock. She fired the gun at the man, but he turned before the bullet could hit him, and it ripped into Margarita's side. She screamed.

The man looked up at Thalassa, Margarita's blood dripped from his mouth. "You missed," he said mockingly, as if he were playing some sort of game.

Thalassa looked at her friend and felt a storm churning inside of her. Enveloping her. Anger and violence seeped into her blood, it took over every cell and threatened her.

"I won't miss again."

She fired the gun, and a bullet ripped into his chest.

He laughed, roaringly and swatted his chest as if an insect had bit him. Margarita was sobbing, still alive and terrified. He bent down to her neck and ran his tongue over the blood pooling there. "Mmmmmm," very nice." He dropped her abruptly to the ground. "Now. .. I think I would like some desert." He moved toward Thalassa.

She fired the gun again and this time the bullet ripped through his shoulder. He stopped for a moment and looked down, a small frown on his face. "That was a nice jacket." He slipped his finger into the wound and pulled out the bullet, dropping on the ground. "What a waste." He continued moving toward her.

Thalassa felt her heart pounding. How is it he wasn't injured? Wasn't bleeding?

He was close now, she could see his skin, pale, translucent in the dim light. He was still smiling. Playing with her. Enjoying himself. She could tell that he wanted her to be afraid, was enjoying fear.

"Run!" she heard Margarita cry out, "Sister Anne run!! Dear God please. . . !" The anguish in her voice, the horror. Thalassa looked coldly upon the man. His face was close now. He opened his mouth and she gasped.

Fangs lengthened from his teeth, stretching out toward his prey. White, gleaming, hungry weapons.

She looked at him in awe, her own face so lovely in the night, framed by the white fabric of her nun's habit. "What are you?" She whispered. Mesmerized she reached up and touched one of the fangs. Sharp like the blade of a newly sharpened knife, it pricked her finger.

His smile faded. He seemed curious, taken aback even by her behavior.

"What are you?" she whispered again. And inched back until she could feel the bark of the tree pressing into her spine. Not just out of fear, but because she wanted to see him better.

"Are you a demon?" Her voice was quiet.

"Don't hurt her!" she heard Margarita cry out and then groan in agony.

The man seemed to suddenly grow bored with the game. He lifted his head. "I am hungry," he hissed and moved so quickly his body was a blur. Thalassa twisted from under him before his teeth reached her throat. She felt her own body transforming itself, Her elbow slammed into his side with brutal force and she used her other hand to crack his spine backward. There was the horrible sound of breaking bones and he cried out in the darkness. His back was shattered and contorted and as he lay on the ground she could see beneath the tattered jacket, how the bones had begun to mend themselves. The gaping hole she had made with her nails when he crashed backward was closing and the skin merging back together again.

She lifted her fingers and smelled the blood. Rank, horrible, it had the strong odor of an animal that had been dead for several days.

"Bitch!" he grated and rolled over and then lifted himself up. His bones not done mending, he cried out like an angry child. "You will pay for this!"

Margarita screamed again and was crawling toward the overturned buggy.

Thalassa felt rage churning inside of her, there was a pinprick sensation in her mouth and she turned the face the demon that had attacked them. She took the wooden cross Father Antonio had given her and pulled it from her neck. The man was standing fully now, his contorted body now mended. His lip snarled and his eyes held the promise of a dark end.

She raised the cross and opened her mouth. He saw her fangs and for a moment his eyes registered surprise. She moved like lighting around him and plunged the cross into the center of his chest, then shoved it further, burying it deeply in his black heart.

He gurgled and twisted, popping veins marring the white luster of his skin. He fell to the ground clutching the cross, trying to pull it from his chest, but his body grew stiff. Slowly his skin began to turn a grey ashen color. She heard a whooshing sound and then he exploded in front of her, as if she had sparked a fire on his insides.

Thallassa stood over the charred ashes in shock. The storm inside of her almost instantly dissipated. She bent down and touched them, the ashes, felt their heat, watched them crumble between her fingers.

She ran her tongue across the roof of her mouth. Her teeth were retreating, sliding back to normalcy.

He had been like her. He looked, like she looked. He was what she was. She held her fingers to her face. She could still see his blood on them, the horrible odor and thick composition wasn't the same as her own, but perhaps that is what happened, when they let the demon take them. Maybe that had happened to him? He hadn't been able to fight it, and it took over everything that he had been. Made him a horror that descended on innocent travelers such as she and Margarita.

The demon had taken him.

She heard a sound, it penetrated through the thick haze she felt around her. It was someone's voice. Someone. . . Margarita!

Thallassa turned suddenly and ran to her friend. Her wounds seemed very bad. She used the knife on the blanket by the food to cut off long strips of fabric and wrap it around Margarrita to stop the bleeding. "Hush now," she comforted her friend. "Everything is all right now."

In the distance, through the layers of sound, she could hear the sound of horses, wheels turning and the faint voice of the driver.

"It's okay darling," she cooned, "Help is coming. Hold on." Thalassa held her friends head in her lap, to keep her from moving and losing more blood.

She felt a cold breeze blow on her face, and she knew somehow that this night was just the beginning.

She took a deep breath and tried to quiet her mind. Father Antonio said that God could overcome all evil. That satan was an infection in the human heart, a disease of sin, and it was only God that could overpower the monster.

Thalassa knew that whatever this demon had been, whatever she herself was, that she would not let it win. She would partner with God, with the covenant of Nuns, and wage this battle for as long as she was a part of this world. Whatever evil she had been infected with, she would never allow herself to become what that man who attacked them had been.

# Chapter 2

1954 Pacific Ocean

There was the smell of salt and of the wind. Erech stood on the deck and watched the white foam of the waves roil in the distance. The sea smelled of the earth's most beloved ingredients, salt and the silty sands of time. Behind him the sails gorged themselves on the wind that had picked up since Guadeloupe.

"Erech", Berengar's head appeared above the stairs, "The fire is coming." His eyes wandered to the distance. As if on cue the light penetrated the line of the horizon, turning the deep darkness of their world into a smoldering grey. His feet felt heavy against the wood of the ship. He could not seem to will them to move. His skin began to warm, and then the tingling, burning sensation began.

"Erech!" The intensity in Berengar's voice crashed against the numbness.

"Mmmm," he murmered, his voice far away. Sometimes he was so tempted by it, pushing himself up against the edge and then further. Just a little more. How far could he go, how much could he see of the sun that had always been taunting him. Curling its fiery fingers along the horizon. In a strange kind of trance, he finally turned to look at his brother who was staring at him from the opening in the deck, as if he were a stranger. "Yes," he said reluctantly, and his boots scuffed against the wood as he slowly trudged below.

The musician's were in their usual places, lounging on the colorful velvet couches, a hysterical palate of lime green and tangerine orange which were blended by the lighting above them in the windowless berth. "Drink?" Berengar made his way to the bar, "I know I need one."

Ice cubes clinked and then there was the sound of liquid being poured into the cocktail shaker. Marissa, his human companion, winked at him from her place on the couch and used her bright red nails to nudge the broken reed out of her flute. Her hair was curly red and wild on one side and shaved to the scalp on the other creating a dualistic effect from the front. Beside her sat Destiny, an underage Carny from a circus show in London. Her thin, somewhat adolescent frame was draped across the green velvet fabric of the couch. She watched intently as Marissa fixed her instrument.

"We were getting worried about you." Berengar told Erech and wasn't paying attention as he moved toward him, the ice cubes in his glass sloshing some of the liquid out the sides. "The fear of Tllaloc will drive you to meet the sun?" Berengar teased, trying to bring his brother back from the strange place he seemed to have gone. "But what of our share of the Queen's reward?"

He slapped his brother on the back joshingly and put a drink into his hands. Then turned back to the bar to make another.

Erech curled his fingers around the glass and stared into it meditatively. The cold soothed the spots on his skin where the beginnings of the dawn had burned. He looked up, taking in his surroundings. The cheerful couches and expensive hand carved furniture, though carefully chosen to match his beloved ship, now seemed as stale and meaningless as dollhouse furniture. Musical instruments were strewn about the room, and there was already the sound of laughter from one of the other cabins where some of their group had gone to play a new record. This kind of merriment had used to be the thing that pulled him out of this, but now seemed like children grating on the nerves of a grown up world.

Of course, his brother knew nothing of Tllaloc, nor of the Americas. What had happened here happened long before he had been born. And long before their father had mingled his blood with that of the ancient to turn him.

"I'm bored," Marissa complained, moving from the couch to wrap her arms around Berengar. She pressed her body against him seductively and he fumbled a little with his drink. "When will we reach the shore?"

Berengar chuckled unsympathetically and managed to pour the last of the scotch into his glass before turning to plant a kiss on her pouting lips. "You're life is so difficult, I know." He mocked, remembering the broken down farmhouse in Southern France where they had found her. It had been the sound of her flute that had drawn Erech's group. Berengar set his drink down and picked her up in his arms laughing as she squealed.

Erech turned from the scene and moved to the small writing desk in the corner. His brother had frequent flings with humans, a residue, Erech assumed, of his own years as one. As for himself, he had no such intimate knowledge, not having been born of their race. Humans were something that intrigued him, their simplicity, their need for joy and sorrow, to fill their brief lives with people and things that made them feel. Not that he hadn't enjoyed human lovers throughout the years, but never for so long, nor so frequent as his brother. He pulled out a sheet of paper, planning to write to their father, but instead stood staring blankly at it.

Marissa was now cuddling with Berengar on the couch and the lilting and merry tone of her flute soon filled the room. Destiny used her rich voice to complement it, singing a song he had heard many times before.

"Enough!" He slammed his fist on the table. A scowl marked his face and his harsh tone choked the melody.

Marissa pursed her lips and flashed him a glare. "What has happened to him?" she whined to Berengar, but her gaze was fixed pointedly at Erech. "He has become such a bore!" She tossed her instrument roughly on the couch. "This trip is a bore. Had I known it would be like this I would have stayed in Bayonne!"

Erech stood abruptly from his chair. His tall frame towered over them. A coldness emulated from his eyes and instantly silenced them. He looked for a long moment at Marissa and she felt an arctic shiver descent. Suddenly there was something so dangerous about him. The metamorphosis was startling.

"Berengar", his eyes continued to bore into her, "take this party somewhere else."

He returned to his seat at the desk and did not acknowledge them as they nervously shuffled out of the room. He continued to sit there, staring at the blank sheet of paper. The boat moved gently, and the motion comforted him. Though he wanted to desperately, he did not try to find his father, to meet him in the web. Morcant's dark magic shrouded the palace where his father and the other Modhai had been sequestered. He picked up the pen and stroked the paper for a moment like an old friend, before he scrawled across it, scribing perfect calligraphic letters:

Dear Father,

Each night I wake and see the land change form. On this night I can feel the wind of the Americas. We are moving closer to Tllaloc's land, the forbidden, and I am painfully, acutely aware, of what my footsteps on this earth, our presence could mean. How long we have kept this peace to now risk everything. One war is not enough for your Queen. I make this journey for you Father, but the price could be far more in the end than we should be willing to pay.

He paused and looked up. Music was now coming from the cabins below, and he could hear his brother's familiar laughter. He breathed deeply, trying to recapture some part of the comfort this life used to bring. He picked up the piece of paper and held in front of him. His penmanship an old gift from the years he had spent with the Edwardian Monks.

Isolde had spies everywhere, the chances of this getting through, especially at court where fear and deception overshadowed the loyalties of even his father's once trusted servants. Swiftly he crumpled up the parchment and tossed it at the trash.

Erech felt a bitter bile rise in his throat. He walked to the bar and poured himself another drink. For him to be here. After all of this time. He took a long drought of Bourbon. And Isolde was rolling the dice because of a prophecy. An inheritance from her crazy Egyptian mother.

Kiya had been condemned, and she met the fire while the Pharaoh and Achaikos looked on. Leaving behind her twins, Isolde and Ianuarius and a strange prophesy which had once again reared its ugly head. Something about a kings' bastard ending their kingdom.

Isolde had decided it was her prophesy, her mother's warning from the grave. And the bastard in her mind was the one that had been born to her father. Though no one had ever seen him, and it was unclear that he had even survived the accident that killed his mother.

That Isolde would risk Tllaloc's wrath.

He felt a deep distrust growing ever greater inside of him.

Marisa's instrument interrupted his thoughts, picking up speed, and he heard the chamber style music of the new artist Jean-Pierre Rampal rising above the talking and clapping from below. One good thing about returning to the Americas was that it was the home of West Coast Cool Jazz, as well as his new favorites, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Theloneus Monk. Though he had seen them in Europe several times, it was not as often as he would like. A piano joined in below and suddenly Erech felt some of the heaviness lifting. He began to smell the smoke from Berengar's cigar and was transported to better days in Milan and Verona. He tipped his glass and drained it.

He had seen too much blood in his lifetime. Too many wars. He remembered too many screams in the night. He needed to replace them with something else. The other side of this world that was about music and laughter.

Erech rustled through the drawer and found his cigar box. The match made a hissing sound when he lit it and he enjoyed it's smoky richness, the perfect companion to the Bourbon lingering on his lips. Pleasure was an important elixir. He picked up his violin and made his way downstairs to make amends. It would be deep into the day before they felt the need to sleep.

The fog created a thick cloak around the landscape. The Monterey pines strained toward the ocean, their flattened tops peering over the jagged rocks where the sea gulls had flown to roost. She could feel it, somewhere close, somewhere in the shadows. It was like a disease, a disruption in the darkness. Something interfering with the natural harmony of things.

"Sister Anne" Beth whispered, her voice a faint tremor of fear.

"Shhhhhh" Thalassa cautioned. Beth's long skirt caught on a low branch and she tumbled loudly onto the forest floor, scraping her knee on a rock. Little droplets of blood escaped the wound.

"Oh", she struggled to get up, making more noise.

Why had Samuel insisted she bring her? Hardly three weeks at the convent, and she was not suited for this task. But then this is how he tested them, she supposed.

The moon peered slightly from an opening in the fog. Thalassa felt the tingling pulses of energy from the light on her skin. A kind of clarity entered her mind that was sometimes missing in the haze of darkness the demons brought with them. She heard a sound, a faint whirling in the underbrush, something that could have been an animal darting to safety, but wasn't.

She grabbed the back of Beth's robe and used it to pull the girl to her feet. Beth looked overly pale in the moonlight, eyes wide and frightened. "What is it?" She whispered, her voice trembled. "Is it here?"

Thalassa did not answer. Wishing again that the girl was somewhere, anywhere else but by her side. She knew that it was playing with them. Close, but not too close. Enjoying the pulsing sensations of fear.

They had grown so much more clever recently. Not like the old days, when hunting could be handled before evening prayer. She heard the slight whisper of a leaf above. The wind shifted and she caught the scent of it, that odor of a thing long dead, mingled with a hint of something so much like cinnamon, that she just called it that.

There were two of them. Then suddenly she sensed another far off to the left. They were crawling, circling, slithering toward them.

A trap!

The realization did not inspire fear, just surprise that they had demonstrated such cleverness. The fat one from the road had lured them, intentionally it seemed, away from their car. She glanced over at Beth. The girl was shivering now, her body stiff with fear. Thalassa knew that she would be of little use to her in battle. She reached behind her and pulled the clasp of her own skirt, letting the volumous fabric drop to the ground. Her black leather leggings appeared and had rows of little silver crosses stitched along the side seams. The handles of various weapons protruded from the holsters lashed to her thighs and across the stiff boning of her hand-tooled tunic. A red and silver trimmed cross was etched dramatically across her front.

Her hands reached up to pull the nun's habit from her head and she let long black curls escape from the confining garment. A quiver strapped to her back contained an assortment of odd-looking arrows. She unsheathed one of them and turned to Beth expectantly.

The girl seemed confused, but then remembered, unzipping the black bag she had been carrying and handing Thalassa the bow.

Thalassa ran gloved fingers over the outside, pausing on a few scars nicked into the wood and metal from other battles. She cocked her head upward, drawing in slowly and deeply the forest, inhaling the scent of wet wood, moldering leaves and the creatures that crawled around them. She inhaled again, and felt the little pin pricks along her spine, the energy. . . the information. She sensed the demon's confidence, their bloated and grandiose sense of self, the thrill of the game they were playing. Then there was the emptiness, a profound failure in the species to feel anything except the robotic confusion derived from throbbing limitations of hunger and lust. She could feel them staring at her, eyes raking over her hair, her breasts outlined by the soft leather that hugged the curves of her body. Though they said nothing. . . did nothing, they were loud and clumsy, and made for an easy hunt, like a deer crashing through the brush directly in the path of the hunter.

Quickly, she knocked an arrow and traced their shadows, moving with them, but opposite to them. There was a familiar twang as the bow released, then a loud grunt as the arrow landed. Not the heart. But close.

Another arrow, this time striking home. There was an explosion in the trees and she felt satisfaction as flames from the corpse devoured the dry branches.

Behind her she heard Beth scream.

Too late, Thalassa turned. It was the fat one. She recognized the scar on his fleshy cheek, the greasy brown hair and the putrid smell of him. As if death had tried to season itself. Blood hung from his mouth coloring his slobber a rich red. Beth's body twitched in his arms, her neck bent unnaturally to one side.

Above her Thalassa could feel the subtle presence of another. Three! She hadn't realized. How had she missed that? It was stronger now, eyes boring through her like beacons in the darkness. Danger. This one was different. As if it had been cloaking itself, but now let down the veil. Like it wanted her to know it was there.

Her eyes were fixed in the dim darkness on the fat one, but she felt more acutely the intensity of the other- sharp, coldly analytical.

"Mmmmmm" the fat one slurred, licking a line of blood from Beth's limp shoulder. "Delicious". He slurped up the slobber escaping from his mouth. His sloppy checkered shirt, hung out of the waist of what appeared to be well worn high waisted pants, and gave him every appearance of a buffoon. He grinned, and dropped her. Pine needles crackled as she hit the forest floor.

Beth made a gurgling sound as her body hit the ground. Thalassa kept her eyes on the predator.

He moved toward her, his intent, she suspected, was to strategically corral her toward the third one who was watching them from above.

"Are you hungry?" Thalassa's voice was low and seductive. "Let me help," She arched her back seductively and then launched herself in the air, twisting herself upward and ramming the metal toe of her boot into his sternum. As she made contact a wooden spike extracted from the bottom and penetrated his flesh.

He screamed. His hands locked onto her ankle thrusting upward trying to pull it out. She threw her weight into him the same time he pulled, and heard the sound of her bones cracking. Pain shot up her leg, but she ignored it, and continued to use her body to pound the spike deeper, ripping through bone and flesh until the wood splintered into his bloodless heart. He screamed again, and his body was torn in half as fire consumed him from within.

Thalassa was thrown backward. She rolled endlessly across a bed of pine needles rocks and forest debris, finally smashing into a thick pine tree. Pain hammered up her leg. She could see a bone sticking out from the side of her ankle, a deep wound soaked with blood. She used her good leg to stand.

He was there.

She could feel him, and there was no urgency. Just a strange curiosity, eyes watching her in the darkness.

She unsheathed a long wooden stake from her belt. A cool breeze caressed her skin. She felt it touch her face, drying the line of blood that dribbled from a scratch.

"Show yourself," she whispered.

There was a tugging sensation in her head. She was startled by it, she could feel him then and for a demon he was unnaturally aware, I know you. She heard him in her head. Soon I will know you better.

She heard a sound above her, just a thin little whisper, but she had learned long ago never to ignore the little things. She moved suddenly, shifting to the side, ignoring the stabbing pain of her ankle. The heaviness, the disturbance in the forest was still strong, but somehow, she knew that he was gone.

She inhaled, breathing in the lingering scent of him.

The convent was grey, gloomy even. The order of nuns had assembled, some to pray and some to prepare Beth's body. Thalassa could hear them chanting in the main hall, channeling their grief into the repetitive prayers. She sat in one of the old wooden chairs, one leg elevated on a stool stacked with several pillows to give it some height. Teresa carefully examined her ankle, murmuring below her breath. "We have to take you to the Doctor," she said, then louder to make sure they heard her, "this is beyond my skill!"

"Bring in Thesba" Father Samuel O'Ryan countered. "They will ask too many questions."

"Thesba is in South America" Teresa reminded him, "she is on a mission." She looked again at the ankle, the jagged edge of the broken bone still protruding from the skin. Though she had cleaned the wound, she could not stitch it until the bone was moved back into place. "I do not have the skills," She said it again, to be sure they had heard.

"You could give it a try," Father O'Ryan encouraged. She is not like us Teresa, her body has a way of mending itself. We just need to help it.

"I can't do it," She backed away. I stitch the wounds father, clean them, tend to them, this is beyond my skill.

Thalassa looked at the wound again. She understood the wisdom of staying away from the clinics or hospitals. If they took a blood sample, probed her skin, it could be very dangerous. She dreaded the inevitable.

"I will do it." She told them reluctantly, her voice steadier than she felt. Her bones could heal quickly, but if they were positioned incorrectly it would take many months and sometimes much longer for them to fuse themselves correctly.

"We should get a doctor" Father O'Ryan frowned. His peppered grey hair straggled across the left side of his face, he reached up to move it out of the way. A short muscular man with a youthful demeanor, the grey hair seemed oddly out of place. Even more so, were the white monastic robes of his station.

"We'll get a doctor Thalassa. With this new surge of activity, we can't afford to have you injured."

She looked at him, his tan skin and the smooth contours of his face. Suddenly she felt tired, weary even, her stomach was a familiar empty pit. If she could just have something to eat. Green apples, or mint leaves, seaweed, or the roots of a lotus plant. She knew she could keep that down. She felt a wave of fatigue. She was so tired. Her ankle throbbed painfully and she knew that her body could not repair itself without some kind of nourishment. Her stomach felt twisted and cramped. Her eyes were drawn to the line of his neck, the faint outline of a vein beneath his skin; the sound of it, his heart pumping, his blood moving through his body. When she was weak it was harder to be around him. To be around any of them.

She closed her eyes and remembered when O'Bryan was just a boy, playing in the cathedral on Sundays. Her memory stretched further to when his father was born, during a fierce storm.

"Thalassa!" His voice was sharp, commanding, snapping her back to reality. "We can go to the clinic. I may know a woman there. . . "

"No." Her voice was flat, definitive. She ignored the trepidation she felt. The last time she had moved a bone herself, it had taken a year to fully heal. The thing had been a lingering nuisance until the last tiny fragments finally found their way home and fused themselves into place. She did not heal as fast, nor as efficiently as the demons. Sometimes that gave her comfort, another characteristic that set her apart from them.

"I'll need some whiskey" it was a command, but nicely stated, with some sweetness in between. "Or vodka will also do," Teresa gave her a nervous look, then left the room.

Thalassa sat up and began carefully examining the protruding bone. She picked up a pair of tweezers from the tray on the table beside them, and winced as she lifted a fold of skin. Soon the whiskey arrived and she drank several glasses before setting about her task. The night, which had already been long, would become even longer.

Erech sat across the table listening to Edwin Sansous explain the complexities of his shipping contract. The green colored soup in front of him reminded him of gout, and though he had trained his system to consume many varieties of human foods out of politeness, split pea was not one of them.

He felt a hand brush overlong on his knee as the blonde he had brought with him reached beneath the table to reclaim her napkin. "Excuse me" she laughed with false shyness, her red lips lifting in a seductive smile before she picked it up. She had obviously drank too much wine and forgotten her mark. Erech had paid her well to do this job, and he hoped she would remember that.

"You can see the opportunity here?!" Edwin queried, taking bite of bread before continuing, "This market is white hot!"

Erech smiled appreciatively, "it certainly seems like the timing could be right."

"That's what I see too!" and Edwin launched into another long-winded explanation of the contract.

Erech felt a slight twinge of annoyance. Edwin was far more interested in his trade deal than the blonde. He glanced sideways. The girl was overly attractive by human standards, with short blonde curls, classic high cheekbones and a well-endowed bosom. Yet Edwin had barely noticed her. It created an unexpected problem. The eccentric millionaire was the closest they had come to a real lead since they had arrived. He was a mirror image of his male ancestor, which was suspicious. An old trick, he himself had used to stay integrated in the human world by rebirthing as the son of your former self.

Edwin had been missing, rumored to be ostracized for many years from his father, who had passed away mysteriously some 5 years ago. His doppelganger ancestors were involved in several mysterious fires in San Francisco that had wiped out some number of Isolde's black-blooded soldiers. Though Edwin looked to be the spitting image of his father, Erech was skeptical that he would bear the marks of the bastard. He had all of the characteristics of a spoiled indulgent human, did not seem particularly well lived, and certainly wasn't in possession of the kind of wisdom that expanded across lifetimes.

After dinner they retired to the library for cognac and cigars. The blonde tried to follow, draping her arm across Edwin and flirting openly. Erech's annoyance grew when she was quickly brushed off and Edwin requested some alone time with Erech, "to talk business." She looked pouty and surprised, but drifted with the rest of his guests to another room where music and drinks awaited them.

Edwin's Pacific Heights mansion was built in Victorian Style architecture out of redwood trees that had been mowed down in the late 1800's to accommodate a housing boom. One of the few homes that survived the 1906 earthquake its 55 rooms were furnished with beautifully upholstered and uniquely uncomfortable Victorian furniture.

Erech poured himself another glass and took a long drag on his cigarette. He scanned the bookshelves while Edwin droned on. His eyes drifted across some old leather bound volumes. Strange symbols, hieroglyphs perhaps, marked the binding. Something seemed oddly familiar about them.

He stood up from the chair. "May I?" he interrupted, and gently slid one of the books from the shelf.

"Ah, yes, of course", Edwin stood near Erech, "that is quite rare. From my grandfather's collection. Part of the monastery until it was broken down." Edwin seemed disinterested and irritated at the interruption. It was clear that he wanted Erech's attention, rather than lose it to the old books in his library.

"The monastery?"

"Yes," he finished off his Cognac and reached to pour another. "Something I have been trying for years to unload from this estate, but a legacy my ancestor made sure I would be saddled with." He finished filling his glass and turned back to Erech. "Millions from my Great grandfather's mines, set aside in a trust to keep the Convent going."

"You said it was a Monastery?"

"Yes, well," Edwin grunted, pushing his thick horn rimmed glasses higher up on his nose. His soft, somewhat bulgy body stretched the fabric of his wool jacket and he temporarily set himself free from its confines by releasing a button. "It was both, until I was able to find a loop hole in the trust. Now it is just the Convent, and I am still working on that." He winked and took another drink. "Damn lot of money to be tied up to appease a dead relative's religion."

Erech ran his fingers over the page, the paper was old and fragile. The characters were like stone art on canvas, simple but complex. There was one in particular that caught his eye. He ran his index finger over it, something so familiar. . . A memory surfaced from so long ago. The ice cave, and the place where his father had once dared to take him. A forbidden place marked by symbols like this one. He looked for a long moment at the tattered book.

"Only the nuns can read those," Edwin said, now seated back in his chair, enjoying another cigarette. They come here every once in a while, to beg for money and borrow some of the books." He swept his hand unappreciatively across the vast collection that lined the walls of the huge room. "There are another few rooms of these downstairs." He flicked some ash in the crystal dish on the table. "My grandfather's doing." He scowled, "I'd like to sell them, but the nuns are fighting me on that. A bunch of veiled prunes, most of them, they want the books for the Convent." He took a drag on his cigarette. "Some of these are worth a bundle." He looked at the book in Erech's hand, "I am working with my lawyer on that too."

"I should like to meet them," Erech carefully put the book back on the shelf. "I have an interest in old things." He smiled friendly and filled his own glass. "Now, let's talk about the negotiations for the contract you are working on. Here is what I see. . . "

The moon was full, bright, the white light spreading its fingers across the grimy city streets. Even through the dingy window Montavrose enjoyed its luminescence. It was something like the sunlight had been, a thing that he could remember from his former life, one small remnant of humanity.

The girl was sobbing. Scratching at the coarse rope that held her hands. "Please" she wept, as they all did, "please let me go."

He cast her a disinterested glance and continued to look out the window. The lights of the city winked at him, and his heightened senses picked up the sound of a vagrant urinating on the sidewalk below. The apartment door creaked loudly and banged shut.

"Brought something for you Tavrose," Dolores panted, "but I see you have one of your own."

He turned and watched as she dropped the large unconscious man on the bed. "This one looks to be more satisfying," she sniggered looking at the girl's small slight figure before shrugging out of her coat, revealing a scant mini skirt underneath, and vanilla breasts swelling over a tight low cut red checkered top. She licked a drop of blood off of her lips and he could feel the energy of her pulsing sexuality. Blood and sex were the same for their race. The one always intertwined with the other.

"Drink with me Tavrose," her voice was ragged and hungry. She sliced a long red nail across the man's chest, and his blood dribbled onto the cheap bedspread. "It has been so long since you have joined me." The man groaned and convulsed, which made her writhe excitedly. She fondled her own breasts rubbing and pinching her nipples through the thin fabric of her blouse. She looked up at him with pleading eyes, "Feed with me." She wanted him, wanted to have wild sex with him and drink the life from this human.

He felt the darkness churning in his groin, the lust rise up and grip his body. He took a deep breath and embraced the energy, allowing without being owned, slowly uncoiling its power. He practiced what he had learned a lifetime ago with the Brothers in Spain, before Morcant had condemned him to this forever hell.

Dolores could wait no longer and she turned to gorge herself on the human. She crushed his throat with her fangs to stop him from screaming and sucked and drained the liquid pouring from the wound.

Tavrose turned from the scene. Like most of Isolde's army, Dolores was a stupid and careless creature. She had been with him for these last few years, but in this city, with its reputation, he did not expect her to last.

His prey was still crouched in the corner, sobbing quietly, head bowed, her tied hands reaching to cover her ears to block out the sounds from the bed. His eyes took in her thin frame, her pretty honey colored hair. She was young, barely a woman. He could hear her heart beating, pounding rapidly in her chest. Hunger, lust ascended again threatening his clarity, and he worked to dissolve it.

As a priest food had been limited and at times as forbidden as sex. Now it was the religion of his species. The single impulse for existence, a perplexing and disempowering side effect of immortality.

He sat at the little table by the window. Dolores was moaning and climaxing even though the life seemed to have vacated the limp body she mounted. He opened one of the books on the table and scanned the pages again for some clue, something that would help him with the hunt.

The Vrykolas, is what the Serbians had called them, in the beginning when there was co-existence. Vampire came later, a term given to those who preceded him, the first ones born in Morcant's dungeon. But Vrykolas wasn't the right name. He had never heard that from them, all the years he had been in the dark belly of the palace.

He frowned. The nun seemed like them. The way she moved, her awareness of everything around her. He had been watching her for weeks now, finally luring her into the forest so he could have a real opportunity to study her. She was not exactly like them, she seemed weaker somehow, less capable, less familiar with the rhythms of the land. But she was also not like the humans.

They had particular characteristics, Morcant's kind, abilities that he had not been able to achieve, no matter how many times attempted. At first he thought it was their age, but so much time spent in the darkness listening, observing them, observing them observing him, had made him believe otherwise. He looked down at his hand, there were faint shadows of dark veins beneath the pale skin. Different blood.

Images, memories flashed through him, needles and the cold steel of the tools. Over time he had learned to identify each one by the way it felt as they prodded and plunged into his flesh. His vision blurred for a moment and he could see again so clearly Morcant's black eyes glinting like chards of glass.

The girl moaned. He had forgotten about her.

Her hand was swollen and purple from where the rope had cut off circulation. He closed the book and rose from the chair. Dolores had collapsed next to the corpse on the bed, having satiated herself, she appeared to be napping.

His footsteps were light, barely brushing the old wooden floorboards. He gracefully bent down and touched the swollen hand. One finger ran slowly up her wrist, then cupped her fingers. The girl looked up, her eyes consumed with fear. He smiled softly. "Are you in uncomfortable?"

Her lips trembled but she could not bring herself to speak.

Tavrose was calm. Relaxed. He heard her heart beat rapidly, felt her blood running through her veins like liquid honey. There was hunger in his body, in his loins. He wanted to rip into her flesh, break open her jugular and drain her body as Dolores had done the man. He extended a long razor sharp nail and flicked the thickness of the rope causing it to snap and unravel. The girl's hands jerked as they were freed. She sat on the floor trembling, so afraid to move.

He reached out and cupped her chin, tipping her face upward. Her fear was like wine and he drank it in, allowing the energy to saturate every part of him. He ran his finger along her cheek and felt her sexuality, her terror, the dark and hidden desires that threatened to unleash themselves. Seeds of human darkness that the girl had never dared to explore. He moved his hand lower, sensually along the contours of her body.

"Please" the sound escaped from her mouth.

Tavrose closed his eyes and enjoyed the torment, the hunger, the dark energy impregnated with the deep and forbidden. The threshold between pain and pleasure dissipated, and against her will a moan escaped her lips. He raked his nail across her nipple, using the other hand to move the blouse completely out of the way. His hands moved over her body and he could smell the little droplets of blood from her breast.

A desperate need took over his body. His mouth salivated and begged to taste her, to drink and bathe in her body's rivers. She moaned again. He bent his head and flicked his tongue over the nipple. The droplets lingered in his mouth and he savored the salty sweetness.

He opened his eyes. The girl's emotions were a dance of terror, desire, and a darkness he knew she did not understand. His breath was ragged but deep. "In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti." He said aloud, and embraced the hunger inside of him, the lust, the wonderful sensations of fear and terror. "In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti." He breathed deeply again, and the storm began to subside. The energy diluted itself spreading black fingers that faded to grey and then thinned to nothingness within.

He moved back to the table. There was a hissing sound as he lit a cigarette, and he sat still for a moment, eyes closed, the tip of the fag glowing strangely. Finally he opened his eyes, and took a deep drag before turning his attention to the books and papers in front of him.

Photos of the nun were strewn about with the paperwork from the investigator he had hired to follow her. He picked one of them up and studied it carefully.

"You shouldn't play with your food," he felt fingers stroking his back. "It will give you indigestion," Dolores sniggered. She bent down and licked his neck, stopping briefly to nip the base of his ear before slinking into the chair next to him. "If you're not going to, let me. . . " She looked longingly at the girl. "She's more of a snack anyway."

Dolores moved forward but Tavrose grabbed her arm, jerking her roughly. His gaze was cold and pointed. "It is an easy choice." He was dangerously quiet, "Gorging, taking a life," he let go of her arm, "but some pleasures and power are far more filling." Dolores looked at him blankly. She pursed her lips in an unattractive pout and moved to the mirror to fix her hair.

Tavrose went back to studying the photo of the nun, Sister Anne was her name in the registry. He traced the line of her face, the small cheek that was peeking out from the nun's habit. Sister Anne. Her body was buried in the fabric of the nuns clothing and she had seemed like such an insignificant wallflower, but in the forest she transformed herself. His mind played over the battle again, the way she moved, the clever weapon she had used.

He needed more.

He looked around the stale apartment, the walls splotchy with different layers of peeling paint. Dolores was still preening in front of the mirror. She was older and a stronger fighter than some of the others, a far better sample than Boris had been. He watched her fingers as they tucked little bits of red hair back into her chignon. He wondered if he would miss her when she was gone.

He doubted it. These creatures that Morcant made were just bodies to him, like pets that sometimes took away the emptiness, but not really.

He was not like them.

Something had gone wrong with Morcant's experiment. Or maybe it had gone right, depending on how you look at it. The Sorcerer had spent years trying to replicate it, to understand, to recreate the process, but to no avail.

He held up the photo again. "Sister Anne." Through the brown dinge of the photo, he thought he could see the shadow of her eyes. He remembered how they had been in the forest, a strange blue green intensified by fierceness and resolve. She had known that the girl would die. He felt it, her awareness and regret. She had felt him, knew that he was watching her.

"What are you Sister Anne?" he whispered. "What are you?"

There was a small little whimper. The girl was huddled against the wood of the bed stand. She hugged her knees to warm her body in the cold air.

Tavrose stood, his frame was muscular and tall above her. He extended his hand. "Come" he whispered. She looked up, her hand shook as it grasped his. He drew her into his arms, feeling the thin slightness of her frame, the odd warmth of her body on his cold flesh. He lifted her up into his arms and silently slipped out of the apartment and into the night, skimming through the streets like a shadow, stopping at the rickety planks of the pier.

He set the girl down, her bare feet touching the rough wood. The Golden Gate Bridge glittered in the distance decorating the black water of the Bay.

He looked down at her little girl face. Her eyes, the pink flesh of her skin. "What is your name," he whispered, and caressed her cheek gently," Her heart hammered in her chest. He felt the blood racing through her body. He stroked her neck, underneath her chin. "What is your name?"

"L. . .Lisbeth," she stammered

"Lisbeth," he tried out the name on his lips.

"I will come for you." He felt another jolt of fear in her body and for a moment allowed himself to enjoy the sensation. His eyes penetrated hers, reached inside of her mind, "I will come for you many times. And on the last time, you will welcome me." Then he let her go.

She stood there, shivering on the pier and watched as he slipped away into the night.

# Chapter 3

She hated coming here. There were so many memories. Sansou's grandfather had been a kind man, eccentric it is true, but kind. One of the demons had killed his sister, when he was just a little boy, he had been in the room when it happened, his grandfather came upon them, and somehow managed to kill the beast. It was the thing that started it, his family's connection to the monastery, and the convent. First the grandfather then the father, and now the end. The current Sansou was a watered down weak link, she could not even call him a version of his ancestors, and it was clear they would soon have to find other ways to fund their work.

She ran her fingers lovingly over the old leather cover of the book she had taken from one of the shelves, flinching as a few tiny leather flakes fluttered like saw dust in the dim light of the library. These books were the only friends left in this house. If she could take them she would, but the wretch had carefully numbered and catalogued every volume when he inherited the estate. Theft would result in unwanted scrutiny toward the convent.

She pushed her reading glasses further up on her nose. The thick rims felt heavy and pinched her skin, but she ignored the irritant and opened the book carefully. The glasses helped her to see better. Without them, her vision was acutely sensitive to light particles and color patterns generated by heat and shadows. She turned her attention to the pages, and was enjoying the moment. Though only a few weeks, it seemed like a long time since she had been there.

Erech slipped into the shadows of the library. The sun had dipped down some time ago but he still felt as though he were just waking up. In truth he was also hungry, but had to skip breakfast to make this appointment.

The nun was early. He could see her dark shape hunched over one of the far tables. The thick fabric of her garment seemed to swallow her, creating a boulder like mass at the table, a slender pair of hands peeking out from the sleeves. He pulled a flask out of his pocket. Power snack. He sipped the blood and watched her a moment, before taking another swig. It wasn't cold enough, and the thickening texture was not to his taste, but beggars couldn't be choosers. Unless he could snack for a moment on this nun, which was probably inadvisable. He would have to do some weaving then, and he needed her mind stable for the books.

He put the cap back on and slipped the flask into his pocket, then cleared his throat, purposefully announcing himself. Her head snapped up, and he saw two blaring headlights- a huge pair of black-rimmed glasses the lenses filled with blurry magnified eyes, the color muddied by the tinted glass. He thought she could have stepped out of a Wells novel, the Martians landed.

Thalassa was startled by his sudden appearance, and gave a long, hard look at the man. Tall and imposing, he was leaning casually against one of the shelves, as if he had no idea of the intimidating figure he posed. She could see his face etched like stone in the dim light of the room. Square rugged cheekbones, and a hard muscled neck and shoulders, he was like a manicured painting of a Byzantine warrior. She knew that he was real only when his lips curved upward, in a kind of half smile.

"Please," he gestured to the book she had been reading. It was not my intent to disturb you." His eyes raked over her unabashedly, and though she should have felt shielded by the thick fabric of her garments, instead it was as if she were totally naked. She could feel her blood quicken. Her mind at least remained in control. She pursed her lips, "you are late."

There was the thud of his boots as he moved toward her. "My sincere apologies," his voice was both mocking and musical.

She frowned, slightly irritated, then distracted herself by examining his clothing, a long stone grey coat with just the glimmer of a carefully stitched lining, styled like the British teddy's with the signature black trimmed pockets, a wine colored silk skinny tie, black pants that off set the finely woven fibers and trim of his jacket. As he came closer, Thalassa felt the power of him, of his body, and her heart thudded in her chest, as if it were a hunt and she were trying to stay alive.

He was very close now, looming above her; she sank down deeper into her clothing, hiding her face in the shadows of the veil.

"Is that the book?" The question was a courtesy, of course Erech recognized it immediately, the same characters that had attracted his attention the night of the dinner.

"Yes," Her hands fumbled a little, and she seemed nervous.

He put his hand on the back of her chair, crouching lower to peer over her shoulder. She flinched visibly and moved again, trying to put some distance between them.

Erech was finding her to be a rigid fearful creature, an occupational hazard he assumed, though he had not spent that much time with nuns, and the ones he had encountered were more of the matronly type. Despite her appearance, this one did have an unexpected magnetism, which was increasingly curious and surprising. It was not often that he was surprised. He inched closer.

Thalassa tried to ignore him, willing the time and task to go quickly. "Edwin suggested you are interested in the collection, this is one of the rarest volumes." She gently turned one of the tattered pages, she cared for it as if it were a child and she its mother. She pointed to some of the characters, thickly painted in the ancient fashion. "I can decipher this one. At least some part of it. I. . . we have not been able to decipher all of the characters." She could feel him behind her, electricity seemed to crackle in the air. She moved her chair to create more space.

He responded by moving in closer, crouching lower to see the pages "What is the language?" His voice was soft and warm.

She willed herself to ignore the discomfort churning inside of her. "It is not really a language. At least not a known one."

He shifted his arm across the table and explored the surface of one of the open pages with his fingers. "Yet you can read it?"

She tried to breathe, and then thought as she did that he smelled like sugar, when it was first released from the bag and poured into the bowl. Sugar and wood from a pine log in the fireplace on a cold night. His fingers continued to explore the page, stopping when they were very close to her own. Her muscles tensed, and she felt her body go rigid.

"I can interpret some of the symbols," her voice was controlled and matter of fact, "which are more like interconnected drawings that tell a story. Like the Anasazi cave art. In and of themselves, they are meaningless, but linked to one another they create a story."

He was looking at her, she could feel the intensity of his eyes. She tried to focus on the book.

"What does it say?" He moved in closer still, to look at the symbols.

One of his hands was on the back of the chair and the other arm circled around to rest on the table, she felt like he was embracing her. "I. . It, I mean. . . The story rather. . . " she fumbled, but then regained footing. "It is the story of the moon I think, at least I have come to believe." Her voice changed, became softer as she connected with the book. "This place," she pointed to a thick circle drawn on the page, "Is a dark place, separated from the sun, you can see by this symbol," she pointed to a circle that was colored half black, "One side is completely apart or away from the sun or the fire. And then the fire changes, see here," she pointed to another symbol, there were stick figures buried in leaping flames "The fire begins to devour the people. It is the darkness that befriends them," then she pointed to the next symbol, which had a line of people leading to the dark half of the moon or circle. "It saves them from the fire.

These other symbols show violence, destruction, but then you can see when they are linked," she pointed further down the page, That it is the dark part of the moon that draws the people away from the destruction. It sets them free." Her face lit up then and she drew a line with her finger on the page, "the symbols are not linear, the way they interact with each other, they are triangular! You see?" She again used her finger to draw an invisible line linking them. She looked up with eagerness and enthusiasm. Erech noticed the lines of her lips, the fullness of them. Thalassa saw him looking at her, and shrank back into her garments.

Erech cocked a half smile, amused at the nun, and himself for noticing her lips, but then looked back at the drawings seriously. He remembered seeing them in the cave so many decades ago, chiseled in the dark stone beneath the ice. Pictures covered with the glassy ice of Sakkara's perpetual winter.

"Vdara," he said it without thinking.

"What?"

He stood up, moving backward as he did.

"What is Vdara?" She looked up at him, her magnified eyes curious, she seemed to lose some of her fear.

He did not reply. He scanned the shelves in the vast library. What else was here? He wondered. What treasures of his people hidden on these shelves?

He looked at the nun. She was still staring at him, searching his face with the huge tinted glasses. "Why did you come here?" she said suddenly.

"Where are the other books from that collection?" he ignored her question, moving over to a nearby shelf to scan the titles.

"I would like for you to answer me," her voice was stronger now, combative even, "why did you come here?"

He continued to scan the shelves.

"Edwin said you are doing some kind of research. . . " She looked at his clothing again, the tailored pants, the perfect and expensive handwork on the seams, the silk lining peaking out of the inside of his jacket. The Italian grade leather of his boots.

"That fucking bastard!" the words were out before she could take them back. He seem startled, his head snapping back to look at her. Oh how she wished she could take them back! It was Lillie's fault, from those drinking days. . . when Lillie was alive and San Francisco had just begun to rise up from the muck and mud of a boomtown.

"I'm sorry. . . I . . . " she stared at him, not sure what to say. "Forgive me father," she finally muttered and then crossed herself".

Still, Edwin Sansou was a fucking bastard. She knew without asking, he brought this man here to sell the collection. If not all of the books, at least the rarest. His father would roll in his grave if he knew. Instinctively, she pulled the book on the table closer to her.

Erech watched her carefully, momentarily distracted from his mission. What kind of language was that for a nun? He stepped toward her again. Watched the way she drew the book to her, so maternal. What was her name again? Sister Agnes? No. Amy? No. Ah, yes,

"Sister Anne, isn't it?" his voice was soft and musical, "I am sure that you and I want the same thing," he looked pointedly at the book in her hands.

"I am sure not!" she hissed, then regretted again her inability to control her emotions.

"This is a very rare collection," he spoke to her like she was a child, as if she did not know every title, every tattered page on the shelves surrounding them. "Times change, and people. . . " he paused, "benefactors," he said with some emphasis, "move on. You would not want to risk its loss."

"The collection is bound to the convent." She said, with her own emphasis. "It was created by them." By me, she wanted to shout!

Using the resources of Edwin's grandfather, she had bought, bartered and scavenged for almost every volume. Hours, Days, years being land bound to this place, the books were one of the few things that allowed her to explore other worlds.

Erech slid into one of the empty chairs beside the table. He leaned over, his immense frame casting a shadow over her. He looked pointedly at the book in her hands, "Rare things need to be protected, don't they?" His eyes slid to her face and watched unwavering as she slunk back again into the folds of the nuns veil. He felt the magnetizing effect of her body, the electricity, and wondered what she was hiding underneath the heavy folds of her religion?

"I will protect them." Her voice was a whisper, and though he moved closer, she did not shrink from him this time.

He touched her hand, still resting atop the book, and she felt a jolt of electricity. "We can consider a partnership, couldn't we?" He was mesmerizing somehow, his touch, his hand on hers, the musical quality of his voice. Her body seemed to want to melt into him. "I have an vast estate in Europe," he went on, "a manor too large and too empty to live in, but with an endless maze of walls waiting to be filled with books." He looked pointedly at the collection around them before continuing. "Rooms for nuns to occupy for as long as they like." His hand shifted and for a moment she imagined he was stroking her skin. "A new benefactor." His voice caressed her.

She wandered into the dream. If she closed her eyes, she would be there. Green hills and a land protected from demons. Were there demons there? In Europe? A splinter penetrated the haze. Europe? What? She shook herself. A frown caused her eyebrows to burrow beneath the glasses.

"I. . . . we," she corrected herself, "We can never leave here. We can never leave this place. And these books will stay with us."

With me! She wanted to say. They will stay with me! Fate and God would and did rip away human lives- Margarita, Lillie Coit, so many others. But these books she would keep, the passing of time would not take them from her.

Erech stayed there for a few moments, strangely enjoying the feel of her skin beneath his hand, the current of electricity that seemed to draw him ever closer. Then he reluctantly pulled away.

"I understand." He moved toward the door, then turned back. "We will talk more Sister Anne."

"That is not my name." The words slipped out, and she was angry with herself.

"Forgive me," he smiled friendly, there was the warmth again, the music. "What is your name?"

Her body became rigid, and she sank back into her clothing. She carefully opened the cover of the book and pretended to be studying it. Shutting him out. He did not exist for her. He was not there.

"My name is Erechantheus" his voice hung like a melody in the air.

She heard the scuff of his boots on the floor and then the distant rhythm of his footsteps until they disappeared.

A storm was coming. She could feel it. The black clouds hung pregnant on the horizon while thunder boomed, trailing them in the distance. The Father was late. It wasn't like him. Teresa pretended that she was not afraid, but Thalassa knew that she feared what they all feared.

The demons had been crawling into the city. The convent was of late the only respite, but even that was fading. They did not feel the security that was once present behind these walls. It seemed like one demon fell to be replaced by 5 more. She looked at the clouds in the distance and felt the irony. The monsters themselves were like a perpetual storm rolling into the bay.

Teresa kneaded the bread dough nervously. The clock on the wall seemed so loud, ticking and tracking time. Thalassa hobbled toward the door, ignoring the pain shooting up her leg. "You should rest," Teresa called over her shoulder, still working the bread. "Have Sister Katherine go."

"I'll do it," she continued toward the porch, once there loaded her arms with a few sticks of wood before going back inside. The inactivity was driving her crazy. Stuck in the compound of the convent while the Father and some of the sisters went hunting. She knew it was a mistake to have set her own ankle, and for the thousandth time regretted it. She tossed a piece of wood onto the fire watching the flames choke and then sputter back to life when they caught the bark.

Tick tick tick from the clock and then the crack of thunder.

"He should be back soon," Teresa said again, but there was a tremor in her voice.

Thalassa stood by the fire, flexing and stretching. She shifted her body, testing the weight on her ankle. She jumped and then winced when her foot came down.

"Give it time," Teresa told her. "It will heal soon enough.

"Soon enough was last week," Thalassa muttered. She had such an uneasy feeling. She took one of the brooms against the wall and unscrewed the handle. Then used it as a cane to hobble across the room to the coat hooks. She quickly shed her heavy robe and hung it on the wrack. A backpack was suspended from one of the hooks and she rifled through it, pulling out the wooden stakes and sliding it into the leather holsters on the side of her body armor. She slung the quiver and bow over her shoulder.

"The Father said you should not go out."

"The Father is not here," she grated, and regretted but did not retract the harshness of her tone. She turned to Teresa. "Something is wrong." She used the broom handle like a cane and hobbled out into the cold.

Little sprinkles fell on her face as she made her way to the old stables. The convent had kept most of the original structures in the compound in tact, despite the city that sprung up around it over the years. They were still on the outskirts of the development, but with the 1950's bringing swinging hammers and a new breed of developer, who knew how long that would last.

The door groaned as she slid it open and it took longer than usual to make her way to the back of the old building. When she reached the corner stall, like an old friend, the familiar red fender was peeking out. It only took a few moments to pull off the dust cover.

She had bought the motorcycle over a decade ago in 1940. A custom Bobber, she had the front fender removed along with other superfluous parts to reduce the weight, which helped with the jumps. Unfortunately the machine made noise and after a few years the demons must have shared that around because they seemed to know when she was coming, so she stopped riding it. Tonight, with her ankle still raw, she needed some artificial legs, and this would have to do.

Thanks to the kick-start, she suffered an exquisite amount of pain getting the machine running. Once that was done, she took a few moments to recover before roaring out of there.

The dock by the grotto was quiet. The fishermen, usually out preparing their nets and equipment for the next days hunt, were either below in their cabins, or scrambling on deck to secure the sails and prepare for the bad weather that was taunting them in the distance. The seagulls, ever present on the wharf, were also now strangely absent, with just a few brave ones floundering around the empty sidewalk cauldrons, scavenging pieces of leftover crab shells, all hungry for the Italian fisherman to bring in the next load.

The Father came down here in the evenings. He still had an affinity for fresh crab, despite the price increase- three for a dollar nowadays instead of five. The colorful Saint Michael, with its original lateen sails, now tightly lashed to the mast, bobbed up and down in the dock.

This is where they had been coming in. Thalassa had long been suspected it, demons dropped off like cargo from some of the boats. The Father had taken some of the sisters to scout the area. It was a tight knit group at Fisherman's wharf, and humans certainly had to be involved. One of the men cat called to her from the deck of his boat, "hey sweetheart! Fresh fish here!," he shouted after the whistle. She had forgotten she was not wearing her nun's garb.

It was too quiet. For a city of hundreds of thousands of people, across a span of some 49 miles, tonight it was like a ghost town. Missing only the tumbleweed. It could have been the storm, but there was a general uneasiness in the air. Better to be indoors, curled up in bed behind a locked door.

She hit the gas and pressed her body forward against the bike as it struggled up one of the notorious hills. The seven sisters she liked to call them, this one was Telegraph. She remembered in the late 20's when they finally put the parking lot on top of that one. She veered off to one of the side streets, combing the streets. Electricity from the storm created distorted color patterns and she could not see the dark particles that usually marked the demons.

It wasn't long before she reached Grant Street and Chinatown. Rain was coming down in trickles again. A large droplet splashed her nose and ricocheted into her eye. She slowed and then idled on the curb next to an empty parked car. An old man wearing a tattered raincoat pulled a handcart loaded with various boxes and packages around the corner and into an alley.

An icy sensation slithered up her spine. Someone was watching her. She could feel it.

Erech leaned against the coarse brick wall. His brother struck a match to light his cigarette, and for a moment the flame drew him. Berengar flicked it onto the streets when he was done and the fire sizzled in a wet puddle. "Mmmmm!" He relished as he puffed on the unfiltered tobacco.

Fire had never been good for his kind, but Erech did marvel at the human ability to constantly reinvent themselves. Tobacco, of course had been around for centuries, since Columbus bilked the queen out of all that cash, tobacco seeds from the Americas were just one of the ways the explorer tried to buy back his life. He reached across and took a drag from the cigarette, drawing the smoke deep. Playing with fire was like playing with fate. If the ancients were right, then one day all of them would become it.

It wasn't long before they heard the sound of the cart, squeaking in the wind.

"This is ridiculous." Berengar flicked his ashes and they hissed in the water on the wet pavement.

"I want the books."

They could see the rounded hat of the old Chinese man bobbing in the darkness as he came around the corner. "Just buy them. As you have so many times before." Berengar fidgeted. He knew from the last few nights, it would be an eternity before the old man finally reached them. Clank clang, clackety clang, the cart cried out as it was pulled at a snails pace up the ally.

"Do you think I am obtuse?" Erech allowed himself to be irritated at his brother. "Sansou can't sell them. He is bound by the law. His father's trust. And the nun is immovable. They are more than just books to her."

"So you will steal them instead?"

"Sansou is being paid well from our kind." Erech sounded bored. "Isolde is paying him."

"What?"

"Apologies. Your Queen I mean."

"Thanks. . . " Berengar did not try to disguise his irritation.

"She is using his ships to transport her soldiers."

Berengar looked surprised. "Why would he do that?"

"He doesn't know. He thinks they are whores. Part of his trade deal."

Clink, clink, clang, the cart continued its sojourn.

"Sansou is transporting the soldiers who are coming here to kill him?"

Erech was quiet.

"Do you think he is the bastard?"

"What does it matter what we think? This is the Queen's game"

There was a long moment of silence. Clang, clankety clang, the cart made its way.

"Why are we here Erech?" Berengar sounded tired. "This trip was meant to be a façade, just to convince Isolde we have not dissented. Not to get in the middle of things."

Clang, clang, clankety clang.

The rain was coming faster now, they could hear the droplets spattering on the old canvass awning above them.

"We'll be leaving soon my brother. When I have the rest of the books. The rarest of them are the hardest to steal."

Somewhere, close, they heard the sound of a revving engine.

Then there was a pop, like a gunshot or a car backfiring, and shattered glass. The chards exploded outward from an upper window and smashed against the street. The smaller pieces glittered like ice in the light of a lonely street lamp. Berengar startled as a man fell from the broken window, his body was caught by an awning, but too heavy ripped through the center and tumbled below.

"Awwwwwummmph!" The dark shape grunted, as it was punched by the pavement.

In the darkness Erech's sharp eyes could see the light patterns in the window, the flecks of darkness, the bloodless blood on the glass.

Clank clang clank. The cart stopped midway up the ally street behind them.

Erech scowled as he saw the old man fearfully cower in the shadows.

Resigned, the two made their way over. Berengar tried to turn the fallen man on his back and then fumbled for a pulse.

"Is he all right?" A chubby blonde woman scurried up the street in front of them from the other side. "Poor thing. . . !." As she came closer he noticed her scantily clad attire, short skirt, tight red top with her bosoms falling out. She had no shoes on. Her hair was straggly but swept up into some kind of hurried bun. "I seen him fall, is he ok?" She asked again, her lips seemed huge and red in the darkness, slightly smeared on one side. The rain pelted against her bare arms, but she didn't seem to notice.

Berengar finally managed to get the man on his back and both seemed to see the priests collar at the same time. Torn on one side with marks on his neck. Erech looked at the blonde. Smelled her.

"Let's go," he said flatly to his brother.

"He is still breathing." Berengar looked at him. "You can heal him."

Erech could see a flash of red hair in the distance in the same direction the blonde had come from. Another one he supposed. "I said let's go." He turned toward the old man, still paused midway in the street behind them. They had a car parked around the corner, and he didn't plan on leaving empty handed.

Suddenly there was the sound of that engine again, and then screeching tires. The old man cried out, there was barely time for him to throw himself out of the way. The rain seemed to take a breath, as red paint and glimmering steel spewed sparks on a low turn against the pavement, screeching into the ally. It could have been the red fender or the sparks from the impact, but the tires themselves seemed to be on fire.

Erech was motionless. It was as if the scene beside him did not exist. He just stood there, looking into eyes that were the color of the open sea when the deepest and most dangerous colors of dawn played upon its surface. The woman herself was like an exotic creature from one of his paintings. Around her were the patterns. The lights in the darkness. The dancing vibrations of who she was.

It seemed to him that she moved slowly, as if time for her was a different rhythm. Or perhaps it was he in who was trapped in that rhythm? He stood hypnotized as she lifted a bow from the front bars of the bike, then an arrow from a holster on her back. An arrow! The wooden point was carved like a dagger that curved in both directions. She drew back, and he could see the tip pointed directly at him.

Erech jerked out of the dream. With a warrior's instinct and a blur of speed he catapulted himself into a backward flip, using the wall and his feet to launch himself to the other side of the ally and out of range.

There was a dull thud as the arrow found a home.

The blonde screamed.

Missed! Thalassa cursed herself. She could see the arrow sticking out from the woman's shoulder blade. The next was for the heart.

What the hell was he doing here? Erechantheous. . . . she remembered his name like the title of a record. "It was in the library when I first heard that groovy album Erechantheous" she mocked herself like one of the teenagers at Rigby's malt shop. And he just stood there, his mouth open like some kind of a street buffoon. Moving himself into her target. "Assole!" And then she crossed herself guiltily. What was wrong with her lately? The last time she had such a filthy mouth was during the Prohi days, and that had only been a disguise to help her hunt some bootlegging demons with Lillie.

The blonde squealed again and she knocked another one. Thalassa revved the bike for effect and hit the gas roaching the tires and powering forward. Too close, so she moved the bow to one side of the front bars, balancing it and holding the bike at the same time. She used her free hand to keep the machine steady until she was close enough to fire at the messy blonde's cold dead heart.

There was a satisfying popping, snapping sound, like a match to gunpowder, and she knew the demon was where she belonged, in a flaming hell. But the bike was off balance; she struggled for control as metal scraped concrete and grinded and skidded on its side, sparks flying outward from the steel, before she was slammed to a stop by the wall.

She shifted her weight, tried to get out from under it. The metal frame was heavy on top of her.

"Oh," she heard a voice, "do let me." A mess of red hair rose above her. Thalassa could smell decaying flesh, sweet cinnamon, and some really bad perfume. The woman smiled and she saw the fangs, pointed and hungry. The demon moved in closer and she tried to scramble for a weapon, but found she could not move, her hands and body still pinned beneath the bike.

She felt the coldness travel up her spine, the watcher, the one in the distance. It was the same sensation she'd felt in the wooded park. He was somewhere above them again, not in the fray, carefully positioned for the view. A director, admiring his show.

"Come back now," Her sensitive ears heard the whisper. The red headed demon seemed to hear it too. She looked conflicted, her overly made up face puckered like a child.

"I want to have her." She said it out loud, and looked up, toward the top of one of the buildings. "Let me have her Tavrose, please. . . " she whined unattractively.

"Tavrose?"

Thalassa felt the dark displeasure. She knew that he knew that the demon had marked him. Called him by name. Thalassa struggled harder to throw off the bike. The metal squealed in protest against the concrete but she gained some inches.

Dolores seemed to know enough at least to know she was in trouble. She turned and ran.

Thalassa cursed, and crossed herself mentally again, straining and shoving against the bike. She felt weak, blood lost from a new cut on her side. She was hungry, her stomach twisting miserably to remind her. And every time she moved her ankle screamed.

In an instant, the bike seemed to vanish, as if it sprouted wings and flew off somewhere. She hungrily gasped air into her lungs as her body was released from the pressure that had been confining it.

Erechantheus.

The bike was beside him. He stood like a Greek statue at the De Young. His jeans were molded to his body by the rain, and she could see the contours of his chest from the places where his damp button up shirt clung to his skin.

Thalassa heard the Father cry out. She reacted instantly, shoving herself up against the wall, using it to force her body to stand. The crackling sound of bone on bone scraped through the air, her knee buckled, and she bit her lip hard to suppress a scream. Somehow she managed to stay upright.

Erech watched the woman struggle and wondered if she were real. Her hair was like a river of midnight curls streaming around her, down her back, kissing the sides of her leather-clad arms. If he touched it, he felt it would be the texture of Lei Zu's silk.

"Erech!" Berengar cried out. Reluctantly he turned. The priest was on the ground in front of his brother, his body convulsing spastically.

The woman tried to move, but grimaced again when she put weight on her injured leg. There was a kind of intensity about her. Desperation.

He moved toward his brother. When he reached the priest, he crouched low beside him, using the palm of his hand to gently support the back of his neck. "He is dying." Berengar said, as if Erech did not already know.

Erech shifted to take out his knife, and cut a line into his wrist. Reluctantly but he seemed resigned. "I will do the weaving." He lifted the priest's head. "Drink from me," he whispered, and then moved the words into the priest's mind, into his consciousness. He commanded his body, Erech's blood dribbled into his mouth, and the priest took it in, his body absorbed it as it trickled down his throat. Drink from me.

He moved his fingers along the man's face, transferring a current of energy, like a charge to a battery, to the temples on his forehead. He felt his body convulse again, more frenzically this time. The woman was watching him. He could feel her eyes on him, her fear.

It was harder to find the strands in a dying man. To weave the fibers together that had been shredded or torn apart. He worked very carefully, delicately repairing, and in some cases creating new. Once he had crafted a structure, he wove and knit the wounds, threading the bones shattered by the fall. Each particle sutured with the energy of itself. Time was pliant and insignificant. He nudged and then lifted the veins in the throat; opening the places where fangs had crushed and drained them. The priest took more of his blood, and used it to generate its own. The walls of flesh beaded with human blood, expanding and contracting until they became a little stream. It trickled through the empty cavities, dribbling it's way to the core. Like a car that had no gas, once it began to fill, then just required the spark of the ignition.

The priest convulsed again and then began coughing and sputtering. Breathing. He was breathing. Erech stayed there just a little bit longer until he was certain that the blood was moving on it's own.

"Well done brother," Berenegar said quietly, not the first time he had been somewhat in awe of Erech's skills. "That one was brought back from the brink."

Erech sat back on his heels, reorienting himself for a moment. He saw that the cut on his wrist had already begun to fade as his skin regenerated. The priest moved to sit up; Berengar braced him with his arm.

Erech looked down the ally.

The woman had reclaimed the motorcycle. His eyes swept over her body, which seemed painted in some kind of an armored suit. A black cape was open and its red lining framed her body in the wind. On her chest he could see a silver and red cross that stretched across the leather dramatically, over her breasts and down her torso. Further on the sides of her leggings, little silver crosses were sewn into the seams, and winked in the streetlight. Her dark hair swirled into the red lining of the cape. She pulled the hood over it, shielding herself from his eyes and the rain. Turquoise eyes bore into him with intensity, making him feel totally transparent. Erech felt a stirring in his loins, which he tried to ignore, but it twisted upward like a tantric snake.

"I can heal you."

His voice was a rugged and low, but he knew that she heard. He saw the flicker flash in her eyes, but just as quickly it was gone.

The cape swirled and she was on the bike. The engine sounded loudly, then the throttle as she gave it gas and bolted. A flash of red lightening in the storm.

"Go after her." Berengar's voice penetrated the haze.

The rain picked up again, and he felt the now familiar wetness spattering his skin. Out from under the cover of the awning, the storm continued to soak his clothing, molding it to his muscled body. The cold was always a welcome respite to his kind.

"You can follow her Erech, through the web"

He looked down at the long and empty street. Tuned his hearing to the sound of the engine as it gunned up another hill in the distance. In a just a few hours, and despite the rain, Chinatown would spring to life. The sun would muddy the sky, the shops would open, and the smells and flavors of the east would pepper the streets.

"Bring the car around Ber" Erech's voice seemed far off. He turned toward the other side of the ally, where the old man still crouched, packages spilling from his overturned cart. "I will tend to the books."
Chapter 4

A cool breeze flooded the triple masted sails of The Poisson. The huge sailboat looked out of place in the bay, its white sails illuminated by the reflection of lights from the city. At 220 feet its reputation preceded it, with talk around town that it was indeed the largest wooden sailboat in the world. Bermuda-rigged it did not have heavy gaffs, thus requiring a much smaller crew to man it. Like any worthy ship, this one had a story, supposedly named after King Louis the XV's chief mistress, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson.

"Lovely," Thalassa whispered. Forgetting for a moment about the Father

"It is dangerous for us to be here." He sounded nervous. After what had happened several nights ago, he was not eager to be back on the waters edge. "We do not know what they are. . . what he is."

"No," Thalassa agreed, her voice sounded far away as she continued to watch the boat. "We do not."

Lights were on in the cabin, causing the little windows to cast an ethereal glow around the vessel. She knew the Father could not hear them as she could, his human ears limited to the smaller more immediate world around him.

He did not hear the Celtic music from the violin, or the sound of the cipin on the Bodhran drum. Then the flute, lifting the song higher, carrying it further. He could not hear him, Erechantheus, whose laughter was a deep rich sound that warmed her almost against her will.

Then they were on the deck. A white shirt appearing, marking his tall frame, the sleeves billowing attractively in the wind. They appeared small and distant at first, but as she concentrated there was soon the familiar magnification and she could see the faces. His face. Bronzed skin, strong square jaw- his smile, the way it transformed his demeanor almost instantly from something hard to something human.

Their energy sparkled around them, the colors an eclectic palate, swirling in the bits of mist as the boat moved in closer toward the landing. There was a woman on deck, and then she could see another, their colorful skirts rippling like liquid as they danced.

"Sister Anne. . . "

Erechantheus was playing the violin like a fiddle, using his fingers to quicken the music, and the women dipped and danced. One of them joined him with a flute, and then she curved her body around him, her own fingers flying on her instrument.

"We can't keep coming here . . . . it is dangerous."

The music continued to pull her closer, even as the boat moved further across the velvet confluence of the water. She wondered what it must feel like, for that woman to have her body so close to his, against his powerful frame.

"Thalassa!"

"What?!" She startled, hearing her given name. In truth, she did not realize that he knew it, he had always called her Anne like the others. Perhaps information passed on to him from his father.

"We are not safe here!" He was clearly frustrated with her.

Reluctantly she turned away from the scene on the sailboat. "We are not safe anywhere," she reminded him, and then regretted it. He was still shaken from the other night. All he remembered was being taken from the docks, grabbed from behind as he walked past the Grotto. The rest was a void for him. He did not remember the demons, falling out of the window, nothing. It was as if the memories had somehow been deleted. But he had felt the pain of his body when he had gotten back. An excruciating few days in bed as his flesh continued to mend itself.

"We should get back," he said briskly, "to the convent. There are two new sisters here tomorrow." He headed to the street where their car was parked. "They will need to be in a safe place for the training." As if the convent, the compound was the only place they should be.

How many times in the last few days had she heard that? But there were too many demons loose to cower behind the convent's walls. The Father believed their hunting excursions had caused more of them to come to the city. But Thalassa thought differently. She thought that it felt like war. More of one than their city had ever seen. A secret dirty war on the sisters and the convent, on the humans the creatures liked to gorge themselves on, the city itself plunged into the devils darkness. She would not cower and hide from them!

"Anne!" He was frustrated again. He was usually such a calming influence, but tonight she felt his temper rise. He gestured toward the car.

"You go on," she told him softly, trying to diffuse his frustration. "I'll find my way."

"Don't be foolish. These are not times in which you should go wandering alone." He took her arm and nudged her toward the street.

"I have always been alone Father." She said quietly, and pulled out of his grasp, moving beyond to the wooden pier on the water.

"Sister!" the Father called after her.

But she was gone, drifting into the shadows at the edge of the water.

The moon was covered by the fog, as was often the case in this city by the bay. Erech stood from the cushioned chair on the deck of his boat. It was almost dawn, and the others had gone below. They had drunk much and he and Berengar spent some time reminiscing about the time before.

There was package today from his father, the inspiration for the conversation. He looked at the box, still sitting on the table. There was an open tin of blood soaked caviar from the Caspian Sea, some trinkets from the Gypsy human who currently graced his father's bed. A letter that was as carefully and politically correct, as if the Queen herself had written it in his hand.

Reading between the lines, it was clear that power continued to shift between Isolde and her twin Ianaruius. Another Modhai, Kurak had managed to flee the palace and join the Prince. Of the original twelve, that made 5 now who were with him. Morcant obviously continued to manufacture the dark solders, whose lives were far less precious than the Modhai and their children. Erech could tell from his father's cryptic tone, that Isolde was consumed with the prophesy, believing that finding her father's bastard was the key to stabilizing the kingdom.

With Achaikos long gone, the future had a place only with those who were born. The Ancients would never turn even one human to feed this fractured realm; not even Ivarr who had done so only to appease Achaikos. It had taken the king too long to create the Modhai, without them there was no kingdom to rule, and Isolde would not move quickly to destroy them.

He took a long drink of cognac. His latest drink of choice, he savored the light fruity flavor and smoky aftertaste. He picked up a book that was next to his father's package. This one was a stolen treasure from Sansou's library. Finally one of the rare's came in today. The google eyed nun was there this afternoon, and she inadvertently left the book out. Somehow it must have slipped from the stack. It was the only one of the rares that the old man had thus far managed to bring. The others were an array of first editions, and some very interesting journals from early American writers which encapsulated the evolution of what they called "vampires" invading the west. Erech assumed they meant Isolde's army.

Interesting still, that some of the miners and historians had journaled of them. Not only did it show their slow, progressive migration, but also their individual evolution. From obtuse almost deranged creatures, to a somewhat more coherent species, who could integrate, fit in, look and act well enough not to be noticed.

There was a whisper in the air. Not a sound really. Nothing. But Erech knew better.

He looked toward the dock.

Empty. Quiet. Except for the lulling sound of gently lapping water.

He searched for her. For the light in the darkness. The particles in the shadows. Nothing. She was very good at hiding. A remarkable skill. If Erech had been someone else, he would have disregarded it, believed what the darkness tried to convince him. But he knew the subtleties of battle, the slightest disruption signifying the presence of something.

She was there.

He found her. Felt her anger, the impulse of her emotions. She wanted to leap up at him, to take from him. Then it was gone. Cloaked in the shadows of the places she was hiding herself.

Rare. A human who could do that. Not just hide their body, but their energy. Very rare.

Erech put the book down and picked up his violin. He stroked the wood lovingly, remembering the tree from which it was taken, the man who had made it. Another human who had remarkable gifts. Was able capture the spirit, no. . . the soul. . . of this planet so perfectly in an instrument. Like all humans Antonio Stradivari had such a brief life, and yet . . . .

It made him wonder if the act of perpetually dying was how a person came to live? That mortals could create with such passion, such intensity, because they knew they had no time to do otherwise. That tomorrow their last tomorrow could be upon them.

He picked up the bow and looked out at the woman whom he knew was hiding. Somewhere out in the shadows. And he began to play. The sound was deep and rich. And he hoped that it would find her.

Thalassa heard the instrument's haunting cry, the hollow sound that echoed through the night. She had completely disengaged from herself, detached from her physical form, turning the particles of her spirit into the particles of the air. She had become the shadows. She did not allow the anger that ignited her body when she saw the book. The book she had been reading only that afternoon in Sansou's library. A visit that she had paid for when he had accused her of stealing from the library. That had been a long and turbulent conversation. Finally he had conceded that the books might have been miscataloged. Afterward, she checked the special collections in the locked room. Of course she couldn't resist taking some of them out. Revisiting her old friends. And combing through the pages for something that may tell her more about Vdara. That was what he had called it, Vdara

The music pulled her, she felt herself sinking back into her body, moving in front of the curtain. She could see him leaning slightly against the ship's railing. His black trousers low on his hips, and he had shed his long shirt, leaving just a thin white undershirt. The muscles of his arms bulged and it seemed odd that he did not crush the instrument as he brought the bow gently over the strings. But instead he began making love to it, and it answered him with long and orgasmic cries.

It sang the song of a lover whose mate was cast out to sea. The magic of two bodies writhing and coming together on a sandy shore. A selkie in the sea. Then it was her song, standing at the window in the church, watching the waves curl their fingers, beckoning to her, calling for her to come into them. And how much she longed to do so, how deep the grief, the hunger, the perpetual and never-ending starvation for something she did not understand. The music promised her, whispered with it's magic that it could feed her.

She opened her eyes, and suddenly he was there. Like some kind of a dream, just standing there in front of her. His fingers still dancing across the strings of his instrument. And his eyes were warm, sparkling with mischief, they captured her in their folds. Somehow putting her at ease, when she should not be.

But how could he be standing here? It was impossible. The boat was too far away. And the music had never waivered.

Against her will she was drawn to him, and to the lyrical melody. It placated her, numbing instincts that should have commanded her to run, and awakening others that were woefully out of tune. She watched his arms caress the violin, his face, his lips close to its shell, his fingers using it gently but with incredible expertise. She closed her eyes and breathed in his smoky wooded scent. She felt a kind of abandonment she had never known. Found the void, the center of starvation, and fed it with an ethereal sound.

Then the fingers stopped. As quickly as it had come, it was gone.

The silence seemed abrupt.

Startled, she opened her eyes. He was looking at her. Erechantheus. His broad shoulders loomed above her and though at 5'9 she considered herself tall, his imposing figure made her feel petite.

Erech drank from the woman's eyes, a turquoise sea that seemed to stretch forever. An open ocean on a long journey. She was otherworldly. Her body still hidden by the same black cloak he had seen her wearing the other night. Painted, he knew, with the armor underneath. He couldn't help himself and reached out, very softly touching her face. Her skin was smooth and pale, and she seemed to melt a little beneath him, relaxing into his touch. He moved downward tracing to her neck from the line of her chin.

"Erech!" It was Berengar. He stood out on the deck confusedly. Searching. "Erech!" he called out, louder now.

Thalassa heard the voice as if it came from some far off foreign land. But then it was louder, interrupting the spell. She looked up and into his eyes. He was looking at her with raw, unabashed sexuality. Desire. She let out a sound and stumbled backward.

"Erech!" Berengar called again. Erech silently cursed his brother and his ill timing. He looked out across the bay and could see that daylight was fracturing the darkness like a disease.

Thalassa turned to the sailboat and saw the man on the deck, the one that had been with him in the ally. When she turned back she was startled to find that Erechantheus was gone. Vanished.

She shook her head, tried to clear her mind.

What was wrong with her? What had she done? She did not know this man, who he was. . . what he was. What in the name of God was wrong with her?! It was as if he had put her in some kind of trance. A state of being that was wholly unlike her. Defied her even, who she was, who she had spent so many years becoming to survive here.

What if he was a demon?

But he did not smell like them, death and decay. He did not act like them. After all he had healed the Father, when he could have let him die.

But the demons were getting smarter. That much she knew from the watcher. The one who was playing with her.

This one could be playing with her too.

Sunlight lit the horizon, and for a moment she tried to calm herself by watching the sky change color. Her eyes wandered again to the boat. Except for a few pieces of ornately crafted furniture, The Poisson's deck was empty.

Thalassa's fingers moved to her face; her skin still felt warm where he had touched her. Her stomach growled and twisted. She needed to eat something. There was a market just up the street. She turned and made her way down the pier, wincing as the bone in her ankle ground into itself. This time the pain was a welcome distraction.

"I don't like this." It was Berengar. "We should not be doing this." The driver was stopped at the Palace Hotel. Erech took in the curved elegance of the exterior of the building. He remembered being in Europe and wanting to go there, to see what was then the most expensive hotel in the world, but of course located in forbidden lands, he had seen only pictures. The 1906 earthquake had destroyed the opaque glass roof and what were at that time many modern and expensive technological inventions, not the least of which were the hydraulic elevators and pneumatic tube system. The hotel was totally destroyed and while impressive now some 50 years after they rebuilt it, Erech suspected it was a shadow of its former self.

"He is the Queen's soldier." Erech remarked, emphasizing to his brother that they were technically on the same side.

"What did he say? When he called I mean?"

"Little. Just that she asked him to meet with us. Isolde. Ordered I think is what he said. That it was an order."

"I don't like it. They are not like us."

"No," Erech agreed.

"He gave a name?"

"Yes, Montavrose. He said his name was Montavrose."

"What else did he say?"

"That is all. The conversation was brief." That of course was an understatement. Just a few words whispered on the phone. If he were their kind, he would not have to use the technology of the humans he supposed. He would have used the web. But as Berengar pointed out, he was not their kind. One of the Queen's monstrosities, and just one more thing they were required to do on this long and distasteful journey.

The driver opened the car door with white-gloved hands and they were escorted into the hotel by staff. To the Pied Piper room. Named after a Maxfield Parrish painting that hung on its walls.

They took a table near the bar, and ordered drinks while they waited. The room was dark and thinly populated. Just a few couples at the tables. Erech took in the human interactions. The women with their dark dresses and white gloves on the table next to them. Men in their suits, hats and coats having been handed off to the wait staff. Fashion was dreary in this era, not like the Renaissance or Edwardian periods. Or perhaps it was an American thing, but he found the women's dresses to be dark and awkwardly sewn, while the men wore different versions of the same.

He ordered whiskey sours and they enjoyed them with a rolled cigar. The room was already cloudy with smoke from the other diners.

Erech could smell him before he reached the table. The distinctive odor of his kind, Morcant's special recipe he supposed. They did not stand to greet him, indeed Erech barely glanced up. The abomination sat down.

Tavrose looked at the pair. It was curious that they had come. He was surprised that they accepted. A testament to their devotion to the Queen? Unlikely. He noticed them shifting when they entered the room. Something to do with his blood. The humans did not notice, their senses were too dull. "Gentlemen," his smile contained no emotions, just the customary lifting of the lips. "I do apologize if I am late." He glanced at his watch noticing that it was still several minutes to the hour. "But I think not." He slid gracefully into the chair. The waitress was there almost as soon as he was situated, not many customers. "Ice water please," he smiled again. Unlike his companions, the woman had the grace to return his smile.

"Best go easy on that," Berengar tried to make a joke as the waitress set the water in front of him, but the humor fell flat.

Erech sampled his drink. Not strong enough for his taste. He glanced at the creature across from him, his lips were a thin line. The smell of him seemed overwhelming, a strange sickening spicy flavor mingled with death. If he was not such an abomination he might have pitied him. "Our time is very valuable Mon-ta-vrose" the name rolled oddly over his tongue. It seemed an experiment like this should be identified with a number, a name was just too personal. "Let us get to business, shall we?"

"Of course," the creature attempted a smile again.

Tavrose burned at their behavior. It was an unusual stinging sensation that threatened to pull him into a vat of darker vibrations. Anger, rage, compiled with the intensity of the other demonic compulsions. Creator Spiritus, mentes tuorum, he calmed the darkness.

It was expected. They were the children of a Modhai, one of the original twelve who were turned so the king could have a kingdom. Nobility and with all of the arrogance of their kind. He sipped the water, enjoying the delicious coldness of the ice on his tongue. The children were no different than the parents, just removed from the source. It was inconceivable to them, he was sure, that they shared his blood.

"You will forgive my brother," Berengar spoke now, "he . . . err. . . we are not used to conversing with your kind." He shifted in his chair to see him better. "Indeed, we were under the impression, that your conversational skills were somewhat limited."

For a moment Tavrose admired him for his honesty, but only for a moment. "I am an unusual . . . specimen. . . " it empowered him to use the word. Their word.

"What do you want?" Erech had already grown tired of the exchange.

"I was under the impression that we want the same thing." The cold little smile flickered across his face again.

Erech looked squarely into his eyes. They were dark, black pupils, with red flecks in them. There was no emotion there, no feeling. Just pits with red glitter sprinkled around the core. "We have followed the Queen's instructions."

"Of course," Tavrose set his glass carefully on the table. "Is there reason to believe otherwise?" His eyes moved over them and Erech could feel him probing, like frigid fingers wrapping around the backs of their chairs.

"We have our . . . orders. . . " Berengar tried to diffuse the tension brewing, "the same as you. We have spent many months along the coast, searching. It is not an easy task. These lands have been forbidden to us." He tried to communicate warmth. "You and yours enjoy more freedom."

"That is an interesting choice of words."

"Pardon?"

"Freedom." Tavrose did not seem to notice the repellent look on Berengar's face as he used one of his blackened fingernails to stir the ice in his drink. "I have often considered the word," he said quietly, "indeed have spent many hours meditating on it. Freedom." He used the napkin to wipe his finger, and then took another sip of the water. He closed his eyes for a moment as the icy liquid ran down his throat. "Do you think that is what my mother wants for us on this journey?"

"Your mother?" Erech felt sickened.

Tavrose opened his eyes. The dark pits seemed more red somehow around the rims. "What would you prefer? Creator? Or perhaps. . . Maker?" He lifted his lips wryly, "Maker then." He refolded the napkin and smoothed the edges crisply. "Is that what you call your father Berengar?" The creature lifted an eyebrow quizzically. "He who turned you? A human once, just as I was."

"We are nothing alike," Berengar's voice was a dangerous whisper.

Tavrose's pale hand reached again for his drink. Erech could see a web of dark veins under his translucent skin, running up his wrist and beneath the sleeve of his jacket. He reached out and like a baited trap, caught the wrist before it reached the glass. He looked into the monster's eyes, unflinching.

"This is not a game Mon-ta-vrose," he put emphasis on the name. "We are here for our father. And it is for our father that we follow the Queen's orders. If Isolde has something more for us, then speak that now. If you are here of your own accord, to prove that you are something more than your species, then let us not waste each others time. You and the evolution of your kind does not interest me."

Erech tightened his grip and he knew that if he wanted to he could crush the dead man's bones with little effort. "I have already heard of you. Your story is whispered after hours, or during a drinking game. You are the nightmare our human companions use to scare their children into eating their vegetables. Like Baba Yaga or the Boogey Man." He paused for effect, and to let the demon feel the full flavor of the power emulating from him. "I do not know how she made you. . your mother. . . maker. . . the name means so little to me. I have no interest in this game. I will say this once more. We are here for our father. Now speak your mind, or let us end this. I have no more time for you."

He thrust the demon from him and there was a clatter of silverware as Tavrose was shoved back against his chair. He did not wince, nor did he show any glimmer of emotions. Erech did not think he was capable of it.

Icy fingers carefully adjusted the sleeves of his jacket. Tavrose shifted in his seat. When he turned to look at them his eyes were cavernous and cold. "Sansou's time is short. The Queen's army is coming."

He rose from his chair. His hat was on the empty seat behind him and he lifted it and adjusted it smartly on his head. Tipping the rim to the side in the Bogart style that was so popular. "This is Tllaloc's land and he will end us just the same. What you call freedom is only that he cannot feel us. We are not tied to the web as you are." He seemed oddly reflective. "We are dead without dying, life does not recognize us. Does not understand us. We do not exist. It is all that protects us."

He glanced around the room. There was music playing, a little band starting up in the corner. The famous Maxfield Parrish painting the Pied Piper of Hamlin hung like a colorful tapestry on the wall, the Piper playing his music, leading the children joyfully to their demise.

"He is looking for you Erechantheus. Word has come from her spies. He has seen you in the web, and when he finds you . . . . . you will wish that you had run." His eyes glittered like flickering coals in a fire ring.

"Remember that I told you that. . . to run."

And with that he was gone.

# Chapter 5

The woman was beautiful. Chestnut hair swept elegantly in the back. Her hairline carefully plucked to open up her forehead and feature the graceful lines of her face. Thalassa wondered why they had invited her? She had arrived before them, making every effort, it seemed to drape herself around Edwin Sansou. If she were not in such a bad mood she would have laughed. Poor girl!

Lisbeth poured the wine. Edwin enjoyed that. His cousin Eloise had always been a pompous super bitch before her husband lost everything in bad business venture. Now her daughter was serving him dinner. That made him smile.

They were late. The cook had to serve the meal or risk ruining it. That pissed him off. Given the amount of time and money he had poured into the European's pocket the least he could do was be on time. Edwin used his fingers to crease the contours of his tie. He had to admit, the magnate was impressive. His knowledge of the industry, the resources, the network that he had available to him. And of course he was easy on the eyes. Edwin smiled. Indeed, he had rarely seen a man cut of the kind of steel as this one. He licked his lips lustfully and allowed his mind to wander.

Lisbeth interrupted to serve him the tender cuts of beef. He gave her a hard look. She seemed flustered, kind of out of it lately. Part of his arrangement with his cousin was to provide her schooling. A private tutor, and a perhaps some future at a prestigious school. Of course he made her work for it. But she had missed several days. Was sick the housekeeper said. She seemed particularly pale tonight. Edwin moved the thoughts out of his mind and decided to ignore her. It wasn't hard. He had bigger fish to fry.

The nuns sat at the other end of the long table with the Father. Edwin scowled at them. He had been forced to invite them, due to Erech. He requested they be there. More questions about the books. Edwin felt a dark cloud descend. Li Qiang, the servant he put in charge of the libraries, insisted that the books that were showing up missing were just misplaced. He said they had already found many of them, that it was due to a new employee. It seemed like a lot of books to be misfiled. As soon as he closed this business deal with the Europeans, he was going to shake up his staff. Put them back in line.

The brunette next to him was touching his arm again. It seemed the Europeans liked easy women. This was the third or fourth one that was all over him. He looked at her as if she was a lump of lard left in the meat mix.

There was a disturbance in the hallway and Edwin glanced up and was relieved to see the colorful clothing of their group. Destiny, if he remembered her name correctly, was wearing a long fuchsia gown, silk, looked very expensive, as did her jewelry, emeralds dripped down her throat with glittering diamonds accompanying them. The other woman was in a ruffled gown, pearl essences with silver sequins rimming the edge of the slit that ran from the floor to her thigh. He had a particular fondness for women's evening wear.

Of course Erechantheus stole the show, with a white tailored dinner jacket with thin black silk trim around the collar. A white shirt with a black vest, accented with a grey tie that had a hand stitched black diamond pattern. His trousers matched his black vest and were custom fit to his muscular figure. He was a picture of rugged sophistication and Edwin felt his heart speed up a little when he finally entered the room. The other one, Beren something or other was also easy on the eyes, but nothing like his brother.

"Ahhh, there you are," he rose from his chair and extended a hand. "Please do sit down," he gestured to the chair next to him, but the brunette tramp was parked firmly there. He had forgotten. "Here then," he motioned to the chair on the other side of him that was still empty, and tried to power through his irritation.

Erech nodded to Edwin, and then gestured to his brother and their group to be seated. The servants ushered them to their seats and moved quickly to serve them, so they may have the opportunity to catch up with the rest of the group who were half way through the second course.

"Apologies Edwin for our tardiness," he said cordially. "Traffic was difficult."

"Of course, of course," Edwin brushed the apology aside, "and please forgive us for starting without you. Our chef was adamant the food not be allowed to grow cold."

Edwin made more small talk and Erech took the opportunity to look around the table. The google eyed nun was there, and the Father, who was looking at him carefully from his seat at the far end of the table.

Erech had specifically requested they be there. His ship was on standby after yesterday's meeting with Isolde's abomination, and he knew this may be his last opportunity to speak to them before they sailed. The old man had managed to smuggle some of the rare's out of the library this morning, which fit nicely with their plans. Erech was hoping he might have the opportunity to convince the father to reconsider his offer to relocate their convent.

The nun was looking down intently at her plate, which seemed to contain only a few piles of greenery. The size and dark tint of her glasses overwhelmed her face, and what was not covered by them was shielded by her veil. Erech took a deep sip of his wine. Mmmm, a nice quality red.

Edwin continued to babble. Erech looked at the brunette they had hired to try and distract Edwin, keep him out of his hair, and as usual, Sansou was completely ignoring the woman. Seems he was very picky, for a human that is. Erech could see that the other guests had finished their main course, and since he had dined earlier on something more to his taste, he motioned to Destiny for his instrument.

"Come now Edwin," he smiled charmingly, "let us liven up this evening." Erech took his violin from the case and stood. He began to play new rock and roll tune he had happened upon a few days ago. He continued to admire American music. Everything new and fresh seem to come from here. Berengar had brought his own instrument, and his guitar seemed to make fun of Erech as the violin struggled to capture the beat of the rock music.

Marissa began laughing hysterically at the scene. She motioned to the servants who opened the sliding doors which had isolated the dining room from a larger sitting area. Destiny curved around Berengar seductively as he played, making the nuns uncomfortable. The edges of her painted nails slid over the shoulders of his black jacket, openly exploring his body. Berengar delighted in her and used his instrument picked up the tempo, taking the music higher. Erech met his brother's challenge and used the violin to match his pace. They glided and danced from the dinner table to the open room, ignoring the flustered chef who had just begun to serve course number three. Marissa pouted a little as Destiny continued to flirt with Berengar. Her leg sliced dramatically out the slit of her dress and she lit a cigarette, poising sensually.

The brunette wanted in on the fun, and despite his reluctance, she pulled a protesting Edwin from the table to join the group. To his credit, he sensed the inappropriateness of it, despite his dislike of the clergyman. "Father, I do hope you don't mind. . . . ?" he managed to say politely before departing with the brunette. As he danced with her, he tried to move a little closer to Erech.

The sitting room was long and open, with comfortable plush white couches and chairs arranged on the edges. They were strangely modern and out of place with the rest of the house, which was stiff and vintage Victorian. A white curved bar was on the other side, the beveled glass of the counter cut attractively along its edges, complementing the carved wood and colorful oil paintings. The walls adjacent to the bar were actually glass windows, and there was a breathtaking view of the city.

From the table Thalassa chewed on her seaweed salad, and some chunks of green apple, taking in the scene. Almost against her will, she took pleasure in their joy, the fun they seem to so easily create around them, with him, Erechantheus, leading like the maestro of an orchestra, weaving a spell of magic around the room.

For a moment she wished that she could dance with them. With him. The thought startled her. She shook her head to clear it. She could not allow herself to think like this. She did not know if it was God or the Devil who had created her, but she did know that so long as she lived, her role was clear. She would protect this city and it's people from the demons, and never allow herself to turn. Still, despite her resolve, she felt like an awkward admirer as she watched them swirling and dancing in the parlor.

Erech's enjoyment of the challenge of playing rock and roll music on his violin waned, and eventually he stepped back, letting his brother dominate. Edwin seemed also to be enjoying himself chiming in with some of the lyrics. Through the open doors he could see that the nuns were still in the dining room, they appeared to be finishing up their dinner. He slipped back to the table.

"A dance sister?" He joked to the googlie eyed nun. Her head turned sharply and he could sense her displeasure. "Not the dancing type. . eh?"

Thalassa put her head down allowing the thick fabric of her veil to hang across her cheekbones, shielding her. Her body felt warm beside him, she felt a pulsing energy in her core that swirled through her insides like the froth of capping waves. She struggled to ignore him.

His massive body moved closer and even through the thickness of her garment, she could feel the hard muscles of his thigh as it brushed against her. "Perhaps this is just not your song," he mused, seeming to enjoy her discomfort.

"I do not have a song." She whispered, and inched away from him, her back pressed against the carved wood of the chair.

"Everyone has a song sister," he reached out and fingered the fabric of her veil, then gently moved it out of the way. One of his fingers slid against her cheekbone and she felt an electric current run through her skin. Startled, she jerked away from him, tipping the chair backward. Thalassa struggled to maintain her balance and stood up as the chair teetered unstably. Pain shot through her ankle when she had to put her weight on it, and she winced, using the table to brace herself.

A strong arm shot out and curled around her, pulling her upward. She felt the hard lines of Erechantheus' body as he pressed her against him. "let me go!" she ground out and tried to get away from him, but the pain in her ankle caused her leg to buckle.

Erech looked down at the nun. He felt her thin body beneath the voluminous robe. She kept her head down, but struggled to stand. Injured, it appeared. His brows burrowed in a frown. Injured?

Then it struck him.

The nun was limping, favoring her ankle, just as another had been. He reached down and cupped her chin, forcing her face upward.

"I said let me go!" she was angry now, her voice no longer a timid whisper. His grip became a steel vice, she could not escape it.

His eyes, probing and intelligent, scanned her face, seemed to look through her, into her. She closed them then, her only recourse to escape. She felt his hand on her glasses, pulling them off of her face. "I said let me go, you bastard!" She jerked backward, but he never wavered.

"That is very bad language for a nun." There was a frightening awareness in his voice.

"Please," she felt desperation welding inside of her, "Please. . . . " Without her glasses she was naked, exposed.

Something shattered in the distance. It didn't seem real, but then it happened again. It sounded like glass.

She opened her eyes. He was looking at her, amber eyes, so warm and intelligent.

Erech explored the turquoise depths of the nun who was not a nun, but rather some kind of rare creature. Her skin was white, almost pearlescent, and her eyes were like the open ocean. A lovely shade of blue green. The same eyes he had been looking into several nights ago on the wharf near his boat.

He was such a fool.

Someone screamed, and he felt it, the tiniest ripple. A shadow in the web. Some disturbance that life did not recognize.

She seemed to sense it too; it broke the spell between them.

"They are coming." She said, and her voice was far away as if he could not understand. She tried to pull out of his grasp again, and this time he let her go.

"They are coming!" The music stopped. Berengar and the others turned toward the open doors of the dining hall. "Father!"

Father O'Ryan ran to her side. "Edwin sent a man down to investigate. Not sure what is going on," He looked leery and on edge. There was another scream.

She could feel them, the sheer mass, like insects crawling toward them. She looked at the group, Marissa and Destiny in their colorful dresses, the warmth of their music still hanging in the air. Erechatheus. She felt an incredible desperation. "You have to get these people out of here. Through the tunnels."

They were more like worms now, squirming and probing the soil to get beneath. One, two, more. . . many more. More than she had ever known. "What the hell is this?" Edwin looked afraid. "Who is it that? What is going on here?"

Erech leaned casually against the wall, he was calm, unaffected. Thalassa could feel the demons moving in a gargantuan wave of darkness-ever closer, across the carefully manicured grounds of Edwin's estate. Berengar at least seemed to take an interest. "What tunnels?"

"Father will take you." Thalassa gave Father O'Ryan another desperate look.

"We don't have time." His voice was somber.

"I will hold them." She told him, pulling the nun's habit from her head. Black curls spilled out over her shoulders. She looked over at Erech who was still leaning against the wall, totally unconcerned or perhaps unaware of the danger. She needed to wake him up, move him so he could get his party to follow the Father.

"Erachantheus!" she shouted his name like a schoolteacher, and he seemed surprised that she remembered it. "You have to run!" The women also seemed oblivious. One of them was polishing the end of her flute.

"Well I don't know what the hell is going on here," Edwin's voice trembled, "I sent a man down to investigate. We have some security here."

Thalassa hobbled toward Erech. They had to leave, there was no way she could protect them. Stabbing pain shot through her ankle as she moved, and when she reached him, her hands fell against his chest to steady herself. She cursed her ankle and the demon who injured her.

"Please," she looked up at him, real desperation was in her eyes. "You have to run. The Father will take you, through the tunnels. He knows the way." Thalassa's heart pounded in her chest. She remembered the warmth of his music on the boat, of their music. The way they laughed, the joy they seemed to be able to create so effortlessly. This world was so bleak, so confining, but they were a treasure, something that sparkled and stood out. And he was their creator. The maestro of the magic. She had seen so many die, but she knew that she could not bear to see the demons take him. "Please!" she begged, "I can not protect you."

Erech felt the warmth of her hands on his chest, heard the real desperation in her voice. He wanted to chuckle but she was serious. She was going to stand against them. For them. For him. To protect him. Her cheeks were flushed, and she seemed so vulnerable in that moment.

"Erech," he heard Berengar's soft voice. "We should not be here. We should do as she says. We should go." His brother moved to stand by Father O'Ryan. The others followed. Erech did not look up; his gaze never wandered from the nun. His eyes were calm and deep, he took pleasure in the warmth of her against him.

"Erech!"

Glass shattered again, and then the sound of grinding wood.

Isolde's monsters had breached the house. He could hear them, slithering through the corridors of the enormous mansion. Perhaps this creature in his arms could hold them, as she had done a few nights ago. But she would not hold them forever. Not with these numbers. Montavrose had tried to warn them. The queen must have given the order.

"Fetch my violin," his voice was quiet but seasoned with a strange remorse.

"What? Erech. . . "

"The violin." He said again, still not taking his eyes from her.

"And what was your name?" he spoke to her, "Sister Anne? But I think not. . ."

She looked at him in disbelief, how could she make him understand, there was so little time. "I don't understand why you don't hear me?! You cannot stay here! You must go with them. You need to go with the Father!"

Berengar reluctantly set the violin case on the table. "Brother, I beg you." And there was real fear in his voice.

Erech finally pulled away from her; he moved to where his brother was standing. To his violin. Click, click, and he unlatched the case, opening the lid. He was greeted by the familiar contours of his instrument.

Father O'Bryan and the others huddled together by the massive wooden doors. The women had joined them, as well as Edwin and some of the servers, including Lisbeth. Thalassa tore off her robes, revealing the hard shell of her body armor underneath. She unsheathed a wooden dagger and hobbled to the center of the room. In front of her were the tall glass windows that revealed the sparkling cityscape. Her sensitive hearing picked up noises below them, the shuffling of feet, a scuffle with a human, probably one of the servants.

She could face her death, but to watch the others die. To watch him die. . .

"Thalassa." She spoke her name out loud, she felt soft inside, like a little girl. She wanted him to know, maybe to remember her when he was gone from here. "My name is Thalassa." She said again.

Erech looked up and the corners of his mouth lifted. His eyes warmed. "Thalassa." He tested the name on his lips, "A pleasure to finally meet you. Properly that is", and he smiled, but just as quickly it was gone. A strange coldness slipped over him as he stared into the case. Carefully, he removed the instrument from the double walled steel of it's protective home and set it on the table. Then he pulled out a panel that was on the bottom, a false bottom that revealed a second compartment. Underneath, like old friends were the glinting silver bands and the blue glow of the Raacas. It seemed like forever since he had seen them, more than a human lifetime.

He felt the familiar coldness of the metal on his skin as he snapped the heavy bracelets in place. He stood there then, looking at them. Remembering.

Shackles. That is what he had felt then. That the Raacas shackled him to war.

"Erech, do not do this."

"You should leave now brother." He was quiet. They were crawling toward them like a disease. There was no rhythm, no quiver of life to be interpreted. Just a cloud that covered the strands.

Together Father O'Bryan and Edwin pulled open the huge wooden doors. Thalassa heard Edwin cry out and then the doors were just as quickly closed. Heavy footsteps resounded outside of the room. She heard them frantically slide the locks back in place. "It's too late! We are trapped!"

Erech quietly moved to the center of the large hall, next to Thalassa. He seemed oblivious to the panic. "Beautiful isn't it." He motioned to the city lights that were sparkling across the coastal landscape. The Golden Gate bridge seemed to be the centerpiece of the show, her spans lit up proudly to highlight the results of a depression era project. He remembered the buzz in Europe around that bridge, 1936 if his memory served him. Not easy to fund a bridge like that while people stood in bread lines.

She turned to him. There was real sorrow in her voice. "I can't protect you. I won't be able to keep you safe." She remembered Lillie then, the night that Garnett had tried to shoot her at the Palace hotel, killing the Major instead. How scared she had been of losing her- her lifeline. And then so many years later, when Lillie lay dying, an old woman, and how helpless it felt to look upon her. She felt the same sense of helplessness now.

Thalassa looked at Erech, who was silent and reflective, still staring out over the bay as if there were all the time in the world. "You do not understand what they are. How much danger we are in! Take the others," she motioned behind them, "and try to get out." She looked at the odd symbols marking the thick bands on his wrists, a weird blue light seemed to be coming from the metal. She remembered how he had healed the Father in the ally.

"I do not know what you are Erechantheus, but we cannot win against these numbers. I can't protect you! Please try to get these people out. I can distract them and give you a chance, some time to get to the tunnels."

Erech took a long breath. She smelled like flowers in the winter. Set on the cold table in the stone palace, a kind of beauty that should not exist in such dreariness. He could feel her sadness, her defeat. Her belief that she would watch him die. He reached down and cupped her chin, tipping her face so that he could see her.

"Step back, Thalassa. I do not wish to hurt you." He pulled her body gently behind him. His fingers curled around one of the bracelets he was wearing, striking one of the symbols. A brilliant blue blade snapped from the base, piercing the flesh of his hand and spiking outward, one on either side of his palm. The blades were luminescent, radiating brilliantly in the dim light. His fingers touched the other bracelet and she gasped as spikes that looked line long claws protruded outward through the flesh of his fingers. Long double edges that seemed to be made of light and emulated the same weird blue color. Though she could see that the blades had penetrated his flesh, he did not bleed.

There were shadows outside the windows and then the demons. One of them swung forward on a rope and struck the glass with an object in his hands. It looked like a mallet. The window shattered dramatically. Edwin screamed as it hurled itself into the room.

Thalassa unsheathed another wooden dagger. From a holster on her back she took a modified weapon that looked like a slingshot, but was custom made to launch the daggers. She ignored the pain in her ankle and fired the weapon, striking the demon in the heart. She felt a sense of satisfaction as flames burst through its insides and then turned it's body to ash. She saw Erech still standing there, not moving. As if he were in a trance. She unsheathed another one and prepared to help protect Erech, but then in an instant, he was gone.

Another demon shattered the side window, and two more flung themselves inside. There was a loud bang behind her, they were trying to bam open the doors to the dining hall. Berengar and the Father had double secured the locks, and were moving a large cabinet in front of it for further protection, but she could hear the repetitive thud as demons pummeled the outside. .

Thalassa scanned the room. Where did he go? He was there and then gone. Vanished? She had no time to think, launching another dagger at one of the demons who was advancing. A female with hair that looked like it had never been combed, it looked surprised when the wood sliced into it. Flames baked the rotted flesh. Three more came through the side window and as she turned she could see two others through the second window that had been breached. She braced herself.

Suddenly Berengar was beside her. He looked tired, resigned. "Do as he says." He told her. "

"What?" She thought he was crazy. "What the hell are you talking about?" She no longer had time for him. Erech was nowhere, and his brother was insane. They were going to die here in Edwin's dining hall, and she was not going down without a fight. She launched another dagger, missing this time.

Then she saw him. By one of the open windows. How had he gotten there? He grabbed one of the demons as it came through, the blue blades slashing through its shoulder, it screamed. He used the blades on his other hand to take off its head. The body burst into flames. The blades retracted, and as he climbed the wall, he pulled one of the demons from the window upwards, and then crushed it's skull against the frame. The blades shot out again, and he punctured the creature's heart, flinging its body aside as the fire took it.

Thalassa stared in shock. She had to snap herself out of it as more were pouring through the windows. She loaded another dagger. She could see Erech, his face streaked with black blood. His eyes were hard, timeless. He moved across the wall to the other window and then it seemed like he was everywhere. His body was like a streak of blue lightening against the white backdrop of the room. She could not understand how he was able to move that fast.

Within minutes there was a river of black blood on the walls and floor and a terrible putrefied stench as the heads of the demons rolled through the dining hall. Ash and black blood damaged the imported furniture and she was sure Edwin must be weeping as fine China shattered when demon heads smashed into it.

Though the bodies burned, the heads did not. Something that happened when they were decapitated. That is why she preferred the heart. Though they had never really lived, the dead undead's heads presented a horrific sight, with vacant eyes rolled backward into their skull, rotting the room as it filled with them.

She poised her weapon, searching for a target, but Erech was moving so fast, and they were dying so quickly that it was impossible to find one. She finally located a female crouched against the wall, but Berengar grabbed her arm. "Leave it!"

She looked at him, at the boyish lines of his face. His short brown hair curling attractively around his ears. "What is he?" Her voice was hushed.

For a moment he did not answer. Then he used his other arm to reach over and un-notch the wooden dagger she had loaded in her slingshot.

"A warrior."

Berengar said it as if he were realizing it himself, though it was a thing he had always known.
Chapter 6

Smoke whispered into the tunnels from above. Thalassa shifted the backpack containing the rare books from Edwin's library. . . her library. She tried not to think about it, focusing on navigating through the maze of old coal tunnels that would eventually lead to one of the underground barracks built during the war. Erech was behind her, he moved silently, surprising given his large frame. They had a flashlight in the pack, but she didn't need it. The tunnels were a second home for her, and she knew every twist and turn, and each crag and crevice.

Finally they came to one of the storm drains, which opened to the world above. Carefully she climbed up the rusty iron steps, slipping out onto the damp street by Mission Dolores, the familiar white columns welcoming her home. Surrounded now by the city, she remembered when the hillsides were barren and untouched by the structures of a burgeoning civilization.

She forgot about Erech for a moment and glided through the narrow opening past the museum and into the garden and cemetery. The oldest cemetery in San Francisco, the graves of over 5000 Ohlone and Miwok's were here along with the others who had built and maintained the Mission for so long. As she strolled past the weathered tombstones, she remembered some of them, like Margarita, who had introduced her to this landlocked world. She lost herself for a moment to the past as she wound along the path, just a little way past the angel with the missing arm. Finally she reached the grave.

The heavy pack slid from her shoulders and she burrowed inside until she located the letter she had written before they escaped. It had been a long time since she had been here, and there were only a few remnants of the silk flowers from her last visit. It was well into the early morning, a little after 2, and with no tourists tromping around the historic sight, there was a pervasive sense of peace, a layered quiet that held the whisper of a promise that it could not keep.

Infant child- the words could still be read on the little tombstone, though it was cracked and marbled with age. She set the letter next to the marker, and put a rock on top of it so that the wind would not steal it. She crossed herself and prayed, as she always did when she came here.

Erech was leaning against one of the trees, his foot resting on the knarled and protruding roots. He watched her as she got up from the grave, crossing herself before limping back down the pathway. In the darkness her pale skin stood out, she looked otherworldly, her hair lifting and dancing with the breeze.

This was an odd place to pass notes. He wondered if Father O'Bryan would know to come here. But of course he would, she seemed to be at home here, he gathered it was not the first time she had secreted a message in the night.

The nun's world seemed to hold many secrets.

"I am sorry about the books," he said, when she rejoined him, misinterpreting her melancholy and trying to provide some comfort. "it was necessary."

"Of course," she said, moving by him, making her way back through the courtyard.

Though not the root of her sadness, it had pained her, to see her labor of love, so many years collecting and bartering - used for tinder to cover up the demon massacre. It was not the first time fire had taken her treasures, and she was certain it would not be the last. They had salvaged only what they could carry, which was mostly the rares.

She waited for him on the street, and was quiet while he lit a cigarette. He took a long drag, seemingly reflective as he took in the quietness of the city. Thalassa felt nervous around him. He had changed his clothing before they escaped, but his face was still streaked with ruminants of the black blood of the demons. The strange blue and silver bracelets were still around his wrists and glowed beneath the sleeves of the dark Jacket he had pinched from one of the closets. The blades, of course had retracted, but his hands bore no sign of any injury. The warmth, the merriment she had enjoyed watching on the boat, and in Sansou's hall, was shadowed now by something she didn't understand.

The end of his cigarette crackled and came to life as he took another drag.

"We should go." In the distance they could hear talking, laughing. A group coming from a party, meandering drunkenly toward them.

He flicked his cigarette and looked at her for a moment. Drinking in the curves of her body, complemented by the molded contours of her body armor. She felt vulnerable, exposed, and longed for her nun's robes which she had shed in the battle. "After you." He gestured, his eyes seductive and mocking. She glared, and maneuvered into the nearby ally. Her ankle was throbbing, and she longed to be off of it.

Erech followed her down the little street until they reached the iron covering of one of the manholes. It took some effort to remove the heavy cover, and she was constantly perturbed by the feeling of his eyes on her. Carefully she lowered herself down into the opening bracing against the skinny bars of the ladder. She could hear him behind her and soon they were both deep below the city again, sliding through narrow tunnels and gaps that revealed the hidden secrets of this glittering city.

It was cool and comfortable where they were. Sometimes she loved the darkness, the way that it shielded her from everyone and everything. And, in particular him, and she was relieved to be able to focus on getting them to Sutro's hidden passage.

Adolf Sutro had been a remarkable man. A friend of Lillie Coit's, they had spent many nights at his estate, enjoying the dinners, drinks, and parties that his wife liked to throw. Lillie liked him in small doses, but had found his wife to be sparkling. Adolf was an engineer, he had made his fortune designing and implementing methods to ventilate and drain the Comstock mines in Nevada. Thalassa had known him much earlier of course, when he was trading on the wharf. Mostly cigars and tobacco, but he had a passion for books, and some of her collection had come from him.

She felt a pang of regret, fresh wound from the burn. She pushed it out of the way. Adolf loved to talk about his projects, which is where Lillie found him to be dull. Mostly Thalassa remembered his excitement over the plans to rebuild the Cliff House, burned inadvertently in 1894 by Lillie's fireman when they were fighting the demons. That was before they had perfected other weapons. Her beloved firemen from #5. Adolf had so much money coming in from his investment in the Comstock Lode, it was nothing for him to rebuild, and rebuild he did, erecting one of the most stunning Victorian Palaces in the world. Hanging out over the ocean on a bed of rock, Adolf used the dunes west of the populated area of the city to create a one of a kind hub of entertainment. The Cliff House, or the Gingerbread Palace as they used to call it, had been just the beginning. He expanded his vision further, using what he had learned working with the hard granite of the mines, to engineer Sutro Baths, the largest indoor swimming establishment in the world.

Of course Lillie didn't have the patience to sit in the parlor with him, listening to him talk for hours about his engineers, architects, the three failed attempts and building the sea wall for the pools. But Thalassa was not so put out, and found Adolf's scientific mind to be a welcome retreat from some of Lillie's bawdy exploits.

Finally they reached the narrow crack in the old coal tunnel. It did not look as if a person could slide in between the gaps in the rough rock walls. Thalassa easily maneuvered her body and was soon standing in the larger more spacious passageway. Given his mocking earlier, she briefly enjoyed Erech's discomfort as he struggled to squeeze his much larger frame through the opening. Eventually, he was able to shimmy through.

Adolf's tunnel snaked through the bedrock narrowing upward as it finally opened behind a false wall in one of the closets of what had once been Sutro baths but was now an ice skating rink and museum. When Erech emerged, Thalassa deployed the lever that rotated the wall, giving them safe passage into the neglected cleaning closet.

Erech was silent as she led him out into the brisk openness of the ice skating rink. It was dark and deserted, the employees having long since punched out and gone home. She felt a familiar sense of relief as she rounded the brick wall above the rink.

Adolf had died in 1898, just two years after the baths and the new Cliff House had opened. They said after a short illness, but only she and Lillie knew the truth. He had been nearly drained of blood one night after one of the demons broke into his home. They had tried desperately to save him, but it was no use, he died quietly, days later. Despite his pain, he had been satisfied with the life that he had lived. He saw his dream come to life, his beloved creation of a coastal palace and mecca for San Franciscans.

She paused for a moment, taking in the glimmering white ice of the rink. Decades after Adolf had died, the building was now showing its age. Leaking roofs and rusting metal. They had closed off much of it, converting one of the pools into the ice rink. Keeping the artifacts and mechanical displays in the museum. She led Erech by the large glass windows that looked out over the fierceness of Ocean beach. Since the pools closed, almost every year tragedies occurred when humans, swimming too far out from the shore, were pulled out to sea in the rip tide.

Eventually they reached one of the emergency exits, and she pulled open the door. She hit the light switch, and felt Erech's surprise as an old rusted world was revealed.

"What is this place?" His voice was quiet.

Before them was a landscape of drained swimming pools and rusted diving boards. Old food concessions which had been boarded up for years, lined the parameter, and were swallowed by the layered and looming rows of bleachers which at one time had held thousands of people. It was an eery rusty world that seemed frozen in time.

"Come." She beckoned, and limped along the path between the pools.

Erech watched her wince as she began to ascend a steep twisting staircase. With a few long strides he bridged the space between them and swept her up in his arms. She tried to protest, but he ignored her, bracing his arm under her heavy backpack of books to stabilize her.

Despite the extra weight, he was not even winded as they reached the top and he set her carefully on her feet. She briskly jumped back, trying to get some distance between him and the unnerving sensations she felt when her body was in contact with his.

"Your welcome." There was humor in his voice.

She turned her away from him and hobbled down the corridor. When she reached the wooden door of one of the old dressing rooms, she hastily went inside. He followed her. When Adolf built it, there had been over 500 dressing rooms in the place the locals called "The Glass Palace". A complement to its sister "The Gingerbread Palace" Cliff House. This dressing room, however was special. Against the back wall was a tall metal locker. It only took her a few moments to locate the lever and the wall and locker pivoted outward, revealing a narrow opening. She looked behind her to make sure Erech was following, then slipped inside.

Once he was in, she found the inside lever and moved the wall back into place. Adolf loved engineering, especially the creativity of it, and he knew that they needed ways to escape the demons, to quickly duck out of sight. Sutro baths was full of many of his secret passages, tunnels, and other mysteries engineered into the fabric of the architecture. They were in a mantrap, a protective space before the entrance to another space. Thalassa found a lever on the opposite wall, and the second interior wall opened.

She felt a sense of relief as she entered the hidden room. Home. Safety. At least it had been that for her since 1896. Adolf had built this suite for her, and she had been able to retreat here, away from the convent, the Father, the demons, away from everything.

Inside was a long rectangular room with two small round windows, almost like ship portholes on the end wall. Unnoticeable from the outside, but a pleasure from the within, allowing her a clear view of the ocean. A large elegantly carved armoire rested against one of the walls, containing her weapons cache. There was a chocolate brown couch adjacent to it with a little table in front of it, and a small writing desk in the corner. The dark stain of the wooden floor complemented the huge wooden cross that was hung dramatically on the wall. It was an open spacious room, functional and uncluttered. A door opened to the right leading to her bedroom, and Thalassa went inside for a moment. She heard Erech shuffling and then his footsteps as he explored his surroundings. Quickly she shimmied out of her body armor and threw on a robe. She felt some relief from the tight constraints of the armor, and safety as she cloaked herself in the voluminous fabric.

Erech was standing by the window when she came out. He raised his eyebrows when he saw her. "Ahh. . . the good nun has returned." A slight smile lifted the corners of his mouth.

She was silent, trying to ignore the whirling anxiety in her stomach. He made her feel jumpy and nervous. Like a rabbit trapped in a lion's cage. The suite had a small adjoining kitchen and she hobbled through the doorway and opened the icebox. She felt exhausted, and hungry. Of course she was always hungry, but when her stomach twisted and cramped painfully, she knew that it had become extreme. In the icebox was a covered bowl of seaweed, chopped very fine the way she liked it. She also had some apples, and dandelions. All things that she had learned over time her body could tolerate, and would provide some degree of nourishment.

Erech stood in the doorway of the little kitchen, his body filling the space. He watched her use a little paring knife to cut up the green apple. She created what appeared to be a salad made out of seaweed, and some yellow flowers. Strange diet. Little wonder she was so thin. When he had carried her up the stairs she scarcely weighed anything, despite the heavy books in her pack.

"Need some help?" His voice was soft, intentionally sexy. She froze, her back to him.

"No. . er. . thank you, no, I am fine." She continued working, and when she was done, put the items on a little tray. He moved to the side and she made her way back into the main room, depositing the tray on the table by the couch. She poured a glass of water for herself. He could see there was also a bottle of wine. He moved to sit beside her.

He could see by the second bowl, that she had made a salad for him as well. He poured some wine from the bottle. The human variety, not aged as long as he preferred, but pleasing nonetheless. He took a sip and sat back casually on the couch. She picked at the food, then crunched on a few bites. He could tell that she was uncomfortable around him, jumpy. Though he hated to admit it, he felt her presence equally. Electric. She was like a magnet that drew him in. He wanted to touch her, to move his hands over her body, feel her skin beneath him. He settled for brushing his leg against hers. She startled, then moved away.

"I am not sure what you like to eat," she said, her voice was controlled. "Unfortunately I don't have much in the icebox."

"Mmmm," Erech reflected, "the wine will do." Destiny had fed him before they had departed for Edwin's dinner. She liked the experience more than she should, and he always felt that he drank for too long with her. "The wine will do." He said again and was quiet, enjoying watching her.

"This is an impressive place," He finally spoke again.

"Thank you." She said between bites, taking a long drink of water to wash the roughness of the seaweed down. "Adolf would appreciate the complement." She took another.

Adolf Sutro, of course Erech was no stranger to the name. A German, his brother Otto had done business with them at one time. "A great man." He commented. "But full of secrets it seems." He looked around, then back to her. "I wonder what other secrets are hidden here?"

She felt his eyes on her, as if they burned through the fabric of her garment. She moved the salad bowl out of the way, and stood suddenly. A stabbing pain shot up her leg, and she cursed inwardly her stupidity, not for the first time, at the pain.

"I am very tired," she said, and the weariness in her voice supported the statement. "If I could just lie down for a while." She hobbled toward the doorway, but gasped as she felt strong arms encircle her waist "What. . ?! What are you doing?!"

Erech ignored her protests. He lifted her into his arms and carried her into the bedroom. A large bed was nestled against the sidewall, its carved headboard framing the neat arrangements of pillows like a work of art. He carefully set her on the bed, leaning her back against the stack of pillows. The bedspread was a soft powder blue chenille, slightly out of character he thought, in comparison to the simplicity of the other room. She tried to get up, but he held her there.

"What do you think you are doing?!" her voice was panicked. The bed creaked as Erech sat next to her. She struggled to release herself.

"Shhhhhh," his eyes held her, and she was paralyzed, unable to move. He touched her face, running his finger down her cheekbone, stroking her chin with his thumb.

"Please," her voice was trembling.

Erech could see that she was afraid. Something that surprised him, given her willingness just a little while ago to die. To die for him, if he remembered correctly.

"I am not going to hurt you," he tried to sound reassuring, still holding her with the strands of energy that he had woven. "Let me look."

He reached down and carefully captured the fabric of the hem of her robe in his fingers. Slowly he slid the garment upwards, exposing the curve of her ankles, the shapely muscles of her calves, then higher, perhaps higher than necessary.

A jolt of electricity ran through her body as his fingers made contact with her leg. Her body began to swirl and thrum as he moved his fingers over her. She tried to jerk away, wanting to run, but she found again that she could not move. He had done something, something that hypnotized, immobilized her body, but left her mind free.

Erech moved into her leg, locating the tiny crack that had merged incorrectly into the cartilage of the bone. It had healed itself, rapidly reconstructing marrow and tissue, but the fabric was damaged, like a microscopic grain of sand encapsulated in living tissue. Bone fragments that had fractured and rearranged themselves incorrectly. He moved deeper into the wound, it was a delicate affair. Carefully he moved the fragments, separated them again from the cartilage they had linked themselves to and fit them back into the places they belonged. It was satisfying, to see each chard find it's home, welding itself into the fabric of the cartilage. But time consuming. Still, he enjoyed merging with her, sewing. Her chemistry, her biology was remarkable. Self-healing, with a biological intelligence that was impressive. But slow. Stagnant in places. The blood did not flow as it should. The bone did not knit as rapidly as it could.

She was starving.

He could feel the hunger. The deprivation of the cells. Like a succulent whose leaves were dry from lack of water. He used his own threads, the fabric of his bodocar, to heal her.

Thalassa could feel a dull ache in her ankle, the pain felt like a sore tooth that needed to be pulled, it ached in a way that begged for more. For relief. She felt the movement there, the gentle pulsing of Erech's energy traveling deeper and deeper into the pain.

Finally she felt him withdraw, the throbbing grew fainter. His hands moved up her leg, over her knee, and she trembled inside. He seemed to hover, his hand pausing against her upper thigh, then almost reluctantly, he pulled the robe back down over her legs. He hovered above her, his warm brown eyes reaching out. There was a pulling in her head, as he released her. She knew when she was freed, that she could move, could flee if she wanted to. But she did not.

Instead she reached up and touched his face, ran her own fingers over his cheekbones as he had done her. She felt the roughness of his skin, the smooth lines of his brow, and the hard edge of his jaw. "What are you?" she whispered.

Erech heard the words, but he did not answer. He drew closer to her. He could see her full lips, and he wanted to crush them beneath his, to bury himself in her body, the softness of her, to find satiating relief from the pulsing energy between them.

"You should rest now. Your body will need time."

And then he was gone. She heard the scuffling of the wall opening in the other room, and the soft click as it swung shut again.

# Chapter 7

When Thalassa woke the sun was just beginning to sink on the horizon. Her body had been exhausted, she must have slept through the day. The flat was empty, Erech was gone. She convinced herself that she was not disappointed.

She went into the kitchen to fix herself some tea, and for the first time realized that there was no pain. She jumped up and down a few times, applying pressure on her ankle. Nothing. She ran her fingers over the bone, pressing them into her skin. It was as if the injury had never been.

He had healed her. As he did the Father that night in the ally. Knit her bone back the way that it should have been. Erechantheous.

She used the kettle to heat water. The gas flames licked the bottom of the pot and soon the water was boiling, the little kettle whistling. The liquid steamed as she poured it into the pot of dried dandelions and green tea. The familiar smell was comforting.

In the background was the music from the ice rink. Thursday night was couples skating, the rink stayed open much longer. She took her tea back into her bedroom and on a whim opened the closet. Rows of black and grey nuns robes lined the rack, neatly pressed and methodically spaced. She pulled them back, the wooden hangers clacking together, and found the hidden collection of clothing. She had entombed it in a large plastic garment bag. Her fingers fumbled a little as she unzipped the bag, exposing the contents. She rustled around inside, until finally she found it.

Even after all of these years the dress was still beautiful. Robin's egg blue, the intricate hand beaded glass sparkled glamorously as she removed it from the bag. The layers of fringe and unique embroidery still set the drop waist garment apart, even for its time. Lillie, who had spent so much time pushing and nudging her to dress up, trying, she supposed, to bring her out of the drudgery of the convent and into the excitement of her perpetual parties. She couldn't resist the dress, and had sent it from Europe in the 20's. The garment seemed to embody all of the fun and rebellion of its time, the flapper era, and it had been sent with a pair of matching shoes and other accessories.

Maybe it was the music drifting in from the rink, or the melancholy she had felt after watching her books go up in flames. Or perhaps it was the way he had touched her, Erechantheous, his fingers stroking her face, gliding over her legs. Whatever it was, without thinking she pulled the robe over her head, letting it crumple on the floor in a heap. She slid luxuriously into the dress. The inside was lined with silk and it felt sumptuous against her skin. Somewhere she had a pair of pinstripe silk hose, and when she found them, took secret guilty pleasure in sliding them over her legs. The shoes were leather died in the same shade of blue, with hand stitched glass beads and sequins, and heels that made a tap dance clacking sound on the floor.

She spun around in the little room, loving the way the fringe lifted in the air and twirled with her. Her black hair streamed out over her shoulders, and she found the sparkling headband that had come with the dress, and used it to lift her hair from her face.

The music pulled her, out through the passageway, and across the rusted maze leading to the rink. She enjoyed the feeling of her heels on the hard surfaces of the old pool area. She reveled in the fact she could walk now with no pain. She felt a momentary sense of freedom that she realized had been missing these past decades since Lillie died.

Her attire drew some looks from the visitors. Many a male head turned as she wound around the mechanical toy displays and game booths. She adopted a cold stare to deter them from approaching, making it clear that their attention was unwanted. She stood by the sweeping glass windows on the landing high above the rink, watching the skaters dance and twirl to the new music that was hitting the scene. Rock and Roll they were calling it, and remembered Erech had been playing some of it on his violin at Sansou's. When she was tired of watching them, she found one of her favorite places by a window in the corner, and looked out over the darkened waters of the Pacific Ocean, watching the fierce waves white cap as they prepared to hit the shore. She tried not to allow the deep longing to sweep over her, the craving she always felt when she looked out over the water.

A song came on that she recognized, a welcome distraction. It was the familiar voice of Ella Fitzgerald. She allowed the music to fill her and twirled for a moment in the corner, looking down like a little girl to watch the sparkling fringe lift around her.

Erech leaned against the rail, watching her. She was a stunning beauty. More than he had imagined. It was like a totally different person stood there, nun's robes gone, leaving this dazzling dancing creation in its place. Her long black hair spun around her as she moved. She was still trying to hide, tethered to a distant corner of the building. Not distant enough, he felt a pull of jealously, a rare emotion for him, as men's heads turned to look at her. Some of them with wives or their dates, pulling on their arms, frowning their displeasure.

Thalassa was a stunner. He wondered at the way she hid herself in her religion, and behind those glasses, when there was so much more that seemed available to her. The light caught her dress and the glass beads and sequins dazzled and glittered, drawing more looks. She seemed totally oblivious.

She felt him before she saw him. A tingling sensation in her spine. When she turned, he was behind her, lounging against the railing, he seemed to be enjoying himself. Watching her. She blushed.

Suddenly she realized how exposed she was. It was ok, when she was in a world of strangers. It was easy to manage that. But with him it was different. He was here, his powerful presence overwhelming the space and she had no place to hide.

She looked at the staircase, tried to calculate the time it would take to get back to her suite. And how to get past without him following.

He strolled over to where she stood and lifted himself up, sitting on top of the counter next to the row of giant metal binoculars used by visitors to get closer views of the seals, wildlife and surrounding landscape. He ran his eyes over her body, her dress, her legs peeking out from under the fringed hem. "Nice," he said appreciatively.

She blushed again, and tried to shrink back into the shadows, but there were none, even in that remote corner. "To what do we owe this pleasure?" His eyes twinkled mischievously as he took in her features, red lips, dark eyelashes, and eyes that were bluer tonight due to the color of her dress.

"I. . . I . . . was. . " she stammered. "It felt good to be healed." The word's slipped out and she instantly regretted them. Feeling as if she had unintentionally referenced something intimate that had passed between them. "I mean. . . err. . my ankle was better."

Erech smiled, and his face was warm. "Ah," he said, "of course." He tried to set her at ease. She seemed. . . panicked somehow. Trapped, like an animal caught in a snare. He reached out and moved a strand of loose hair out of her face, allowing his fingers to linger on it, running them down the silky strand.

The song changed, and Erech turned toward the rink. Bill Haley and the Comets. Some were saying he had invented the new Rock and Roll genre blazing through the United States with his Rockabilly songs. This was one of his new ones.

"Dance?" Erech reached out his hand.

Thalassa looked surprised. "Wh. . what? "

"Care to dance?" He smiled humorously. "Kind of like what you were doing a few minutes ago, except with me."

She blushed again. "I. . I'm. . not really a good dancer." She shrunk back further, feeling the hardness of the wall against her back.

"Well, that is a shame," Erech slid from the counter and moved closer. "Fortunately I am a good dancer. Just follow my lead."

Before she could protest, his arm curled around her waist and she was pressed up against him. Erech glided backward, pulling her with him, his feet dancing in a remarkable manner, and he guided her body with him. As the music picked up pace, she thought she stepped on his toes a couple of times, but he didn't seem to notice, and never faltered. Soon she found herself lifted up into his arms, rhythmically to the beat. Then he moved from the lift to a dip, swooshing her downward. She let out a laugh. She couldn't help it. He smiled at her and swooshed her upward, then back to her feet again. He was enjoying himself, she could tell, and she felt his pleasure as he danced her whimsically around the corridor.

People stopped to stare and soon a small group began to form, but Erech didn't seem to notice, he continued to lift and guide her around the make shift dance floor. At one point he twirled her, lifting her arm and moving her into a spin. Her shoes clacked like an instrument against the floor and she laughed again and it felt so good. She forgot about her body, exposed to him, forgot about her vulnerabilities, and became totally swept up in it. Finally the song ended, and though she wasn't tired, she felt out of breath.

There was clapping and cheering, and Erech took a bow. Thalassa noticed for the first time the crowd that had gathered. "You should take your gal out there," someone called out, pointing to the ice rink below. She moved to stand behind him, away from the crowd, but he pulled her forward in his arms.

"Have you ever danced there?" he nodded toward the rink.

"What? I mean. . no. Of course not. No." She felt flustered.

"No," he raised an eyebrow; his face was very close to hers. "Never? That is a shame. How long have you lived here?"

She was silent. If she told him the truth, that she had been a resident for some 58 years he might have some questions. "I don't know how to ice skate." She said instead.

"Hmmm," Erech responded reaching down and finding another stray hair that gave him an excuse to brush his fingers sensually along the line of her cheek. "Fortunately, I do. It is similar to dancing, but requires more trust."

"I really don't think. . . " she started to protest.

"Come," Erech took her hand, and led her toward the stairwell. She felt the slight weight of the beadwork on her dress, and the fringe, tapping her legs as they descended. Thalassa felt also another sensation- guilty pleasure. She was doing something she shouldn't do, wasn't allowed to do. Father O'Ryan wouldn't like it, Teresa, the sisters. She had duty, vows that were made to God. They did not allow for things like this. For men and dancing.

But the music called to them, it would not be ignored, commanding movement and merriment. "Cherry Pies Ought to be You," "Fatback Corn Licker", "All Night Long", the songs wove their spell as they were projected over the loud speaker. Erech had her fitted for skates, and then he was crouched before her, his fingers enjoying the silk stockings as he caressed her foot before sliding it into one of the skates. She wanted to protest, she wasn't a child she could put on her own shoes, but the sensation was so pleasurable, the connection to him so strong, that she put her hand on one of his shoulders and just went with it.

Then she was lifted up, her dress glittering, as he carried her to the ice. She was wobbly on the blades at first and he used his arm to steady her. He proved to be a patient teacher. Helping her grip the ice, moving back and forth along the side of the rink. Soon she was ready to learn to swizzle, pushing the skates apart and letting them glide back together. Though she was wobbly and insecure, Erech's was there to give her balance when she thought she would fall. Eventually she began to move out a little from his reach, laughing with delight when she was able to swizzle around him.

Erech took pleasure in Thalassa's delight. It had been too many years to count since he had learned to skate, his father had taught him on a pond near the Caucasus Mountains by the Caspian Sea. Born in a land of snow and ice, it was like second nature. Suddenly he saw her begin to stumble and quickly bridged the space between them to catch her.

Thalassa looked up at him, his strong arm capturing her just inches above the hard ice. Her face was flushed, cheeks red, eyes sparkling with the fun of it. He stared at her with intensity, desire. It should have been frightening, but instead she wanted more. She lifted her arms and then curled them around his neck as he pulled her against his chest.

The music slowed, and the giant speakers belted out the recorded sounds of Bill Snyder's orchestra. Erech recognized the tune, his trained ear appreciated the musical tapestry of the piano and the other many instruments, "Bewitched". For a moment he allowed the darkness of yesterday, Isolde's war with Ianarious, his father's precarious position, the politics and madness that had crept into his world, to disappear. He was enchanted by this beautiful creature in his arms, and immersed in American music, which had been denied to him for so long. The entire western world, the birthplace of ragtime, jazz, barbershop and now rock and roll. In this moment he was soaking in it, like a giant steaming tub in a frigid Russian bathhouse, the culture and innovative evolution of the Western civilization.

"The Happy Whistler" came on and Erech whooshed Thalassa around the rink, enjoying her laughter and the way that she clung to him. He dipped her low, then high above his head. Her joy was infectious. The fierce fighter he had seen on the motorcycle, and later at Sansou's seemed to have vanished, leaving this soft and unabashed creature in his arms. It was unexpected and totally delightful, Erech continued the dance, one song after another, until the lights flickered, signaling the last.

A slow song. Her blades touched down, and he glided her, holding her close. She seemed a willing victim, her arms pressing her body against his, melting into him. She forgot the swizzle for a moment, so he swizzled for her, lifting her so her skates were no longer touching, making the turns. He glided backward, effortlessly navigating between the human skaters, oblivious to their stares.

Then the song ended. The dance. People reluctantly began to trudge across the ice, heading for the counter to turn in their skates. Erech and Thalassa stood there still wrapped in each other's arms. Finally with regret, he let her go, gently detangling himself while simultaneously pulling her toward the wooden benches.

He unlaced her skates, replacing them, like Cinderella with the pretty little shoes that matched her dress. Reality began to sink in.

Erech disappeared, taking her skates to the counter. She stared out over the empty rink, white ice glistening in the fading lights, and the heaviness began to return.

By now he will have found the note she had placed on the grave. Father O'Ryan and the others would need to get out. She had to get them out. It was too dangerous. The demons would return. Somehow they were multiplying, growing dramatically in numbers, and they would be back. Hungry to finish what was started at Sansou's. Though they had burned the Mansion, hidden the evidence, still, she knew that they were in great danger. She had been in many situations since the sea had discarded her onto the shores of this tumultuous land, but this time it felt different. A deeper danger than she had ever known.

Erech returned, his hand sliding to the small of her back as she stood. She quickly moved away. Click clack click, the shoes echoed against the corridor winding toward the closet that was the entrance to the passageway. Click clack clack. She wasn't sure if he followed.

# Chapter 8

It was foggy and cold on the pier. The bay was like black glass glimmering under the light of the moon. Nights like these were his favorite. Calm, quiet, full of a kind of solitude that was not allowed to his kind. They, who were like the rats of the city, crawling through the darkness, through the shadows to find morsels to sustain themselves.

He looked out at the bobbing row of boats lined up along the docks. Fishing boats mostly, named with all of the symbolism of the foolishness of humans. Girlfriends and mistresses, Rose Anne, the Donna Arana, the Bellefontaine. Then came the ones that were about the experience, Lazy Days, Happy Trails, The Suzie Sunrise. Even when he had been one, he had felt a certain repulsion for the human need to stamp their names and emotions on everything. A narcissistic misperception that their legacy would be important when they were gone.

There was a splash in the water below as a hungry fish jumped to catch an insect. He heard soft footsteps in the distance. His hearing was good, almost as good as the Vdarayans. A thing he had been careful not to reveal during his time in the dungeon. Soon the girl reached him.

He stood with his back to her, his long black trench coat flapping in the wind. He felt her fear, her uncertainty, her remorse. The snake twisted inside of him and he stroked it, calming the infestation. Then he turned.

Her face was pale, she looked cold, her thin straight figure was wrapped in a short ill-fitting yellow coat. She had freckles on her nose, which made her look like a schoolgirl, but then that is what she was he supposed. He moved closer.

"Did you bring it?" His voice was soft, intentionally sensual. He wove the darkness around her, transforming it into a delicious song that her senses enjoyed. She looked up at him, large doe eyes searching for some compassion. The pulsing and perpetual desire consumed her, it was like a chemical fire that could not be squelched with water. The more that was flung upon it, the more it grew.

"Yes," she said, not taking her eyes from him. She held out the key. It dangled from a dingy ribbon. It was long and gold colored scratched and nicked by time and use. A key, he knew, that would help him pass, with ease and convenience, through the tall metal gates that were sandwiched between the vast stone walls of the convent.

He smiled coldly, the corners of his mouth lifting ever so slightly. Veined white fingers reached out to claim the prize "Good girl."

She moved closer. Scared, almost against her will, but still closer. "Will you drink from me now?" and her eyes were pleading, begging for some relief. "Please. . . " she whispered, and tears pooled, one of them escaping and sliding slowly downward.

Tavrose felt the serpent inside, turbulent and reckless. He wanted to gorge himself on her. Take everything she was, the liquid that gave her life. To trade her for it, exchanging for death, and in doing so gorge also on the power in that; on the dark and terrible energy that sustained his kind.

He would not die. No matter if he took from this girl or did not take from her. Starvation would never kill him. It was not the key to the doorway that led to the eternal peace his Spanish Brothers had found. They who had not survived the experiment.

His red eyes dilated, drawing her closer, until she was touching him, her green plaid skirt whipping around his body in the wind. He traced the line of her neck with a long black fingernail, and felt her tremble. "Tell me," he continued to weave the darkness as he stroked her, "of the Father."

"He left tonight to meet her." Her shy little voice spoke. They are waiting for someone. Someone who will take them from the city. My uncle wanted to go, but the Father would not allow it. He remained with the nuns." She leaned into him, pushing her neck against his fingers. "Please. . . . " she begged.

Tavrose pressed the tip of his nail into her neck, and his mouth watered as a little drop of blood lined the wound. He lifted the finger to his lips and savored the smell. The snake inside of him rose up, lashed upward with viperous fangs. It's gaping venomous mouth threatening to swallow him.

"Veni, Creator Spiritus," he whispered, "mentes tuorum visita". Morcant had made him a monster, damned him to an eternal hell "Creator Spiritus," he whispered. Yet ultimately, this hell belonged to him. He did not have to belong to it.

"Mentes tuorum vista," he leaned in, ever so slowly. His black tongue darted out, probing. He inhaled deeply, using his breath to control the viper, pushing it down, deciding how it would be fed. Carefully his fangs pricked the girl's soft skin moving deeper into the wound on her neck. He closed his eyes, taking another deep breath, and then allowed himself a drink.

One drink.

He felt her body convulse as the blood flowed into him. She moaned as her darkness was satiated, her awakened desire culminated in a fevered orgasm that clashed with his damned flesh. She participated in the disease of his spirit.

He lifted his head. In a daze she looked up. "More," she whispered, her voice thick with lust, "please more. . . " But then she felt the wind whipping at her, the coldness of the air.

He was gone.

There was the familiar smell of grilled fish in the smoky room. Fish cooked in a particular manner, with charcoal and mesquite, such as it had been for so many decades stretching back to when the restaurant was just a tent on Long Wharf. Now called the Tadich Grill, Thalassa remembered when it was Cold Day Restaurant. A name given to it in 1882 when tax assessor Alexander Badlam ran for re-election and said it would be "a cold day" when he was defeated. Of course he lost by a landslide, so the public started calling it Cold Day Restaurant, because that was where Badlam liked to drink his coffee and talk about himself.

Father O'Ryan, sat across from her at a little table on the other side of the wooden partition, a square mirror smartly embedded in the painted wood beside them. It highlighted Father O'Ryan's brown, slightly moth eaten suit, which he seemed uncomfortable wearing. It was out of character for him to be without his monastic robe, but tonight he was trying to blend in, avoiding unwanted attention from those who may be hunting them. Cigarette smoke from nearby tables mingled with the scent of fish, and the father nervously adjusted his tie.

"He hasn't come."

"He will."

"How do you know?"

Thalassa pulled the hat down over her eyes. The Father was nervous, fidgety. She had exchanged her own robes for a wide ugly brown dress that draped down well past her knees, and an equally unattractive hat. Her hair was pulled back tightly and hidden. Thick black glasses comfortably perched in their familiar place on her nose.

"I just know."

"I found the letter." The Father looked haggard, his usual youthful looks had somehow vanished and the lines of his face now seemed to match his the grey peppered hair. "He had not been there before me."

"He will. You and the sisters just need to lay low, at the convent. Run the patrols. We need to keep Sansou safe until we can get you out." She looked at him, her eyes large and blurred and distorted by the thick tinted lenses of her glasses. "We have been through this before."

"Not like this!" He seemed to catch himself, his voice too loud. He lowered it. "Never like this. So many of them. We have never seen so many."

She didn't know what to say, so she took a sip of tea instead. He was right. They had never seen so many demons. The Father had only one brief lifetime as a reference, but she had been in this city now for over a hundred years, and she knew there had never been so many. She nibbled on a slice of apple that was in her salad.

"How do you know he will come?" he asked again. "From Mexico. From all that way?"

"He always comes. When I need him."

She took another bite of apple. It was exhausting to try and explain to him, how she was able to reach him. She couldn't explain it to herself, it was just a part of it, a part of what she was. She never allowed herself to explore it, she did not really understand what it was. Only when absolutely necessary. In an emergency.

"He will come." She had found him. Found the strand, the pulsing cord of energy. It would reach him. It would pull him. "But it will take time." She said the words aloud. "Time for him to get here."

"They will come for us again. More. Teresa saw them getting off of one of the boats. At least 10 of them. Headed to one of the brothels." The Father leaned in closer, clanking his silverware as he inadvertently brushed up against the table setting. "Ten of them! How many more boats are out there?" His voice was hushed.

"Give me the address of the brothel," she slid a pen and a slip of paper across the table. I will take care of them.

"We have to get out." The Father's face was serious. "You have to get out."

Thalassa watched him scratch the address on the slip of paper. She felt frustration. He knew she could not leave. Could never leave. How many times she had driven to the boundary? She was like a plastic character captured in a snow globe. The world outside was available to her only through the glass.

The father was right though, they had to leave. It seemed that the demons had somehow targeted Sansou. Some of them had been at the wharf asking about him. Two more spotted at Pacific Heights going through the rubble of his mansion. If it were not for Erech, there would be no reason to search. They all would have been killed at the dinner.

"How did he do it?" The Father asked as if he read her mind. "How did he kill so many? It was like he was a lightening bolt, or some kind of phantom. He was everywhere at once." He leaned back and picked up his coffee cup, pausing to take a sip. He set the cup down and added a sugar cube, stirring loudly with the little silver spoon. "What if we ask him to help us?"

Thalassa looked at him. She remembered Erech's hands on her body, the tingling sensations she felt as he lifted her in his arms and danced around the rink "We don't need him." She reached across the white tablecloth and took the piece of paper, noting the address before slipping it into her pocket.

"How can you say that Anne?" He sounded shocked.

She slid her glasses down past the rim of her nose. She wanted him to see her, to understand the seriousness. "We do not know what he is Father. Nor what he could become."

"He saved our lives."

"Was it our lives or his own! Or the lives of the musicians? Or his brother? We do not need him!" and with that she rose from her chair. "We have to take care of ourselves, as we have always done." She pulled at the fabric of her dress, straightening it where it had bunched up in the seat. The ugly brown fabric swirled around her legs.

"He will come. He can hide you. When you and the others are out, I will lose myself in the tunnels of this city. They will not find me there."

"Anne, you cannot escape from these numbers."

"I will send for you," she said over her shoulder. "When he crosses the boundary."

Erech lounged on the deck of the Poisson. He enjoyed the rocking sensation of the boat as he puffed on a tightly rolled cigar imported from the Vuelto Abajo region of Cuba. It had been days since he had seen his brother. Marissa, more intent on leaving them for the daylight to taking in some of the local attractions, seemed nonchalant when he asked her. "He's somewhere," she told him. Since the dinner they had not spoken, and he assumed that Berengar was avoiding him. Angry at him for going against the Queen.

The moon was sinking below the horizon signaling only a few hours left before he would have to go below. He looked down and a soft silver blue glow emulated from the bands still locked onto his wrists. It occurred to him again that he should take them off, return them to the violin case they had called home for these many years.

He held out his hands, turning his wrists to watch the light shift. He had spent so many nights by so many campfires doing the same. They were old friends, and older enemies. How many lives had they taken? Wars fought and won. Human worlds altered and shifted by the results. Sometimes just for fun, or on a whim. Sometimes for a woman. And other times it had just been practice, for sport, like a hunter in the woods. Occasionally it had been for Achaikos, to shift the human tides and maintain the security and secrecy of his palace.

Raanca, the sacred stone whose origins were just a myth to him. A fairy tale told by his people during the six weeks of summer when the sun did not set and they had to go to ground.

The symbols, the engravings so similar to the books they had rescued from the library curved around the bracelets. He thought again about taking them off, putting them away.

But he did not.

Life, which stretched endlessly behind and before him had taught and taken him through many rivers. And the most important lesson he had learned throughout was that it is choice that took you there. The results were always woven by the actions and intentions of the chooser. Him, his father, Isolde, others. Choice had created them. It was the weaver weaving, selecting the shape, the colors, the design that birthed the outcome.

He had made his.

It happened when she told him to run. He-Erechantheous. A warrior whom even Isolde feared. Her father Achaikos had never dared to demand of him; to command him, only to ask, and sometimes even barter or bargain. He was a legend to his people. An elusive mythical figure they seldom saw, but knew had altered history. Thalassa had put herself in front of him, to save him. To shield him. She had not asked for his help. She did not beg nor barter. He had not existed to her, except as one of her human companions. A fragile helpless thing to protect. That is what he had seen in her eyes that night at Sansou's mansion. That is when he had made the choice.

He held up his arms again. The Raancas eerie blue color interrupted the night. Despite his choice, war was no longer in his palate. The Ancient's had it right. They did not interfere. This kingdom was created against their will by Achaikos. When this was done he would sail to China, to celebrate the New Year, and visit Zi Ru in the Dunhuang Caves. Then to India to Adjanta, where they could forget by playing their music and listening to it echo off the walls of the Buddhist temples while they danced.

But for now, he would follow his choice.

# Chapter 9

The fog moved steadily in, creating a mystical white blanket that wrapped itself around the darkness. Tavrose moved quietly along the old wall that edged the interior of the convent.

It was as the girl had said, the priest left earlier, to meet her, he assumed. Sister Anne. Thalassa, he had heard her say her real name that night at Sansou's mansion. Tavrose had gone with them as he was ordered, but he hadn't gone in, hanging instead on the outside, watching the massacre.

The Father's absence provided him with opportunity. The nuns were very busy, he had observed, they never seemed to slow. Busy praying, busy cleaning, busy mucking out the stalls of the few horses they housed in the little stable adjacent to the main building. Cooking, training in the grove of trees nearby, tending to their little garden of lettuce and other plants that liked the cold. Busy.

He ducked into one of the corridors. It was here he had seen the nun take the plates of food. His ears perked, and he heard the noises of the convent, then isolated them, honing in on the locations of the humans. Slowly he slithered up the stairs, padding on the balls of his feet, to prevent the hard heels of his boots from making sound.

Tavrose enjoyed himself. The thrumming of anticipation. The crackling sensations of risk and the danger directed toward him. He knew if he was discovered that the nuns would use their experience, their training to try and end him. That he could be trapped in this fortress, with little hope of escaping before one of their wooden arrows struck his heart. He was like a tight ropewalker at one of those fairs. Suspended high above, balancing on a thin thread above the crowd.

He heard the scuffling of shoes. Someone was coming. He looked up at the high stonewall above the spiraling staircase, and then jumped, the soft suctioning centers of his palms securing him. Another attribute of his that had fascinated Morcant. Carefully he climbed higher, and then paused, frozen as one of the sisters made her way down the stairs below him. She did not seem to feel him, to sense his presence, as she continued her journey. Of course that was not surprising. The dead were an insignificant part of the scenery.

He watched her wind down around the staircase and out of sight. Then waited until her footsteps wandered out of range. He continued his climb.

Eventually he came to the top, and melted into the shadows of the long corridor. There were several doors, framing the long hallway, thick wooden ones with black iron rivets and knockers bolted on the outsides. He perked his ears. Eventually he thought he could discern a faint sound from one of the rooms. It was an inconsistent buzzing, or snorting. Snoring? He glided toward it.

The door was heavy, it would make a lot of noise. He used one of his long fingernails to slip the latch, then lifted it, putting pressure in particular places to stifle the creaking. Finally, when there was a crack big enough, he slipped inside.

Edwin Sansou, the third Edwin, dating back to the original who had forged a fortune in gold by being one of the first to land on the American River, 6 months before Sam Brannon paraded through Market Street with a vial of Gold dust shouting loudly for all to hear. Brannon of course had not been interested in mining, but rather selling merchandise at his store, axes, shovels and other things. He knew a gold rush would make him rich, and so it did. And others, like Sansou, the fist responders, made claims that netted them fortunes that would last beyond one generation.

Tavrose wondered, as he stood above Edwin, watching his lips flatulate unattractively, loud snoring permeating from his nostrils, if this Edwin, was the same as that one. Perhaps it was as Isolde's spy's believed, that he did not inherit or benefit from his grandfather's find, but was his grandfather. An immortal Edwin who cloaked himself in his own history, regenerating by becoming his own heir.

He looked at the pale chubby arms, peeking out from the sheet that covered him. His black/brown hair was disheveled, and it looked like his mustache needed a trim.

Tavrose reached out a spiny fingernail flicking ever so carefully the edge of the sheet. Slowly, gently, he pulled the white cotton fabric downward. Just a bit more. His hand recoiled.

Edwin's chest was as flabby and out of shape as his arms. Not fat, just flabby, unused. Tavrose took in the dark mass of hair curling around his nipples furry striping down his abdomen, looking for the mark.

It was not there.

Suddenly Edwin chortled and snorted then shifted his body. His eyes flew open.

"Shhhhhh. . ." Tavrose put a long white finger to his lips. His red eyes were like beacons in the darkness.

Edwin's eyes widened. He looked terrified.

Tavrose leaned down. A long black tongue darted out, and slid from the base of Edwin's neck to his earlobe, stroking him. Then he whispered, flicking the inside of his ear with his tongue. He validated his sins, gluttony, lust, and greed. Then more, the suppression of what he truly was, and the darkness created by that suppression, it had become an imprisoned beast longing to get out. But it was 1954 and Edwin was not allowed to be free. "I can help you," Tavrose promised, weaving the darkness, "I can feed you," The song danced around him, writhing and worming its way into his body and he trembled.

Tavrose smiled.

He pressed the dagger of his nail against the man's throat, watching a line of blood form.

Thalassa had just finished washing the last of the black blood from her, when she heard him come in. From behind the closed door of the bathroom she heard shuffling, then a chair creaking as he sat down.

She took the heavy corduroy dressing gown from the hook on the wall, and slipped inside its protective folds, pulling the long zipper to close the front. Teresa had made the garment for her last year, crafted on the old sewing machine at the convent, the hunter green color a variation from her usual black robes. She adjusted the long sleeves by pulling them to slide down over her wrists. She had just washed it yesterday, and enjoyed the feeling of the soft fabric against her skin.

There had only been 4 at the Brothel. Three had been easy, she had surprised them by coming through the side door near the kitchen pantry. There was an easy passage into the lounge. Something she learned 50 years ago, when they were smuggling out some of the girls, a slave trade being run from China. The fourth one, a small but fast blonde, had taken off when the fighting started. She had to go after her, which is how she got splattered by the blood. One of her shots missed, so she'd had to take her hand to hand. The father said there were ten, she would have to go back for the others.

She picked up the hairbrush laying on the counter and was attempting to contain her thick mass of curls, when she heard the lilting sound of his violin, it lured her out, pulling her almost against her will.

Erech's eyes met hers when she emerged, warm brown eyes like a fire on a winter's day. Sparkling and alluring, he used his instrument to weave comfort and safety. Playing a solo he had learned from a Russian Princess who had been condemned to Siberia for crimes unknown.

Thalassa moved closer. The room was dark, lit by a few candles he had put on the table. It was afternoon, her day-his night, and he had darkened the windows with make shift black curtains, tacked haphazardly above the pretty little bronze portals.

Finally the music tapered as he lifted the bow, then lowered the instrument. Erech smiled, warming her, and extended a hand to the empty chair by him. He took in her appearance, hair a wild mass of curls, her body buried somewhere in the massive green gown. Not the usual nun's garb, but a close second. He reached for one of the books that he had taken from the backpack they brought back from Sansou's, and flipped through the thick worn pages.

Her bare feet padded on the floor, she went into the kitchen, rustling around, then brought back a tray with tea and coffee. Erech traced his fingers over some of the symbols painted colorfully on the pages. He shifted when he heard the clinking of the cups.

"Coffee?" He nodded, and she poured him some. He declined the cream, which never sat well in his system. She made herself a cup of tea, spooning the leaves in the pretty flowered cup. The liquid steamed as she poured the hot water.

"Your story," he gestured to the book, the same one she had shown him that day in the library.

"Vdara," she countered. "I believe that is what you called it."

Erech didn't respond, choosing instead to take a sip of his coffee. It was hot, warming the inside of his mouth. Humans liked warmth and heat. It is what made their blood so palatable he supposed.

"Is that what the moon is called?" She asked quietly. "Vdara?"

"The star." He answered, fingering one of the symbols, marveling at how time had seemed to preserve it rather than age it. The bold lines made bolder by the faded color of the paper it was scribed on.

"What?"

He looked up. "Vdara is a star . Not a moon." He took a cube of sugar from the tray and dropped it into his coffee, enjoying the effect as it began to dissolve. "A red star." He pointed to the symbol with the leaping flames. "and this," he pointed to another symbol on the page, a circle half black half white, "is Vdaraya, the daughter of the star."

"Daughter of a star?" her voice was quiet.

"Yes," he clanked the little spoon as he stirred the sugar, incorporating it. "A planet, tidally locked to its mother and her ecosystem".

"I've never heard of this planet." Indeed there were only 9 planets that had been discovered by astronomers, and all were, how had he put it, "tidally locked" to the earth's star, the sun .

"Of course." He flipped the page in the book, pleased to see more of the story. It was starting to make sense, the way she had explained it before. That the symbols fit together triangularly, not linear. He began to see the pattern, the ways in which they were related. "Vdara is a universe away from your universe." He smiled, as if she were a child. "To you, and your people, it cannot exist. It is a thing this world is not yet even able to dream of." He flipped the page again, interested to see more.

She thought of herself, of being trapped in San Francisco for a hundred years, a century contained by a boundary she could not see. The loneliness, the insatiable curiosity for what might live beyond.

"But it exists for you??" She looked down into her cup, still waiting for the leaves to turn the water. Also feeling intimidated by him, his hard muscled body next to hers.

"To me it is a story, passed from parent to child. Like verses of poetry or music from another generation." He sat back, lounging in his chair, enjoying looking at her.

She swirled the leaves in the cup with her finger. Hot. She quickly pulled away. Then picked up the spoon. She snuck a glance at him, and hastily looked back down when she saw him studying her. She knew her hair was wild, she should have pinned it up, covered it with the hat. But she left it loose, and it seemed that he liked it, the way that he was looking at her. Her cheeks flushed.

"Can you tell me? The story I mean."

He could tell she was nervous around him. Not panicked anymore, which was an improvement. He wanted to reach out and run his hands through her hair, pull her to him, into his lap. Play his violin, fiddling in the gypsy style, more merry and fun. He sighed. Choosing instead to take another drink of his coffee

"Ah, yes. . . the story." He rose from his chair. On the desk was an old record player, circa 1910 he thought. A nipponophone perhaps? Japanese, crafted of oak. "Records?" he asked, lifting his eyebrows quizzically.

"Of course," she said, enjoying his surprise, and opened the armoire. Her body armor hung there, along with carefully arranged hooks and compartments containing an assortment of weapons. She opened a wooden box resting on the floor of the cabinet, and pulled it out.

"Impressive." He said, scanning her weapons inventory.

She bristled and ignored him. A layer of dust powdered in the air as she slid off the lid. He peered over her shoulder as she sorted through them. "It has been a while since I. . . .err . . . have had these out."

"I can see that." He crouched down, intentionally brushing her arm, lingering there a little as he assisted in flipping through the collection. "Vintage. Mostly 20's" he commented

"I . . um. . . inherited them." She said. It was partially true. They were Lillie's of course, and she took them from her house just before she died. She needed something, to remember. "This one," she said a bit too eagerly. Her cheeks flushed again and she moved to the player.

Erech frowned quizzically. Full of surprises. A nun with records, most of them from decades ago, but still, no Ave Maria or gospel music that he could see. There was a moment of static as the needle searched for the track. "Ahhh," he said aloud when the music began to fill the room, "A lovely tune." He remembered this one, Fats Waller.

The tinkling wonder of "Music Maestro Please," filled the room, accompanied by the piano, and Waller's rich voice. He crossed the room and pulled her into his arms. She tried to jump back, but he nudged her closer, then moved back and forth to the rhythm. Thalassa tried not to embarrass herself by tripping on the long hem of her dressing gown as she tried to keep up with Erech's fancy footwork. He seemed not to notice her dilemma, artfully maneuvering around the bulky garment.

She was transported to another place, another time, and let herself melt into him, let him lead. She could feel the muscles beneath his silky dress shirt and the thickness of his lined wool jacket. It gave her a kind of craving, feelings she had not been allowed. She found it so difficult to push away. And she struggled with herself because she didn't want to.

Soon the record ended and they both stood there, listening to the needle scuff the edge. Finally, with some reluctance, she pulled out of his arms. "Another?" she queried, more bravely than she felt.

"Certainly." Erech smiled, and slid back into his chair. His coffee was getting cold. He got up again and went into the kitchen for a refresh. Music soon filled the room again, ragtime, and he felt a familiar sense of comfort in the merriment of it. He struck a match and held it to the tip of his cigarette, inhaling before heading back into the room.

She sat down, turning her attention to her own drink. She added some hot water from the pot on the tray. "Vdara."

"Mmmm." He took a drag, making little rings of smoke as he exhaled. "This is another good one," he said of the record she had put on. "Surprisingly good taste for a nun."

She chuckled. It just slipped out, he had some kind of charm that caused her to drop her guard. "Are you saying that nun's cannot have taste?"

His turn to laugh. He set the cigarette on the edge of the little saucer that matched his cup. "The story?" he looked at her with those warm eyes. "Vdara?" He picked up the cup and took a drink. "A planet cannot maintain an even climate when it is locked to a red star. It creates extraordinary temperature variations." He turned his attention to the book, flipping the pages back until he returned to the story they had been discussing. "This one."

She leaned closer and could see that he was pointing to the circle that was half black. "Separated from the sun?" she pointed to the symbol.

"Not sun. Star. And not separated, locked." He emphasized the word, as if she had not heard it the first time. "Vdaraya is locked to its mother. It is magnetic, a gravitational pull. One side of the planet, this side," he pointed to the half black part of the circle, "faces away, and is cold. A cold frozen world, that remains in a state of perpetual night. Forever darkness. The other," he pointed at the unshaded half, "a desert. A day that never ends. And when the star flares, the desert becomes storms of fire that threaten the darkness. It takes a while for them to burn through the atmospheric gases.

"But there are people," she pointed to the stick figures, "in the flames. Were there people on this planet?"

He picked up the cigarette, flicking the ashes off the end before bringing to his mouth. "Every story must have characters. In this case you mean the planet's inhabitants, Vdarayans. He pointed to the figures. The ones who lived in the night that does not end. They inhabited the cold and the frozen places. And during the flares, they had to go to ground, or take to the skies to escape the fires."

"The darkness saves them," she had moved her chair closer to see the pages, her arm was touching his, she reached out and ran her fingers over the yellowed pages, the stick figures who seemed to be running from the flames of the symbol next to them. "This book is so old. Ancient. How is it this story is here? In a book like this?" It seemed to her more like Science fiction, something that belonged on television or in a story book. They did not even understand their own moon, the earth's moon, and their own solar system, let alone what he was talking about.

"Where did this come from?" she asked him, "how did you hear this story?" She studied him carefully, wondering what else he know, what other things these books may reveal, that Erech could define, far better than her broken interpretation. Limited, she realized by the boundaries of her world."

Erech leaned closer, pushing the book out of the way along with his cup and the expired cigarette. He ran his fingers down her face and lifted her chin. She felt his breath on her, his face so close to her own, and then his lips were touching hers, softly, gently brushing across them, exploring. Suddenly his tongue was parting hers, darting inside her. He caressed the back of her head with his large rough hand, and she lost herself in the sensations, he sucked and massaged her, and when he finally pulled away he began trailing little kisses down her neck.

She clung to him. "I. . .mmmmm. . . " and somehow the zipper on her gown had opened, and she felt his mouth on her shoulder, his hand gently moving under the garment and then stroking her breast. He captured her mouth again, his lips pressing into her more passionately.

Thalassa felt as if her body was on fire. Her abdomen was swirling flames and she felt wet and aching. His teeth pulled at her bottom lip. "Thalassa," he whispered her name, and the fire spread.

She was so hungry. She wrapped her arms around his neck and moved with him as he pulled her into his lap. He kissed her deeply and she felt a desperate need; a kind of hunger she could not describe. It wasn't like the pinching curling sensation she felt at a meal. It was more intense, a crazy frenetic kind of starvation that overwhelmed her senses and robbed her of all logic.

His hands seemed to be all over her and it wasn't enough. Suddenly something pricked her mouth, interrupting the waves of pleasure. She tasted blood. Blood? In an instant a new kind of verocity struck like lightening. She pulled away. Her hand reached up and she felt her mouth, the sharpness there, and the fangs. Fangs?!

She looked at him. Erech was still in the chair, but shock lit his face. Horror she thought. He was looking at her, seeing her. Repulsed, horrified. He saw what she was.

He saw that she was a demon. A monster like those whose heads he had taken at Sansou's mansion.

Her stomach twisted and constricted in agony. Her fingers touched the red blood on her lip. She pulled them away and looked at them in the dim light of the room. Red, blood. Her mouth watered, and she felt roots tangling inside of her like a weed. It was in her legs, her sexuality, her organs, her spirit. An infestation of sin.

"Thalassa. . . . " Erech's voice was raw.

She was an abomination. He could see that, she was certain that she saw horror in his eyes. What had she been doing. What had she been thinking? She was such a fool. A terrible eternally damned fool! And she had compromised them. Everything that they were, the Father, the convent, all was at risk.

The gown was gaping open, she hadn't realized it, exposing her shoulder, breasts, her abdomen. She pulled it back up over, jerking the zipper in place.

"Thalassa. . . "he whispered again and rose from the chair.

She ran.

Erech could hear the shuffling creaking sound of the false wall turning. His acute hearing picked up her footsteps, barefoot feet, thudding on wood and metal corridors. And then there was nothing.

Stunned, he sat back down. He looked at the table, at the book that was still open. The little cups, half full. "Thalassa. . . " he said it for a third time and his voice was a whisper.

He had seen them, on her body, just below her rib cage, his hand moved over them. Four lines, like the marks of a bear claw. Flaps of skin dark in the creases where they adhered when they were dry.

The mark of a Pure.

Thalassa was the King's bastard.

Enjoy Book II by

Sno McLaine

Unraveling

Book II: A Vampire Mermaid Trilogy

Desperate to find a way to free Thalassa from Morcant's weaving, Erech struggles to buy some time. But he is in Tllaloc's land and time is not on his side. Thalassa begins unraveling the mystery of her past. Through Erech and ancient books, she discovers a world she never knew existed and the snow globe world she has been living in begins to crack. As the Queen's dark soldiers continue to penetrate San Francisco, Thalassa discovers a terrifying truth which tears her from the comfort of her new world. Forced to form strange alliances, she finds herself unraveling everything in the ultimate battle with the ancient world.

