11

REVELATION 12:4

And the beast stood before the woman for to devour her.

REVELATION 22:12

And, behold, I come quickly . . .

~ * ~

Well, this is a fine mess, Vic thought in disgust. He extricated himself from the unconscious woman's legs and stood; the thick, offensive smell of gunpowder crawled up his nose and he waved an ineffective hand in front of his face. Gregory's corpse, now a headless lump of slowly melting flesh, still twitched a few feet away, and already Gabriel was scrambling across the stage, his expression a study of slavering eagerness.

"Just stay the fuck away!" Vic snarled. Rita staggered down the aisle, screeching and ricocheting from one side to another like a pinball being slapped about by mechanical flippers. Her once darkly exquisite face had taken an upward slug in its cheekbone, destroying her right eye and ear and leaving pieces of her skull an exposed and dripping horror. Her head had a new and impossible shape that now sloped toward the front of her gore-encrusted blouse.

"What do I look like?" Rita whined and clutched at Anyelet. The Mistress pulled away in distaste and hurried toward Vic and the woman, leaving Rita to moan against a velvet-covered seat, hardly glancing at Gregory's body. "Is she dead?" Anyelet asked. She nudged the woman with one toe.

"No way." Gabriel was panting outright. "Can I do her?" His lips stretched and saliva trailed in glistening strands from his top to bottom teeth like a sparkling spider web.

"Kill her!" Rita's scream rose from the seats below. "Kill her and leave her for the sun!"

Anyelet ignored them both and nodded at the weapon that had killed Gregory. "What is this thing?"

Vic picked it up. "Some sort of semiautomatic shotgun, I think. Never saw one like it before." He lowered it back to the floor. "Pretty damned effective." He looked at Anyelet. "What about Gregory?"

"Leave him," she said flatly. "I've no time for dead meat."

“And the woman?" Gabriel asked again.

"Kill—"

"Shut up!" Anyelet snapped. "I'll make that decision!”

“What's to decide?" asked Gabriel. "You want to breed her?"

Vic tensed. The woman at his feet was far lovelier than anyone at the Mart; what would she do when Howard tried to rape her? Howard might kill her trying—and then, of course, there was the mutilated Rita, still keening in the background like an old woman. He cleared his throat to regain Anyelet's attention. "Don't we need to replace Gregory?" he asked. "There's only a few of us left." He couldn't believe his own suggestion, yet how could this woman, who had fought so valiantly to survive, be shut away and used like some weekly menu selection?

Anyelet studied him thoughtfully. "Perhaps we could use some new blood." Her black gaze slid briefly in Rita's direction.

"All right!" Gabriel swiftly buried his fingers in the woman's curly hair and yanked her head back, exposing her white throat with its richly filled arteries. Vic's huge hand shot out and covered Gabriel's wrist in a crushing hold. Gabriel yelped and released the woman; her head thumped to the floor and she gave a soft moan as Gabriel cried, "Hey!"

Anyelet glanced at Vic sharply and he released Gabriel. The younger vampire rubbed his wrist in bewilderment. "What the hell's your problem?"

"I just thought the Mistress might want to . . ." Vic couldn't bring himself to say it and a play of thoughts crossed Anyelet's features, then she smiled slyly.

"No. I think she should be yours, Vic."

"Why him?" Gabriel protested.

Anyelet cut him off with a glare. "Because that's what I want." She smiled again. "I think Vic could use a companion."

Companion? It was something Vic had never considered and his eyes sought the woman collapsed at his feet. Impossible—she'd probably despise him as much as he despised Anyelet. Yet . . . she might enjoy the new "life," as had hundreds of thousands of others. He shied away from the threat of Rita's ugly temperament and remembered instead the lonely nights in the echoing, empty Mart and on the city streets before the outcasts had become such a danger. Could the time stretching ahead be shared with someone?

He had to try it.

Vic picked her up in one smooth movement, feeling her warm skin and already regretting that it would soon be as bloodless and cold as his own. The life within her ebbed and swelled with each heartbeat, her pulse surging against the insides of his arms. Gabriel's envious stare and Rita's more vicious one followed him as he quickly carried his burden down the steps and out of the auditorium, grimacing and averting his eyes from Rita; the wreckage of her face was indescribable and far too great to ever heal. Following Anyelet's instructions, Gabriel swung the woman's weapon over his shoulder, then went to help Rita; in another few seconds, the group joined him at the Columbus Drive exit. Outside the locked doors the snow gleamed, white and unbroken beyond the driveway overhang. Gabriel gave one set of doors a petulant kick and they shattered; in vies arms the woman mumbled something, trapped in her own ominous dream.

"Unless you want her screams to draw every outcast for miles," Anyelet commented, "I suggest you get her to the Mart as quickly as possible. Gabriel will run with you in case you're attacked. Rita and I will follow."

Gabriel frowned. "What about the outcasts?"

Anyelet’s smile was a dull red slash in the night. "They don't dare challenge me."

Gabriel nodded and looked at Vic. Without bothering to speak, Vic held the woman close and began to run.

~ * ~

It was done.

Vic would have liked to have thrown up, but there was no way his body would allow him that cleansing luxury. He'd learned a lot during the melding of minds as he'd feasted, the least of which was her name—Deborah Nole—and more important, that she'd had a lover as recently as last night, a man called Alex. Still, even as her human body died, she'd fought the meld and kept his location so buried within her that Vic couldn't get to it, and the will such resistance entailed was beyond his comprehension. Now she slept beside his own sated and lazy form. He'd forgotten the feeling of fullness, of completion, that changing someone brought; it left in him a desire for more, and he hated it, and hated himself, too, for sacrificing the life of this splendid, strong woman on the oh-so-vague chance that his loneliness might be eased the slightest bit. He told himself that he was saving her from worse—Siebold—but what was Vic himself, really? Only another rapist, of a more unspeakable kind. At least in death she would've found whatever eternal peace awaited humankind. Now she simply had . . . hell.

And what of Deb's lover, Alex"? The determination with which she'd protected him even in death told Vic that the woman sleeping unwillingly within his arms, her porcelain-pale flesh forever chilled, would probably detest him from the instant she opened her eyes and felt The Hunger.

Vic sighed and pushed a curl of blue-black hair off her forehead. It was a waste that her sky-blue eyes would turn eventually to black, though at least the bruises his bloodkiss had left on her neck would be faded by dawn. Deborah Nole had never even opened her eyes. What a shame.

He would have liked to have seen her soul before it turned to the nightside.

~ * ~

Three A.M.:

In an alcove of St. Peter's, her face a shining, hopeful oval in the dimness, Jo knelt before the rack of votive candles. She'd lit them all half a hundred—as she'd voiced her prayers for Deborah Nole, and now they flickered like the winking red eyes of tiny nightthings, forever seeking freedom from their metal cradles.

Like Deb.

Deborah Nole had died an hour ago. Jo had known when it was happening, had felt the life-force drain as surely as her own knees felt the stone floor at the foot of the altar, helpless and bound to the church by a Will not her own as her neck experienced the agony of the beast piercing the other woman's neck. Now Deb, too, was bound.

Jo rose and stood before the basin at the foot of Christ's statue, a stone bowl that had in its time held Water that had kissed the heads of thousands of babies as it cleansed them of original sin and sent them on their way to Jesus. It still held the True Water, and always had; while Jo washed with and drank river water, this basin filled sometime each day of its own accord. Jo drew her hand gently across the width of the basin just below the Water's surface, leaving a tiny, bubbling wake. The church was cold tonight, as was the world beyond its protecting doors; the True Water was always body temperature.

She looked beseechingly at the marble face of the Savior and He gazed back without comment, His expression at once stern and compassionate. Once Jo had seen a music video in which the statue of the Son of God had come to life at the kiss of a prayerful young woman. But there would be no frivolous miracles in the real House of the Lord.

The battle approached.