With a feeling of dread that only increased by the second, I walked through the wrought-iron gates and into the club. Something told me that this might just be the stupidest thing I'd ever done. But there was no turning back now.

You don't keep a necromancer waiting.

When the doors opened, I was immediately assaulted by a wave of trance music. But it wasn't just music. These beats took the term "progressive trance" to a whole new level. There was dark materia-we called it necroid materia, although nobody at the CORE could precisely confirm its existence-threaded into the tracks, dubbed into the pounding base, the epic keyboard highs and thrumming lows. I was immune to it because I kept pumping low-level earth materia into my aura, kind of like a metaphysical screen door between me and the big dark, but a lot of the dancers, it seemed, were not. They were gyrating wildly, sweating, their hands in the air, and you could tell that it wasn't just G or Ecstasy. The music itself was actually hypnotic, calling to them on a cellular level, convincing them to relax, give up their inhibitions, surrender to their instincts. I could feel it pulsing in the back of my brain.

Now, if they'd been playing INXS, I might have been screwed.

The dance floor was about twice the size of most clubs that I'd been to, surrounded by shimmering lights. Nearly naked men and women danced on raised platforms, wearing thong underwear and knee-high boots. They were human, in very good shape, and I found myself blushing slightly as I stared at them. Strippers were pretty normal at gay bars, but seeing them in a "mixed" crowd bar was a bit unexpected.

As I looked around, I began to see them. Not just vampires-all sorts of demons, some that I couldn't even name. All dancing with each other. Over in one corner, I saw two male vampires making out, showing just a bit of fang, while a woman stared at them, enthralled.

Just across from them, a shirtless goblin was dancing with three other women, and appearing to have the time of his life. Near the bar, a vampire was giving amyl nitrate to a young boy- barely sixteen-whose eyes were as big as saucers. On the stairway, a man-human?-was being bitten by a female vampire wearing a red kimono. The blood from his neck pooled around her lips; his eyes were closed, and he was groaning. It seemed consensual. I shuddered.

The song changed. Joy Division, "Love Will Tear Us Apart." It was mashed up with the dubbed materia beats, and something-those dark gaps, the echo and distortion-made it seem even more haunting. As Ian Curtis let his charred and melancholy voice soar above the demonic crowd, I saw two butch female vampires dancing together, hand in hand. One was dark-haired and wearing a Tegan and Sara shirt, the other was taller, with a shaved head and a utility-kilt studded with pockets and buttons. The dark-haired girl wiped the sweat from her lover's shaved head, then leaned in and whispered something. It might have been "I love you." I saw her fangs-small and slick, almost like deciduous baby teeth about to burst out.

The other girl laughed and touched her face.

I remembered the bouncer's warning. Don't stop. Don't talk to anyone. Just follow the directions and wait for Lucian.

I headed for the stairs. A curtain parted to my left as I passed, and I saw-just for a moment-a glimpse of a woman tied to a revolving cross. Her hands and feet were bound with leather straps, and two other women-vampires, I think, although I couldn't be certain- were whipping her back and shoulders. I felt my stomach tighten, but then I realized that the woman's face was ecstatic-her eyes were practically rolling back in her head. She wasn't in pain at all. The two other women seemed to be enjoying themselves just as much. They were both wearing leather bodices and skirts that appeared to be made of chain mail. One of the women had a cat-o'-nine-tails whip, and the other had a bullwhip. The woman with the bullwhip saw me, and smiled. It wasn't a warm smile.

My mind flashed back to the photograph in the dead vampire's pocket, and I recognized the woman instantly. She was the one with the cold smile that the John Doe had his arm around.

I filed it away and kept walking.

The second floor of Moonbase was a series of different rooms, all partitioned by red and black velvet curtains. One room was full of couches-most of them occupied by people doing all sorts of interesting things. I was all for free love, but interspecies sex seemed a bit risky to me, especially when certain demons had well-known anatomical incompatibilities with humans. But then again, maybe some people liked that. I kept walking and tried not to stare.

Another room was just a bare floor with tables and leather mats. People were reclining on the cushions and doing a wide spectrum of drugs-sniffing poppers, injecting heroin, smoking crack or crystal, doing shots of GHB, and ingesting substances that I'd never even seen before. I noticed one guy in the corner, drooling slightly, comatose, just staring at nothing in particular. Stuck in a K-Hole. A few young vampires were just sitting together, passing a joint around, laughing. I heard a few stray words that sounded like "Bazin" and "mise-en-scene," and it occurred to me that they might be film students at UBC. It looked so normal, except for every few seconds when someone would grin, showing fang.

I kept walking, past the DJ booth-all slick with tinted windows, so that all I could see was a dim blue glow coming from the inside. Then I came to the hallway that the bouncer had been talking about.

I could hear his warning in my head: Walk down the hallway and enter the first open door that you come to. Wait there.

There were doors evenly spaced along the hallway, each one closed. As I walked slowly past, I could hear indistinct sounds coming from the sealed rooms. Laughter. Muffled screaming. A bizarre sort of dripping. A regular metallic clang, like something being banged into shape.

I kept walking, telling myself that I didn't want to know what was going on behind any of those doors. Just then, a vampire burst out of the room to my left. His face and shirt were drenched in blood. His clear gray eyes flashed at me for a moment, but he just stood there, not saying anything. Just stared at me. My guard trembled a bit. I was immune to basic vampire mind tricks, mesmerism and metempsychosis, but older, more powerful ones could still affect me. This vampire was medium range in terms of power-not enough to really freak me out, but certainly enough to worry the edges of my psychic guard. If I lost concentration, or panicked, even for a minute, he could find a way in. Tear right through my mental screen door like a killer bee.

Slowly, keeping my expression neutral, I walked past him. You never run from anything immortal. The Last Unicorn was right as shit about that one. The vampire made no move to stop me-just kept staring, his face entirely expressionless, as if it was made of sculpted wire or blown into a mandala, entirely still. The undead can look at you that way, and it scares the pants off you. They'll seem warm and human one minute, then bam, you remember that you're dealing with something as old as the dinosaurs.

This one was curious, but not belligerent. He wouldn't give me any trouble as long as I didn't challenge him. So I kept walking, keeping my breathing even, my stride regular. I didn't look back.

I sensed him leave, and my heart hiccupped back into its normal sinus rhythm.

Finally, I came to an open door. The room beyond it was small, but comfortable. There was beige carpeting on the floor, a sofa in one corner, and a chair adjacent to it. They looked surprisingly . . . comfy. Judging from the decor, this wasn't a room where the vampires did any killing. You'd never be able to get bloodstains out of that carpet. Microfiber, maybe.

I sat down on the chair, feeling like I was in a doctor's office.

There was a table next to the chair that I hadn't noticed at first-one of those tiny stainless steel jobs that blend into any room. Sitting on the table was a pitcher full of ice water with lemons, and two empty glasses. Huh. Vampire hospitality.

"You look surprised. Were you expecting two goblets of blood?"

There was no way I could hide the panic in my eyes when I looked up. Normally, I should have been able to sense a necromancer-especially a relatively powerful one-who was near me. Like all demons, they had a peculiar genetic signature that I could feel in my blood. It was sort of like the feeling you get when someone walks over your grave. Like mages, necromancers were only part-demon, a hybrid of sorts. But the similarities ended there.

Lucian smiled and leaned against the door frame. "I startled you. I'm sorry." He clearly wasn't. The way his lip curled slightly, you could tell how pleased he was that I hadn't felt him coming.

The liaison to the vampire community did not look at all like I'd expected he might. That was probably because he was wearing jeans and a black tank top-the kind of shirt that you might go running in. He had a dark complexion- black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin. Chicano ancestry, maybe? Lucian's arms were golden, lightly muscled, and tattooed. I noticed a snake devouring its own tail on his left shoulder, a bracelet of black and blue thorns around his bicep, and some symbols that I couldn't quite make out on both of his wrists.

His hands were in his pockets, and his black boots casually tapped against the floor like a nervous teenager, but I knew better. He wasn't scared-not a bit. I, however, was just a shade above terrified. I was alone in a room with a necro, and he was powerful enough to sneak up on me.

Welcome to the party.

13.

"You did startle me," I said. "But I'm all right now."

It sounded like we were in Jane Eyre. If he took me anywhere near an attic, I was bolting right then and there.

There was no sense in lying. If he was as powerful as I suspected, he could probably smell a lie. And I didn't want to do anything to provoke him. I knew from experience that his playful exterior, that boyish grin, those warm brown eyes, were all just a transparent curtain that could be pulled away at a moment's notice.

Was he reading my mind? Sensing my fear? Could necromancers do that? Probably. I didn't try to hide it-there was no use. I didn't look him in the eyes. I looked very carefully at a space just above his left shoulder.

Lucian smiled. "So-would you like a drink?"

"Is it poisoned?" The question came out before I could stop it. Shit.

But Lucian only laughed. It was a warm, eerily inviting sound. A human laugh. He could play human very well, and I almost wanted to buy it. But I'd met too many of his kind, and I knew that it could dissolve any second. You can't commune with the dead for that long without absorbing some of their traits, their mannerisms, along with their power. The more you bend the rules of life and death, the more . . . different . . . you become. Not like a vampire, but not like a human either. Necromancers were their own breed. There was nothing worse than looking for a person in there, but finding something else, something immeasurably ancient, terrible, hungry. Like finding a forbidden hallway underneath the foundations of your living room.

"It's just water," he said. "Go ahead."

I was particularly fascinated by his hair. It was coal black, and gelled into little tufts and spikes. Almost a faux-hawk. You expected death-dealers like him to wear lacey tunics and have shoulder-length hair, but they often surprised you.

"I could get you some wine," Lucian continued. "Or beer."

It was the suggestion of beer that made me laugh. Somehow, the thought of a creature who could raise the dead offering me a Molson was too much to take. I snorted a little, and Lucian smiled. It wasn't an entirely innocent smile- more of a curious one.

"Did I say something funny?"

"No. Sorry." I looked away. "I've just never been offered a brewski by a necromancer before. It seemed funny."

Lucian cocked his head. "I'm not what you were expecting, am I, Miss Corday?"

There were so many answers to that question. What had I been expecting? Someone wearing a cape? Some languid, pretty thing lounging on a canopy bed, covered in red silk sheets? Or an honest monster, maybe. A monster that actually looked the part. Lucian looked like someone you might pass on the street. A buddy who might lend you his Tragically Hip CD, or some mellow friend of your brother's. He didn't look like a death-dealer capable of ripping the immortal soul out of my body, the same as you might rip an annoying tag off a sweater. But I knew that he could. His power was like a heat-haze on my skin.

My own power was responding to it. I could feel the magic welling up in me, rising from that secret place, wherever it slept. I'd felt it to a lesser extent when I was in the presence of more powerful demons, but this was different. Lucian's power seemed to tease my own, to brush up against it, tongue it like a sore, beckon it. There was a glimmer of darkness between us, just a scrap of empty space that separated me from him, but any moment it seemed like our collective powers might leap the gap.

I risked a glance into Lucian's eyes, and saw that he understood all this-he was amused by it, maybe even a little pleased. It was no surprise to him. But he could feel my anxiety, and he was enjoying that. It made me want to scream. But all I did was pour myself a glass of water and sip on it- calmly.

"You know," he said, "I hear the most popular theory about my kind these days is that we're hatched from eggs rather than born."

I chuckled. "Is that how necromancers come into the world?" I said "necromancers," but I meant "you." Were did you come from? Who are you? Are you less human than me, more demon, or what?

He grinned. "'I was from my mother's womb untimely ripped.' "

"Macbeth. Classy." I sipped on the water. It was too cold.

"I tend to surprise most people," he continued. "I've never been very conventional. Would you mind if I sat down?"

"Go ahead." I tried to sound unconcerned. He merely smiled, and sank comfortably onto the couch. He was close enough now that I could feel a thread of power between us, some dark tendril of energy that connected us in a way that scared the hell out of me. Not too close, though. It wasn't overwhelming-just unnerving. And he knew that. All of his movements were careful and calculating. He could read my body from every angle, but all I could sense from him was a feeling of pleasure, an almost tightly coiled delight.

"You're an investigator for the CORE," he said matter-of-factly. "An OSI. What level, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Level one," I said evenly.

"Hmm." He smiled. "You seem more experienced than that. Confident. I'd think someone like you would have risen quite quickly through the CORE ranks."

"I'm barely twenty-four," I muttered.

"Most level ones are teenagers. Girls. Women your age tend to occupy higher positions within the CORE"-his eyes flashed-"or am I wrong?"

"I like my job," I said simply. "It's rewarding."

"Still-you should have moved up by now. Especially someone with your level of power."

He smiled as he said "power," and I felt his will nudge my own just a little, a friendly sort of touch. Clearly, he wanted to see some of my power firsthand, but that wasn't going to happen.

"My job is my business," I said. "I haven't asked why you like snorting necroid materia like nose candy, or why you do PR for vampires. Bad career counselor, maybe?"

Lucian smiled again, but this one was genuine. "Something like that. The story might intrigue you, actually."

"Thanks for the offer, but I think that we should get down to business." This time I smiled, ever so slightly. "The night is still young for you. I don't want to keep you from whatever it is you'd normally be doing."

Raising the dead? Perverting nature? Reading Aleister Crowley?

Lucian shrugged. "Your choice. I don't often get to converse with CORE officials who are willing to look me in the eye."

The subliminal suggestion made me look up, and for a moment, his eyes seemed entirely black-two perfect globes of jet staring back at me. I almost made a sound, but managed to hold it in. His eyes grew larger, and the warmth between us flickered, died, became ice-cold, as if the room had suddenly been plunged into winter.

Lucian smiled, and everything went back to normal. The room was temperate again. His eyes were their usual shade of deep brown. Something residual hung on the air, like a flake of tobacco you would peel from your tongue. Dark materia.

I forced myself to smile as well. "I just thought you must have better things to do than talk to me," I said.

"On the contrary, Tess. I think I could talk to you all night." He flashed white teeth. His fangs were purely metaphysical.

Trying to keep the tremor out of my hands, I handed him a color reproduction of the photo from the vampire's pocket.

"We found this male vampire's body in an alley on Granville," I said, "four nights ago. We've been trying to determine his identity. We don't know who the woman is, but I noticed her in the club-um-with a bullwhip?"

Lucian glanced at the picture coldly. "Four nights ago? And you're only just contacting us now?"

"We had a lot of processing to do," I said. "And there've been some-incidents-that have kept us busy." Like demons attacking me.

"You should have come to us immediately," he said. His tone wasn't exactly angry-there was something else. Irritation? Guilt, even?

"We've always cooperated with the vampire community in the past," I said slowly. "We have reason to believe that this vampire was connected somehow to another case. A teenage girl who was attacked by Vailoid demons."

"Vailoids." His eyes darkened. "Mercenaries. They'd carve up their own mother if the price was high enough." He looked at me strangely. "You say they attacked a little girl? Where would the profit be in that?"

"Well, we're not sure. But this vampire had that little girl's address in his pocket-on a note, written in vampiric script."

"And you think he was after the girl as well."

"That would be speculation. All we know is that he was connected to her somehow. Maybe the same demons who attacked"-I almost said her name, but stopped myself- "her were the same demons who attacked this vampire." I looked at Lucian closely. "Can you tell me who both of them are? Were they-involved?"

"Yes," he said. His expression was almost-vacant. As if someone had completely drained any feeling from his eyes. Demon trick. "I know them. And yes, they were 'involved,' as you say. His name is Sebastian, and hers is Sabine."

"Did you know Sebastian well?"

"No. He belonged to Sabine, though, and I do know her somewhat better."

I blinked. "Belonged?"

Lucian smiled slightly. "Sebastian was a thrall-a submissive vampire who serves a much older, dominant vampire. He was newly born, you see. I think he was only turned a few decades ago."

"That's what we thought," I said. "He seemed like a new vamp. Inexperienced. Could definitely have gotten himself into a whole world of trouble."

"Yes. The newly born need to be closely protected at first, by a loving sire." His smile widened. "Someone to watch over them. To comfort them, and teach them, while they make the first transition into their new life."

Or unlife, as the case may be.

"Yeah," I said, glancing at the picture, "she looks like a real Professor Higgins."

Lucian merely smiled. I don't know if he got the reference.

"So you're saying that she was also the one who created Sebastian? His sire?"

Lucian nodded. "Yes. Sabine was his sire, and his mistress. "

"Any chance I could speak with her?"

"I can summon her," Lucian said, "but I have to warn you-Sabine isn't as friendly as I am."

The word "friendly," when he pronounced it, had a sensory flavor that made me distinctly uncomfortable.