"Mister Alek!"

No, not Mister Alek. Just Alek, once. Just Beloved. Just that, once, when I belonged to her...

Eustace let him go finally and stumbled back to eye the creature stationed not a dozen paces away from them, watching them with her bejeweled masklike eyes. Catlike. Waiting. White-faced Kabuki doll in all her medusan tangles of midnight hair and red eyes and lacy bloodstained dress. Black leather coat. Chains. Too old for her, that coat, and that dress too young, like an old wh.o.r.e had dressed her. How old was she? How old could anything be? Her hands slid like fragile white spiders down the line of her hip and thigh. Her eyes darkened. Her lips parted silkily. She had fanged eyeteeth, upper and lower, like the mouth of a great cat.

Like something unevolved and primitive. She was old, old to smile like that with such teeth. She would pounce and tear his throat out and it would all be finished. Him. Eustace. All of it. The end. Fertig.

"Don't worry, Mister Alek, sir, I won't let nothing happen to you, sir, I promise, I double promise!"

Eustace drew his sword and parried it at the creature like a poker. The creature snarled in response and shrank away. Eustace advanced on it, trembling, jabbing at it, winging the brickwork with the tip of the delicate and powerful weapon. Hooting like a kid driving swine.

The creature retreated to the back, stopped, spun around. Nowhere to go; she'd reached the dead end wall.

No fire escape to jump to, no boxes to climb, no windows and no window ledges. Eustace had her boxed in.

She put her back to the wall and only watched him approach with wary, unblinking eyes. Her demeanor was distant, unafraid; she seemed to understand innately that the game was almost over and there was nothing she could do to derail this simpleton's prerogative.

But this was no good. No good at all. What was Eustace doing? This wasn't the way. This was never the way. Why didn't they understand? Why didn't anyone understand this wasn't the way?

Alek was on his feet, the sword at his side. He could rise after all, he discovered; he could take up the sword.

He did have the strength and the will after all, and he would show Eustace the way, would show them all the way. Because he knew the way, could imagine it, like he could imagine every picture months or years before he painted it, like the way he knew all the stories inside all the pictures he d ever looked into. It was so easy, so clear and easy and full of truth. Magic. It was like a different soul stepping into him, an older soul, one with all or most of the answers. A soul he trusted with his life.

He stalked forward, wielding his weapon like a wing, and with that wing he took flight.

Sean Stone's eyes pigged in irritation when be heard the noise for the first time. His chair was c.o.c.ked back on two legs, his feet propped up on the edge of the Coventable, and he didn't pay it much notice at first because he was paging through a four-year-old flesh mag with a set of straight pins at hand, using them to spear the wh.o.r.e's t.i.ts and faces, and alternately to peel back the cuticles on his thumbnails to get the blood to rise. His fingers were an aching ruin, two of the fingernails stripped dead away, and the pinups he was torturing were no longer naked; they were gowned in his blood.

Mom used to hate his habit.

His face hardened at the memory. He realized he hadn't thought of his mother in f.u.c.king years, not since she'd rode the speedball to the stars over ten years ago. Mom in that black rubberlike dress, beautiful and cold as the Snow Queen in the old fairy tale, white-gold hair down to her skinny a.s.s. But her fragile frame had belied her strength; her hand had had the power of a brick when it connected with his face, knocking his chronically bleeding fingers out of his mouth, her fingernails fine slivers of ice when they pinched and twisted into his flesh.

He used to like her better stoned. She'd put him to bed and read things to him when she was flying out of her skull. His storybooks or her Harlequins or whatever the h.e.l.l she had, it didn't matter, not to him. But then after a while she'd crash, and then she went f.u.c.king nuts and cried and screamed a lot about her f.u.c.ked-up abortion and how much he was costing her in food. Like he ate much, or all that often. Sometimes she'd break things, or try to break him. Didn't work.

But, man, that was then. This was now. A lifetime ago, all that s.h.i.t. A lifetime since he was a little t.u.r.d with snot and blood and fear smeared all over his face. And, man, he'd evolved since then, changed. He'd gone from bleeding himself to the sticky-furred crawly things in the alleys around Slim Jim's Shangri-La, where they lived and Mom worked, to Slim Jim himself finally one night. The stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.d--he'd caught Sean alone in the apartment one night, put a stiletto under his chin, unzipped his pants, and told him he was up for his first business lesson. And Jimbo had thought Sean would be the surprised one--what big eyeteeth you have, grandma, heh-heh.

Sheep. That's what all of them were--mortal, ripe, and waiting. Stupid and living in the shadow of the wolf.

But now, s.h.i.t, studying the ribbons of blood coursing out of his thumb he realized he'd digressed somehow.

He sucked his thumb. The blood was good, eased the nausea in his stomach left over from the night before.

He felt almost right.

The noise again. Like a crow in a noose or something.

Sean lowered the magazine, but there was no one here except the two of them, himself and Father Amadeus.

The Father sat meditating like a Shao-Lin monk or something at the center of the table, brilliant white hair plaited over one shoulder, hairy, taloned hands resting calmly on his knees. His eyes were open, but Sean knew he was elsewhere. Still as a Buddha, man. Beside him lay one of the books of the Covenant Sean had thrown down after the Father had lighted out and wasn't noticing him anymore.

He shook his head at the book. Rules. Rules everywhere. Sometimes he really hated the Coven. Well, not the Coven precisely--just them. Those sanctimonious a.s.sholes skulking around like they were angels of death or something. Doc Book was kind of cool and all, but the others, man...Takara was just a b.i.t.c.h on wheels.

And Useless Eustace was like some stupid, p.i.s.s-a.s.sed puppy everyone thought was just darling; he could be cute even when he was being a total backwoods weed.

And then there was Alek. That f.u.c.khead had it coming to him, oh yeah. Heir to Covenmaster or not, Sean was going to take his pound of flesh out of Amadeus's protege in recompense for crossing the Stone Man.

Turn your back, you long-haired scarecrow, and wham! you are one righteously dead duck. It was going to be easy, man, easy as taking candy from a baby. Easy as...well, as eating a Slim Jim.

Sean giggled at that and turned the page to a new victim.

s.h.i.t, what was it with that noise, man?

Scowling, really bugged now, Sean pulled the earplug full of Cowboys From h.e.l.l out of his left ear and kicked down his chair. He leaned forward to study the Father. Like a statue. Couldn't be he was having some kind of seizure or something, could it? The Coven with all its rules was pretty much s.h.i.t and all, but Amadeus was cool. It was the Father who got his a.s.s out of the system last year just like magic, and, man, if there was a h.e.l.l it looked like a foster home and Satan was really a social worker. He owed the Father, and the Stone Man was no ingrate. Weren't for the Father he wouldn't know jack-s.h.i.t about who he was.

It was Amadeus who taught him how to read and write, how to use a sword and handle the psi without killing himself. The Father said he was a rare thing, not a freak like everyone else seemed to think. He was a slayer, not a vampire like in some f.u.c.king stupid Dracula movie. Amadeus's choice in heirs was s.h.i.t and all, but Sean sure as h.e.l.l didn't want to watch as the Father melted into a puddle in the center of the table or something. The Father cared when there wasn't anyone else to give a s.h.i.t about you.

Sean pa.s.sed a hand across his master's face. Nothing. Maybe he ought to just hustle his a.s.s out of here. Go crash in his cell and plug into the Net or something. This was all too weird, man.

Scrubbing at the stiff little hairs on the backs of his hands, Sean was just about to take his own good advice when he heard the sound again. It was Amadeus. As Sean watched, transfixed, the Father's eyes brightened, the distant consciousness behind coming fully to the fore, and with it-- "Oh, s.h.i.t, man," he whispered, bracing himself in his seat. He recognized that look. Like Mom's, only it was worse because his old lady at least couldn't turn your mind inside out and mix it up like a Cuisinart if she was good and p.i.s.sed off with you.

A wave of silent white rage slapped Sean's face like a fiery hand. He gave a little squeal of surprise and toppled over in his seat, his skull cracking against the cobbled promenade of the Great Abbey. What the h.e.l.l?

He blinked, hands nesting his bruised skull. Then his eyelids skinned themselves away from his eyes automatically. Using his elbows as leverage, he wriggled out of his overturned chair and scrambled to his feet, nearly cowering.

Cowering, because Amadeus was coming off the table in a savage hiss of silk. His lids were lax, his colorless eyes hooded by crystalline lashes, his face pale, writhing, subhuman. His hair actually bristled, rising out of its plait like quills. Like albino snakes.

Standing, he began to pace, barking words that lashed the air of the Great Abbey like blades, words in languages Sean could not begin to guess at. His lips splashed spittle, mantras or curses, spells for all Sean knew. Words which built arches and b.u.t.tresses and pinnacles around them, an enormous cathedral of noise built up and up toward heaven, a golgotha of sound, of light and shadow and cold wind, air and bronze...

Sean buckled and collapsed. He crushed his hands to his head in a blind effort to hide from the shattering noise of the Father's unleashed wrath, so terrible and new it seemed to gain a real presence in the room with them. It rattled the crosswords and sent angry hackles through the tapestries. It smothered the candles in the chandelier and it set the mosaic panels to perilous singing above them.

Sean squelched his eyes, but it did nothing. Nothing to break the cacophony, the sound as nakedly painful inside his head as out. And when something struck him across the face, he began to cry at last. He didn't want to be hit, he didn't. He wanted to be good but he couldn't, it was so d.a.m.ned hard, so d.a.m.ned f.u.c.king hard...

Sean's whimpering voice hitched, caught on a sob. He moaned, trembled. Afraid. Angry too, angry as all h.e.l.l now, because he was kneeling here with snot running out of his nose and begging for the mercy that had never come, and, s.h.i.t, man, he was the Stone Man now, not some eight-year-old t.u.r.dface anymore. And no one hit the Stone Man. No one made him cower. No one, man.

His eyes slit open. And now he saw that it wasn't a hand that had hit him. It was a bat. One of the Abbey's bats. It chirped, fluttered over onto its back, struggling and dying. Not the only one too. The bats were falling all around him. Three big young males lay scattered at his feet, gla.s.sy-eyed, their little pink tongues lolling stupidly. A female struggled only inches from him, her suckling, crushed from the fall, still attached to a t.i.t.

Dark muddy blood spooled from little velvet ears, from moist, struggling snouts and beaded eyes.

Sean groaned.

This was all too f.u.c.king weird, man!

Amadeus loomed silently overhead. His face was a lifeless mask. Blood dribbled out of his clenched fists and from the corners of his mouth where he'd bitten through his tongue. His mouth moved soundlessly.

Or not quite soundlessly, for Sean could just make out the murmured phrase being repeated over and over like a holy litany. Latin. And Sean was surprised to realize he could translate this one by way of all the stupid hours he'd been made to study that s.h.i.t.

Alek. Amadeus was speaking of Alek.

He called him a Judas.

Sean's mouth unpouted into a graceful grin.

Yeah, man.

Alek collapsed at the foot of the carousel and wrapped his arms around himself and arched his back. His scream was a sword, narrow, deadly, penetrating, and for a moment all his whiteness of flesh flushed red as though his skin had turned to crystal and his blood shone through like light in a cathedral window. Then he sagged forward, forehead touching the stage of animals like a man whose soul had come out with his cry and left him an empty sh.e.l.l.

"Alek Knight."

Painfully his eyes moved to meet those of the speaker. She was seated on the edge of the stage like a beautiful and expensive porcelain doll some child had placed there and forgotten. He did not fear her; what had he to fear as d.a.m.ned as he was? "Eustace," he wept, running his hands through his hair, pulling at it like a madman. "Oh Christ, Eustace. Eustace..."

Judas, he thought, a second scream within. Cain.

She did not smile; nor did she make any move to take him, now, at his most desperate moment. She did not give him even that. "Why did you kill the slayer?" she asked him politely instead.

He wept and did not answer her. And all this time they'd said it was Sean. They'd all but branded the word on the young one's forehead and cut his cheeks to mark him. But it wasn't him. No, it wasn't. Because the real Judas already wore his mark over his pulse and it was the mark of Covenmaster. How had this happened? How?

"Alek Knight, so full of regret..." the creature singsonged. "Regret nothing, for regret is a useless emotion."

"I've sinned," he groaned. Oh, G.o.d, have I sinned...

"You've sinned before. You mean you've sinned against the Coven."

He closed his eyes and saw again the sword burying itself in soft white throatflesh, the redness and the heat and the scream like a wire pulled tight as a migraine across his mind. "I'm the Judas! I was to be Covenmaster after Amadeus," he sobbed.

"And do you wish to be Covenmaster?"

"You talk funny. Shut up. You make me think of--of the--the f.u.c.king social workers in the Home!"

"Debra. You meant to say Debra."

"No, I didn't. Get the f.u.c.k outta my head!"

He caught himself, calmed his hysteria. Why in living h.e.l.l was he arguing with this thing? Why had she followed him? Why was she torturing him like this? Why? And why the h.e.l.l wasn't she killing him or leaving him the h.e.l.l alone? Why wouldn't anyone leave him the G.o.dd.a.m.n h.e.l.l alone?

"Don't lie to me, caro mio. I've glimpsed the naked side of your soul. You cannot lie to me after such an intimacy." She reached for his hand, and to his amazement he found himself allowing her to take it as she had taken the rest of him, his mind, his empty soul. She held it a moment, watched him with her dark, intense stillness. Then she turned his palm over, read it like a Gypsy wisewoman. "You have no lifetime,"

she said.

"I'm dead."

"Vampire."

"No. Yes. No!. You're the vampire," he spat at this persistently annoying little demon.

"And Amadeus?"

"Amadeus is--"

"The greatest vampire," she said. "His eyes are dark, Alek Knight. He knows."

"He'll kill me."

She smiled over his palm. "No. He won't."

He yanked back his hand. "Jesus, who are you?"

She smiled, her face flushing like shadowed porcelain, full of secrets. For a moment all the world shifted around them and again she was the Debra clone, the saintly, bone-jarring, sensual image. "I am peace. I am beauty. I am death. But you may call me Sister Teresa."

"I'll kill you," he spat to hurt her, this beautiful little monster with her honest eyes and evil powers, "like I killed a hundred of your kind on a hundred other nights like this one."

Her smile never faltered. "Yes, all right. Kill me too. Now."

He looked at her; he looked away. "I lost my sword."

"Then take me with your lips and your hands and your words. Release me as you released the other--"

"Why are you tormenting me?" he screamed into the dark.

"Torment makes pain. Pain makes you strong; pain also breaks you."

"Is that what you want? To break me before you kill me?"

"Don't be too strong to be weak, Alek Knight."

He shook his head, furious, helpless. Broken. "Go away. Just go the h.e.l.l far away. Go! I'm giving you a respite, only don't make me look at you another moment."

"And what will you do with me gone?"

He did not answer. Why should he?

"I see," she said. "You will return to your great mausoleum and look on the face of your master and he will destroy you and only your skull will remain to crown your infernal Babel. You cannot allow this to happen, Alek Knight."

"It's what I deserve," he insisted.

"But I need you."

He felt something seize him from within. A memory--Debra's mischievous smile. "What the h.e.l.l do you mean?"

She took his face in her hands, but now there was no pain, no memories. Only her. Only beauty. Only that.

She kissed him with her knowledgeable little mouth as if she would seduce him to his death. She tasted red.

Debra. She said, "I am old in the way of continents and languages. I remember the Black Death. I have walked with the cursed children of Lilith since before the Crusades," she said. "So old, Alek Knight, and in all those years I kept the secrets of the church." She lowered her eyes. "But then came the knowledge- seekers and the powermongers and it was impossible to tell the difference and they took from me the truth, and that truth they corrupted and scribed wrongly. My work, my purpose, was undone. And the greatest among them built up a cache of lies and perpetuated their power upon which to establish his kingdom--" He jerked away from her, folded his arms on the stage and let his face fall down upon them. That d.a.m.ned Chronicle or whatever the h.e.l.l it was. That story again. "Oh G.o.d, don't say this. Don't start--"

"You don't believe." She paused reflectively. "But of course--you are caught up in the web--"

"What am I supposed to believe? That some f.u.c.king book out there exists that can destroy the Coven?"

"Debra believed in the story."