>>ReALlY?< bey="" smirked.="">>HEr GuN iS eMPty aNd hEr bACk Is StiLL bRoKEn. I aM gOiNg To kILl hEr nOW. I'm gOInG tO LeT yOu wATcH. WaTCh AnD thiNk aBOuT whAt I'M gOIng tO dO tO eACh oF yOu wHEn iT's yOUr tURn.< "i="" still="" say="" you're="" making="" a="" mistake,"="" i="" said.="" and="" then="" suki's="" right="" foot="" flashed="" up="" between="" kadeth="" bey's="" legs.="" he="" gave="" a="" screeching="" sort="" of="" grunt="" and="" bent="" forward,="" releasing="" his="" captive.="" it="" was="" too="" late:="" as="" she="" dropped,="" suki's="" left="" foot="" came="" up="" and="" nailed="" his="" groin="" a="" second="" time,="" completing="" a="" double="">

As he rolled away, still curled around his unexpected agony, several more corpses shuffled forward.

"Now would be a good time, I think," Suki said in a surprisingly deep voice.

I nodded and bowed my head, still straining against the clammy hands that held me in death's cold embrace. "O," I said, "Amon Ra, oh!" My voice seemed suddenly louder, echoing through the bas.e.m.e.nt as if whispered in an empty sepulcher.

"G.o.d of G.o.ds," I intoned, my voice taking on strength and timbre, booming down the access tunnel across the room.

"Death is but the doorway to new life. . . ." The hair on the back of my own neck was starting to rise as I spoke the words and felt the power starting to gather.

Bey recognized the text from the Scroll of Thoth: >>BlASpHeMy!< "we="" live="" today,="" we="" shall="" live="" again.="" .="" .="">

>>SiLeNCe!< "="" .="" .="" .="" in="" many="" forms="" shall="" we="" return.="" .="" .="">

He uncurled himself and turned toward me.

"Oh, Mighty One. . . ."

He moved stiffly, uncomfortably. But it was more than the discomfort of a kick to the groin that slowed him now. Decapitated, impaled, flame-broiled, sliced and diced, Kadeth Bey had been discomforted, but hadn't actually experienced true pain for thousands of years.

Until now.

And as I spoke the Words and the potion spread through his body, the pain began to spread, as well. >>KiLl yOu ALl!< he="" thought="" venomously.="">>DoN't uNdERstAnD! CaN'T huRt Me! cAn'T kIll mE!< he="" was="" growing="" disoriented="" as="" nerve="" endings="" came="" to="" life,="" sending="" long-forgotten="" sensations="" to="" his="" ancient="">

As his attention faltered his necrotic army relaxed their grip and we shrugged ourselves free.

"Oh, I understand all right," I said, having completed the incantation. "And thank you for explaining it so succinctly the last time we met." I switched off my light and the few sputtering candles that remained did little to hold back the darkness.

"Do you see?" Ba.s.sarab asked. "It has begun."

It took me a moment longer to clear my vision: afterimages bruised my retinas in yellows and purples and blues. But beyond the fading aurora borealis a different candle flame flickered, caught hold and grew in intensity, forming an orange nimbus about a swelling, yellow core.>>WhAT's HaPPEnIng? WhAT HaVE yOu dOnE?< "the="" only="" thing="" i="" could="" do,="" under="" the="" circ.u.mstances,"="" i="" answered.="" "as="" you="" have="" already="" said,="" we="" cannot="" kill="" something="" that="" is="" already="" dead.="" so,="" i="" have="" utilized="" forces="" ant.i.thetical="" to="" yours="" to="" perform="" a="" resurrection.="" thanks="" to="" the="" scroll="" of="" thoth="" and="" hypodermic="" darts="" filled="" with="" tanna="" leaf="" extract,="" kadeth="" bey:="" this="" is="" your="">

>>WhAT? WhY?< "oscar="" wilde="" said="" it="" best,="" i="" think,"="" ba.s.sarab="" growled,="" stepping="" forward.="" he="" slide-c.o.c.ked="" the="" mossberg="" as="" the="" orange="" began="" to="" shed="" a="" red="" aura,="" the="" orange="" turning="" yellow,="" the="" yellow="" core="" turning="" white.="" "="" 'and="" the="" wild="" regrets="" and="" the="" b.l.o.o.d.y="" sweats="" none="" knew="" so="" well="" as="" i.="" .="" .="" .'="" "="" he="" raised="" the="" shotgun="" to="" his="" shoulder.="" "="" '="" .="" .="" .="" for="" he="" who="" lives="" more="" lives="" than="" one="" more="" deaths="" than="" one="" must="" die.'="">

>>I dONoT UnDErStANd!< "you="" are="" no="" longer="" the="" walking="" dead,"="" i="" said.="" "now="" you="" are="" alive.="" and,="" now="" that="" you="" are="" alive-you="" can="" finally="" be="">

He reached toward me and Ba.s.sarab swung the shotgun around. "Down!" he commanded.

I ducked as a hand clutched at my shirt from behind. The Mossberg roared, peppering me with stray pellets, and the grip on my shirt disappeared along with a sizable swatch of fabric. I hit the ground and rolled, turning over to look behind me. Jennifer- I closed my eyes and thought of death.

"Release her, Bey!" Ba.s.sarab's voice seemed to come from far away. "It was blasphemy before, but every second of false life now is an abomination! Let her go!"

>>Or wHaT? YOu'Ll kIll mE?< "that="" won't="" be="" necessary,"="" i="" heard="" myself="">

"It won't?" Ba.s.sarab's voice was incredulous.

I tried rising to my hands and knees. "As part of the embalming process, he had his heart removed and preserved in a canopic jar. Isn't that right, Bey?"

He hissed but made no reply.

I climbed shakily to my feet, careful not to look back at the trembling, twitching, headless thing that once had been my wife. "As the tanna leaf extract spreads through your system, it's turning everything back on and starting everything back up. You're becoming human, again, Bey. Your body will once more be subject to the laws that govern flesh and blood. I think you'll find it's important to have your heart in the right place."

He clutched his chest and the detonator tumbled from his trembling fingers. He sank to his knees, his mouth forming a gigantic "O" of pain.

As I reached down and retrieved the remote, Ba.s.sarab stepped forward and placed the shotgun muzzle to Bey's head.

"That isn't necessary," I said, bringing the Sabrelight to bear on them both. "He can't survive with a hole in the middle of his chest."

"I want to make sure."

"So do I. But think of the irony of Kadeth Bey being the agent of his own death."

"f.u.c.k irony," Ba.s.sarab said. He pulled the trigger.

The roar of the Mossberg gave way to a collective sigh and whisper as the ring of cadavers collapsed around us like unstrung marionettes. That sign, alone, was more rea.s.suring than the incomplete corpse of the necromancer himself.

Still, I had to walk over and kick at the more substantial portions of his remains. I could hardly see, and it was awhile before I realized that it was because I was weeping again. But I didn't stop right away: I had to make sure.

No one else moved. No one else spoke until Mooncloud's voice crackled in my headset: "Is itover?"

"Almost," I said, moving the beam of my flashlight until it picked up Jenny's foot protruding from a mound of human debris. The foot no longer twitched or shook.

I opened the case of the remote control. "Dennis, get out of here."

Suki took one step forward, her face congealing with masculine features. "That's not necessary," she said with Smirl's voice as I pulled out the telescoping antenna. "Bey's dead."

"So am I," I whispered, the bas.e.m.e.nt amplifying my words like a microphone. "So are the wampyr.

So you see," I said, looking over at Ba.s.sarab, "I have to make sure."

"There are better ways of making sure." Suki's bosom flattened out and sprouted chest hair. Her hair retracted, became wiry and shot with grey.

I shook my head. "Doctor, Mr. Smirl will be joining you momentarily. As soon as he does, I suggest you provide him with the clothing I stashed in the spare wheel compartment. Then you need to get to the hospital, post haste, and get Suki out of room 512."

"What is Suki doing in the hospital?"

"She has a broken back and internal injuries, Doctor. I slipped her past security and put her on the Psych floor where the overnight staff is stretched thin and a little more isolated than the other floors. I left instructions with the charge nurse to give her whole blood and keep her room dark. I don't know how much that's helped, but by now the night-shift has gone off duty. It's just a matter of time before the day-shift finds discrepancies between their floor records and Admissions." I looked at Smirl, who now only showed vague vestiges of Suki's topography. "Time to go."

"Why don't we all go?" he asked.

I shook my head. "I have to make sure." I pushed him toward the door with my mind.

"A rendezvous with Death?" Mooncloud asked as Smirl headed up the stairs. "At some disputed barricade?"

"You're quoting Seeger, Doctor. I'm thinking of Swinburne."

"Swinburne?"

"Algernon Charles Swinburne." I flipped a switch arming one of the detonator circuits. "He wrote: 'From too much love of living, / From hope and fear set free. . . . ' " I turned off the flashlight. Only two guttering candles remained to light the scene. " ' . . . We thank with brief thanksgiving / Whatever G.o.ds there be. . . . ' "

Ba.s.sarab stared at the remote, seemingly transfixed; he made no move to escape. " ' . . . That no life lives forever. . . . ' " My hands began to shake and my voice broke. " ' . . . That dead men rise up never. .

It was time to make an ending.

" ' . . . That even the weariest river / Winds somewhere safe to sea.' "

I pressed the switch that blew Christopher Csejthe and Vladimir Drakul Ba.s.sarab V out of existence.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

It is said that when you die you see a light in the darkness, that you are drawn toward the light.

Nothing is said about the smell of brick dust and scorched concrete and liquid copper roiling in your nostrils.

It is also said that there are beings waiting in the light to greet you-angels or loved ones that have gone on before. No one ever suggested that you might look upon eternity and see Vlad the Impaler reaching out his hand to you.

I blinked, trying to clear my vision. It slowly became obvious that I wasn't dead, yet.

Ba.s.sarab helped me sit up and then moved the Sabrelight's beam about to reveal the damage done.

The plastique that Smirl had planted between the first and second floors had brought the entire building down on top of us. That I had counted on: it was part of the plan.

I had also figured on the building's collapse sealing off the stairwell with a rockslide of shattered concrete and brick. With the bas.e.m.e.nt buried under the collapse of the upper three stories, I had counted on the access tunnel being our secret escape route. But, as the flashlight beam picked out the spill of earth, rock, and ancient brick spilling from the tunnel's maw, I realized that all exits were lost. I might just as well have triggered the detonator for the vest and saved us both a long, slow, lingering death.

I lifted a leaden arm and checked my watch. 3:49 in the p.m.: I had been unconscious for hours. As I digested this piece of information I noticed something else: it was as quiet as a tomb.

Or perhaps not. Ba.s.sarab had ahold of my arm and was making strange mouthy expressions at me: he was speaking, maybe even shouting, but I couldn't hear a thing. I put a hand to my right ear, felt something sticky. Ba.s.sarab moved the flashlight so I could see my fingers more clearly. My ears were bleeding. So was my nose. Although the ceiling above us had held, the concussive shockwave from the blast had slammed into the bas.e.m.e.nt like an invisible battering ram.

I lay back down and closed my eyes. Bruised and bleeding and stone-cold deaf, I probably had internal injuries that would have killed me had I been human. Might kill me, yet: I wondered how long it took a semi-vampire to die of dehydration. Perhaps Ba.s.sarab would solve my problem by finishing the task he'd started in his barn, nearly a year before.

I dozed.

Dreamed of Jenny and Kirsten and happier times. The nightmares didn't come this time.

I awoke to Ba.s.sarab shaking my shoulder.

"What?" I asked, my voice now sounding m.u.f.fled and faraway.

He gestured, pointed at a narrow fissure in the debris choking the access tunnel and then beckoned for me to follow him. With that, he bowed his head, crossed his arms across his chest, and began to fade.

As his body became less distinct, it lost form all together and dispersed as a kind of mist. I picked up my Sabrelight and tracked the now tenuous nimbus of vapor as it floated into the pa.s.sageway and fadedfrom sight.

I glanced at my watch: after ten p.m., now. The old vampire had escaped by traveling the dreampath.

I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the outside.

Tried to imagine the far end of the tunnel where it came up and out in the remains of the pump station.

Tried to image myself outside.

Tried to project. . .

A hand fell on my shoulder. I looked up at Ba.s.sarab who had returned for me.

He gestured.

I gestured.

Together we pantomimed our way through a discussion of what we already knew: my first dreamwalk had been a fluke and I didn't know how to repeat the process. Although they seemed to be healing, my ears were still nonfunctional and, with my head still buzzing from the blast, I couldn't "hear"

Ba.s.sarab's mindspeech. He couldn't guide me onto the path much less help me off again.

I waved him away. Maybe if I slept, healed a bit. . .

He gestured that he couldn't wait. The sun would return in a few short hours and he had to find Wren. Tell him that the plan had worked. For the most part. I switched off the Sabrelight and he left, signing that he would return.

Sure.

Less than a week before, when we had discussed faking our deaths, Ba.s.sarab had promised me wealth undreamed of, a new ident.i.ty, and a life of ease. Ease, particularly, in the sense that once we were believed to be truly dead, undead hitmen and shapeshifting a.s.sa.s.sins would stop complicating our existence. We would no longer have the resources of several vampire enclaves scouring the country for us.

Not that I really cared.

I had finally figured that my chances of nailing Bey were next to zip unless I was standing face-to-face with him when I pushed the b.u.t.ton. The only reason for adding an escape clause to the plot was to guarantee Ba.s.sarab's cooperation.

And it had worked to that degree: Ba.s.sarab had cooperated. And now he was escaping.

But I didn't mind, really. All that really mattered was putting an end to the ancient necromancer and giving my family final peace. Now that it was accomplished, I could let go of everything else. I would be joining them soon.

Ba.s.sarab wouldn't be coming back. With me dead and buried, his existence was secure. I was an amateur at living this half-life and would eventually make a mistake that would betray my own existence and, therefore, his, as well.

All in all, I felt something akin to contentment. It didn't matter whether I had actually ended my mortal life on the muddy floor of an old barn, in a tangle of twisted metal at a Kansas intersection, or hooked up to life-support equipment in a hospital emergency room: I had lived my life. Maybe it wasn't the biblical three score and ten, but who said life was fair? I certainly knew better by now.

I lay on the cold, hard floor of the tunnel and waited for a final ending.

Slept again. . . .

Chris.