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Ysidro laughed, his fangs flashing white in the glare of the flame Lydia came over to them, a second firebrand in one hand and her silver hatpin in the other The ruddy glow illuminated the weed-curtained stone of the walls, the spurious Gothic corbels, and the shadows of the altar Behind her spectacles, her face was scratched like an urchin&039;s, sed with dirt, and spotted with Dennis&039; blood To Asher&039;s eyes she was utterly beautiful

She tucked the matches back into his jacket pocket Quietly, she asked, "Are you ht?"

Dennis&039; screams of pain and fury had ceased; the wind had fallen The naked beeches and the thick clumps of elder and hawthorn around the walls see The silence orse now than any sound

"You mean, aside from a broken hand and assorted bites, contusions, and abrasions, and ato kill us all?"

Her lips twitched "Aside from that, yes"

"Yes"

"I orried" Her voice sounded very small; he knew she could see the half-healed red bites that tracked his jugular froht, her breath blew as a tiny puff of gold

"Not as worried as I was, believe me"

There was aWas that Dennis?"

She&039;d told hie to her for the first tih his head that she could actually not want to be his wife It occurred to Asher that Dennis had undoubtedly done so here in the ruins In the slanting light of a su, there would be no hed and said, "Yes"

Ysidrohis torch aloft "Can you feel it?" Through the rip in his shirt, Asher could see the wound in his shoulder, still tracking a sluggish trickle of dark blood A mortalas if with deadly cold, his face strained and sunken-looking The rip was visible on his ars on his hands, blackening bruises and five claw rakes where the nails had ripped the colorless flesh "There&039;s movement out there, on the lawn I can&039;t see exactly"

For aits breath

Then Dennis was there, appearing with terrible suddenness just be-yond range of the torch&039;s light, as, long ago in the dark of the cata-combs, Brother Anthony had see shadows of the bones

Beside him, Asher heard Lydia&039;s breath hiss in pity and horror

Dennis Blaydon had always been of heroic build and proportion; a golden Hercules in cricket whites Now his size seemed monstrous, the breadth of his shoulders and chest, visible through his ripped and open shirt, like some maddened bull&039;s Blood tracked down his side and blot-ted his shirt above his ribs-had it been anyone but a vampire, the puncture wound administered by Lydia&039;s hatpin would have been a serious matter-and where the bar had struck his face the flesh had puffed up like rotting ht nose was flattened and spread now Drool and blood dripped frolea blue eyes were no longer even remotely human

"Professor Asher," he whispered, in a sticky decay of a voice "Lydia, get away from him I won&039;t harm you, I swear it You know I&039;d never har you"

"Only because you wanted her for yourself!" Asher called into the flickering darkness "Because you wanted to make her like yourself, infect her with that foul malady in your veins, so she&039;d be yours for-ever"

"That isn&039;t true!" Dennis&039; glaring eyes widened with hate "Dad will find a cure-Dad will make me better! And why shouldn&039;t I have her? She should have been mine Now she&039;ll be mine forever I&039;ll make her love me! It&039;s him I want-the vampire I need him I need him! "

"Since we&039;re easy prey without him," Asher said quietly, "I&039; to keep the va to focus his er-quite- visible Asher had the impression he would still be able to see him if he knehere to look, but he could not find hied clu now here now there-the whole night see as soon as he iven spot

"He&039;s a killer, Professor Asher," a voice breathed out of that dark-ness "Killed women, killed sweet little children-he&039;ll kill Lydia if you&039;ll let him You know he&039;s killed"

He called into the darkness, "And you haven&039;t?"

"That&039;s different That&039;s for a good cause I had to take the risk-this country needs th And anyway, it wasn&039;t me that killed all those people It was the vampires Calvaire and Lotta"

"Calvaire and Lotta were dead by that time and you know it"

"It was still theic Asher re man in his classes "They did it, not ood cause I need the blood I NEED IT!"

So cloud of faintness and exhaustion He thought he sawweeds that carpeted the fabricated gravestones far to his left, but the next second Ysidro swung the torch as Dennis ca out of the darkness al with the metal bar at the ain, and Ysidro was on his knees, clutching at the bigdark between his fingers His torch lay guttering out on the daround

"Killer," Dennis&039; voice whispered out of the dark, as Asher, never loosing his grip on the bar, held his arm down to help Ysidro to his feet "Both of you, killers Spies, sneaks, cowards, and killers of realon to his shoulder, Ysidro was shuddering all over, his hand like ice, even through the leather of the jacket, his thin body oddly weightless against Asher&039;s The fine bones of his face stood out like a skull&039;s with shock and fatigue-Asher won-dered if it were possible for a vampire to faint

"You never deserved Lydia You lied to her, cheated me of what should have been mine You made her leave me alone She would have loved me if it hadn&039;t been for you But I won&039;t be alone When I&039;ve killed you both, she&039;ll betohere he thought the voice was cohtened up a little and staggered, fighting to remain on his feet "Where is he?"

He shook his head "I don&039;t know" Oddly enough, his voice sounded as cool and disinterested as ever "I thought he was over a can the three of us hold hi to take effect on hi brand in her handher spectacle lenses seeht hand tightened over Asher&039;s shoulder, "It has only reat deal of strength still It will be days, maybe weeks If he takes me or another va his life indefinitely In any case, it will be dawn soon"

She pushed her spectacles e of her nose "The room where I was kept had no s," she said "If we can uard you"

"You&039;d never even see hihtened sloay frorip, reers were dark with gore, and the handkerchief that

bound the silver burns saturated and dripping His voice was expressionless, "The dawnlight will kill me-and then he will have you"

Lydia whirled sharply, raising her torch "What&039;s that?"

So the toht wind There was a fluttering tangle of black over li leam of vampire eyes showed

Asher breathed, "Anthony,"

Tiny, skeletal-white hands lifted to the cloud-patched sky Asher had a gli streaht wind the whispered cry: "In Nomine Patris, et Filti, et Spirtius Sancti "

Ysidro shouted, "Antonius, non!" as the dark shape of Dennis rushed out of the night and fell like stor the tombstones

If the little ht hiht hied out of the safety of the chapel ruin, pain jarring his broken hand with every step on the uneven ground He heard Lydia call his naroan of satiation broke froht he heard, perhaps only in his mind, a frail drift of voice: "In ether in the obscene parody of a kiss

Then Dennis flung the broken body aside and turned, blood running down his fangs, swollen lips, and rutted chin With a bestial snarl, he fell upon Asher like a charging bear

Asher kneas blood frenzy beyond caution and swung the silver bar with all the strength he had But Dennis&039; weight s hiaping wider and wider, the blue eyes suffused, not with hatred, but with astonishony In the split second as they collided, Asher realized that Dennis died even as he sprang

The impact of the corpse knocked the breath out of hie of an ied hi and inert mass of infected flesh that had been Dennis, and in that moment it came to him what must have killed hiht splashed jerkily over hi weeds and Ysidro&039;s voice saying, "Ja over theuselessly from his hand Then he dropped it and stumbled a few feet away to the body of Brother Anthony, like a broken othic of the pinchbeck toether, a shrunken tangle of old bones, rotting robes, and white hair bound together with a filthy rosary, clotted with his own blood and that of six centuries of kills His bare feet were scratched and bloody The big veins of his throat had been ripped open by the violence of Dennis&039; attack, not h sunken and fallen in upon the skull, his face wore a look of strange serenity and the faintest hint of a smile

Behind him, Lydia and Ysidro were silent, Asher raised the dead vampire&039;s left arm and pushed back the decayed shreds of the sleeve The torchlight showed clearly the line of dark-stained punctures that tracked the big vein Rising to his feet, he stepped around behind the toht he&039;d seen movement

His own ulster lay there, its nubby broeed still flecked with the hay from the bales in the Queen Anne mehere he&039;d left it with Ysidro&039;s cloak On top of it lay the velvet box that had contained the hypodermic needle and its ten ampoules of silver nitrate

The ampoules were all empty