“Misto! Mystikite!” exclaimed Gadget, grinning widely. “Dudes! You’re back . . . and you’re back! Fuckin’-A! Awesome!”

  “Well,” said Mystikite, giving him a wry half-smile, “sort of, I guess. For the moment, at least. You okay, dude?”

  “Uh, yeah, I guess,” said Gadget, sounding a little more guarded than he would’ve liked to have. “Sure. But . . . Misto . . . how . . . I mean — the alien — it took you, and — !”

  “And I escaped, thanks to her,” said the big, blue-furred man-beast, adjusting the spectacles that sat comically on his nose, as he gestured with his other hand toward the literal cat-woman who stood next to him. Gadget looked at her, and though it took him a moment, he realized quickly enough that her “cosplay” was no such thing. No — that was real fur, and those eyes and ears were real too; that facial structure wasn’t just some cosmetic prosthetic, nor was it all just some really good makeup job. No . . . he was staring at — and was face-to-face with — an actual alien humanoid, most likely from another planet, just like the Zarcturean Visitor, except somehow on Humanity’s side. And she smiled at him, and extending a hand for him to shake. Dumbfounded, he did so.

  “My name is Darmok,” she said to him. “Darmok Anjaladatanagra.”

  Gadget couldn’t help it — his sudden eruption of laughter escaped him unbidden; he clamped down on it quickly. “Wha . . . ? Really? That’s your actual name? I mean — for real?”

  “Yes,” she said, and smiled. “It is.”

  “Well then allow me to introduce myself,” said Gadget. “I’m Terry ‘Shaka-when-the-walls-fell’ Anders.”

  “Seriously?” said Darmok, raising an eyebrow and looking at Misto as if to say, “Really? These are the people you spend time with?”

  “C’mon man,” said Misto. “Don’t be a Mundane.”

  “Ack! Your words wound me, sir,” said Gadget. He smiled sheepishly, and shook Darmok’s hand. “Just kidding, ma’am. My name’s Terry Anders, but everybody calls me Gadget. Pleased to meet you, Darmok. Welcome to Earth. You are, I take it, not from around these parts, am I right?”

  “You presume correctly,” said Darmok, inclining her head politely. “And likewise, nice to meet you. Besides. I’ve heard that joke before. A lot. And on my own planet, no less.”

  “I’m Elphion,” said the green-skinned, witchly-dressed woman who stood next to Mystikite. She stepped forward and extended a hand. Gadget shook it, unsure of what to think of her or her proximity to Mystikite. She had a bandage on her neck — Vampire bite. Had Mystikite already hooked-up with someone else? Someone other than Zoe? So soon? No, he couldn’t have, thought Gadget. Could he? Elphion continued: “I’m just a plain, ordinary Human, but I’m a writer, too, so I’m mostly an alien . . . at least alien when it comes to polite society.”

  “Er, good to meet you,” said Gadget. “Uh, Mystikite, maybe we should . . . uh, maybe have a talk, or something . . .”

  “Sure,” said Mystikite. “But can the personal stuff wait until later? I’ve brought some . . . special new friends with me. And we kinda need to ask Dizzy — and you — for some help with something. Something pretty big. Call it a ‘new sideways mission statement’ for Dizzy’s special team of technowizards.”

  “Oh. Really. You . . . need our help. That a fact, huh.” Gadget had tried not to let that sound as sarcastic as it had in his head. Nonetheless, he was pretty sure it had. “That a fact, huh. Well. Come on in, I guess.”

  “Dude, are you . . . are you okay?” asked Mystikite. He looked concerned. Well, good.

  “Uh, fine,” said Gadget. “Yeah, I’m fine. Come on in.”

  Behind him, Dizzy had roused herself from sleep. “Yo Gadget-man. Can you bring my wheelchair in here? I wanna take a shower before we get going today.”

  “Uh, okay, but there’s, um . . . something you oughta see first,” said Gadget. “C’mere.”

  “Erm, wheelchair first, dummy,” she replied from the other room. “I’m not one of the Wheelers from Return to Oz.”

  “Oh! Right,” he said. He turned back to face Misto and Mystikite. “Excuse me one second, guys.”

  “Ah, allow me,” said Misto, smiling. He walked over to where they had parked Dizzy’s Professor-X-lookalike wheelchair, grabbed the handled, and rolled it into the next room. Gadget and Mystikite followed as behind them, Buffy and Jetta began to stir from sleep.

  “Misto!” cried Dizzy, her face lighting up with joy, relief, and happiness. “Oh my Gods, Misto, you’re back! You’re back, you’re back, you’re back!” She reached out with both arms, a huge grin spilling across her features, and he bent down to embrace her in a big, tight bearhug, and she hugged him back. He picked her up off the bed and whirled her around in the air before he set her back down again, and she laughed, a bright sound like faery bells ringing across a will-o’-the-wisp-lit summer field. Okay, he thought to himself, you’re gettin’ carried away, Imagination. That was a little over-the-top. “Did ya miss me, Diz?” Misto asked, as he set Dizzy down. “Or rather, what did I miss, being away?”

  “Never mind that,” said Dizzy. “How the frak did you escape?”

  “I had some help,” he said, and turned to face Darmok, who stood in the doorway. “Like the alien, she’s . . . er, not from around here, Diz. As in, not of this Earth. But, she’s a friend. She’s here to help us get rid of the damn thing. And to spoil their species’ plans for Earth.”

  “Uh . . . wow,” whispered Dizzy, as Darmok smiled at her. “I’ve — I’ve waited all my life to say this . . .” She put up her hand and made the live-long-and-prosper gesture from Star Trek. “Hello. On behalf — on behalf of the Human race, we . . . we come in peace. May we meet, and part, in friendship, love, and the cour — “ Her words caught in her throat. “The courage to go forward together. May you live long, and prosper . . . and know peace, and long life.”

  “Damn, son,” said Darmok, casting a glance at Misto. “Sure you hang out with some dorks — like your friend Gadget over there — but you also hang out with some pretty cool people, too.” She raised her hand to Dizzy and made the same Vulcan salutation. “Peace, and long life to you, as well, Dizzy Weatherspark. We are well-met on the path of the Beam.”

  Dizzy grinned and a shudder passed through her. “Damn. Wow. Guys? I think I just peed a little.”

  “Annnnnd just like that, she makes it weird,” said Mystikite, nodding to himself. “I notice I didn’t get a big hug.”

  “That’s because you were a butthead and left us,” said Dizzy. “No hugs for buttheads.” She broke into a wide, dazzling smile. “But y’know, I am really glad you came back, Mystikite. Things just weren’t the same without your acerbic wit and your inappropriate sense of cruel, sarcastic humor. And your penis jokes.”

  “That’s me,” said Mystikite. “ I’m a helper. And hey. Who’s joking? That thing’s huge. You’ve no idea.”

  “And this is?” asked Dizzy, turning to face Basil.

  “Dr. Basil Wrothisbane,” replied Basil. “A pleasure to meet you at last, Dizzy. I’ve heard much about you from your father. We’re friends, he and I. Colleagues, actually.”

  “Goddamn you,” came a voice from behind Dizzy. She, Gadget, and Misto all turned to look, and there stood Jetta, her fists clenched. “Goddamn you,” she repeated, her eyes boring holes into Mystikite. “You led them right to me.”

  “Jetta, calm down — ” he began.

  “No!” she cried. “You led them right to me, and now I’m trapped! Goddamn you! Well, go on!” She turned her attention to Basil. “Go on, I said! Kill me! That’s why you’ve been hunting me these past three years, isn’t it? So you can kill me? Well, go on! Do it!” She reached up and pulled apart the collar of her top and went to her knees. “Stake me through the heart! Use a silver bullet! Do whatever! Just do it and get it over with already! I’m sick of this life your kind have given me anyway! So go on! What are you waiting for? Get it over with!” She shut her eyes and swallowed hard.

  Basil regarded her with aghast confusion and curious bewilderment, as did the others, who all exchanged puzzled glances as they stood in the hallway just beyond the door, all trying to get a look at what the commotion was. Behind Jetta, in the other room, Viktor and Buffy woke up and, bleary-eyed, stared at Jetta and the others.

  “Uh, Jetta?” said Mystikite. “They’re not here to kill you. They’ve been looking for you because you’re special to them. You’re some kind of Chosen One. A legend, actually. Prophesied to exist. They don’t want to hurt you at all.”

  Jetta opened one eye.

  “Say what?” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Mystikite. He helped her to her feet. “They think you’re the Chosen One from an ancient prophecy of theirs, and that I’m some Champion whom you’ve Made. They don’t want to hurt us. They want to recruit us to help save them from some Vampiric Civil War that’s erupted within their ranks.”

  “Oh,” she said, gathering herself back up, trying to regain her dignity. “Oh. Well then.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “So.”

  “Uhhh, yeah, so aaanyway,” said Dizzy, turning her wheelchair back toward Basil, “it’s a pleasure to meet you, Basil. Any friend of dad’s is a friend of mine. I take it these fine folks are also Vampires? Friends of yours, right?”

  “Yes,” said Basil. One by one, they filed into the room. “This is Trazeal Wolfenstein and Thrallia Tanhauser, of Coven Vathias . . . Giova Miskandriska, of Coven Artigiana . . . Ripley Mibs, of Coven Iravaban . . . Dana Zulfridge, and her associates Razor and Bryce, of Coven Les Orogrü-Nathr?ks . . . And this is Balthazar Kingman, and his associates Vivacia, and Gnarl, of Coven Anamotika. We’ve come to talk to you because we might need your help.”

  “What with?” asked Dizzy. “We kind of have our hands full defeating an extraterrestrial menace, just now.”

  “Yes, so I’ve heard.”

  “Wait, you have?” said Dizzy. She glared at Mystikite. “Loose lips sink ships, Mystikite.”

  “Yo. Sue me and my huge penis.”

  “Hey, I could, y’know, if I’d had you sign an NDA,” she retorted. “But anyway. How rude of me. You were saying, Basil.”

  “Er, yes, your help,” said Basil. He sucked in a breath, and barreled ahead. “Dizzy — if I may call you Dizzy — I’m sorry I haven’t more time to explain, but: I have been named Leader of these Six of the great Covens, which each have Leaders of their own — and those Leaders, you see here before you — because the other Seven great Covens have all formed a New Cabal and have rebelled against us, attacking us, provoking a civil war within the Vampire Nation, the likes of which it has never seen before; it’s unparalleled in our entire history. Vampire-kind stands on the brink of extinction. Now that may sound all well and good by you; you’re a mortal, and it could only be a good thing for mortals if Vampires went extinct, yes? Well, perhaps not. Though we live in secret among you, our two societies exist in a kind of . . . strange symbiosis with one another. If one of us perishes, the other will eventually perish as well. So goes the thinking within two of our Covens, at least — the Vathias and the Simulacyrica, and my Coven, the Simulacra, are rarely wrong in such matters. The Leader of the New Cabal, a vampire named Vynovich Karishnikov, is a madman, bent on the total enslavement of your race, and the eradication of the entirety of my Six Covens from the face of the Earth. If he wins the day, it can only be bad for all of us. We — my Six Covens and I — may need your help in fighting this mad bastard and his Seven Covens. Now. Dizzy. Your father said you may be able to help us. So. Will you?”

  Dizzy appeared to think for a moment. She narrowed her eyes at him and looked pensive, glancing at him sideways, turning the thought over in her mind. Gadget could see the wheels in her head spinning.

  “Ye-e-es?” she said at last. Basil visibly relaxed. “I will. But helping you has gotta take second priority to the mission I’m currently involved in — which is stopping this alien menace — and you’ve gotta agree to help us with that first. Are we agreed?”

  “Agreed,” said Basil, nodding. He stuck out a hand meant for shaking. Dizzy shook it. “Okay, Misto. Guys. I’m gonna go take a bath. While I’m in there, Gadget-man — do me a favor, would you? Dig around in my bags and find me a clean pair of black underwear, a black sports bra, a pair of stockings, the black leather miniskirt with the slits up the thighs — y’know, for the Evangeliojaeger parts — and the black spandex top with the Flash emblem on it, okay? And set it all out on the bed there for me. Then, if you ladies and gents wouldn’t mind — go into the other part of the suite and close the door, if’n you would be so gracious.”

  “Uh . . . do I have to go digging through your underpants?” asked Gadget. “I mean — “

  “Oh for gods’ sakes, dude, don’t be such a rude, crude sack of pre-chewed-food prude!” said Dizzy. She got situated, wheeled herself into the bathroom, and then closed and locked the door. Gadget heard the shower come on. He went in the other room, opened her suitcase, and did as she asked. He gulped as he retrieved her a thong, the stockings, the bra, the top, and the skirt, and laid it out on the bed in their half of the suite. Viktor got up off of the bed beside them, and wandered into the other room, as did everyone else. Misto closed the door behind them.

  “Egads . . .” yawned Viktor. “What time is it?”

  “It’s about 11:45,” said Gadget. “We only slept for about four hours.”

  “Damn,” said Viktor. “Well, would someone mind telling me what the hell is going on here? Who are all these people?”

  “I’ll tell you what time it is,” cried Buffy as she rose from the bed nearest them. “Time for somebody to get their ass-beaten for leaving us! C’mere, asshole!” She laughed and ran toward Mystikite, a huge grin on her face, and practically tackled him into the wall and hugged him. He embraced her in return, laughing along with her. “Who the hell are they?” She nodded toward Basil and the others.

  “It’s good to see you too,” said Mystikite, as they parted. “And it’s a long story.”

  “Is this her?” asked Elphion, leaning close to Mystikite.

  “Uh, yeah,” said Mystikite, looking extremely uncomfortable.

  “Who’s this,” demanded Buffy.

  “Oh, Michaelson!” exclaimed Viktor. “Why, you’ve returned! Thank the gods, you’re still alive! We thought the alien — !”

  “Yeah, yeah. Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated,” remarked Misto.

  “Well it’s good to see you, nonetheless, Misto,” said Buffy, cooly ignoring Elphion. “Glad to see you got away from the alien. How the hell’d you manage that, anyway?”

  “I had help,” he said, and smiled. “Darmok here sprang me.”

  “Pleasure to meet you,” said Darmok, inclining her furry head.

  “Yes, she’s an alien too,” said Misto, interrupting Buffy before she could speak. “But don’t worry — she’s on our side.”

  “Well thank the gods for small favors, at least,” muttered Buffy.

  “Huh,” said Elphion, clearing her throat. “I can see why you walked out on her. She’s ten kinds of rude.”

  Buffy folded her arms across her chest and glared at Mystikite.

  “Dear god,” said Viktor, his eyes wide. “Two extraterrestrials in one day! I must have done something right in this life. Maybe it was creating Pris.” He got a faraway look in his eyes, and a worried look settled on his brow. “I wonder if she’s still alive, somehow, somewhere in that system . . .” He shook it off. “Now, then. Er, Mystikite, right? That’s your name?”

  “Yes,” said Mystikite. “Most of the time.”

  “Well, answer the question . . . Who are all these people?” asked Viktor.

  “Yeah,” said Jetta, coming up behind Mystikite. “If they’re not here to kill me, and they’re here for Dizzy’s help instead, who exactly are they? I mean yeah, they’re from the other Covens, but who are the other Covens? What the hell is a vampire Coven?”

  “Like I said,” said Mystikite, “it’s a long story. Gadget? Why don’t you do the honors for me.”

  “Huh?” said Gadget. What was he . . . ? Oh. That was what he meant. He wanted him to suck it out of his head and implant it into everyone else’s. What was he, everyone’s go-to storyteller and psionic messenger these days? He sighed. Well, why not. He supposed it was better to have a job you were really good at, and that people depended on you to do, rather than to have no job in particular and to just be kept around for no particular reason. He switched on the Mind-Weirding Helm, and felt it power-up. The vacuum tubes began to glow, the circuits began to heat, and clouds of coolant-mist began to form around the liquid-nitrogen canisters. He closed his eyes and concentrated on Mystikite . . .

  . . . And got smacked right in the face with a wall of rough emotions. Gadget had been all set to tear into his friend, and to deliver him a lecture on what an asshole he was for leaving them earlier. He had had all the words picked out, and had known exactly what order to deliver them in, too. But now that he got a face-full of what Mystikite had been going through, what he had been feeling — the pain, the confusion, the tumultuous inner-conflict — he wasn’t too sure he wanted to do that anymore. Instead, he instantly felt empathy for the poor sucker. The poor dude; what he had been going through since Jetta had Made him was unbelievable. Gadget saw the fight he had been in with those other two Vampires. Saw the struggle he had had when it came to feeding on Elphion. Saw and felt the pain of the Thirst. Felt and went through his fear of harming Zoe, his worry over maybe hurting him, too. No, there was no way he could be mad at him now.

  Somewhere in all of that, he got the story of Basil and his Vampires, who they were, and what they were doing here. He wisely filtered out the rest — Mystikite’s emotions and especially the parts about Elphion — before passing it along to Jetta, Viktor, and Buffy. When he was done, he switched off the Helm and wiped the sweat from his brow, and sat down on the nearest bed.

  “Marvelous invention!” cried Basil in an amazed breath when Gadget had finished. “I felt you just now . . . you touched my mind with it! My boy, you deserve a place in the hallowed halls of science beside Edison, Tesla, Einstein . . . the Greats, the Giants!”

  “I deserve an antacid tablet,” said Gadget, putting a hand on his stomach.

  “Jetta,” began Basil, turning to her — she took a step back — “Please. You know by now that we do not wish to harm you. Why do you draw away from me?”

  “I’ve spent the last three years avoiding you, all of you,” said Jetta. “I hate what I am. I hate being . . . this. Ever since I was Turned, I’ve wanted rid of it, but I’ve been too scared to end it. Too scared of dying, of what’s on the other side. Especially if it’s just nothing. So I keep going. I keep feeding, even though I hate it, and I don’t want to. I don’t want to be like you, to revel in it, the way you . . . people do. I’d just as soon not be one of you, be nothing rather than be what I am.”

  “My dear,” said Giova, tenderly, “you seem in so much pain. Most of it is, I suspect, because you are alone. You have no other night-creatures to call friend, to call family.” She extended a hand toward Jetta. “Come, join us. Be one with us. Be among us, your fellow Vampires.”

  “No,” said Jetta. She took another step backward. “I don’t want to. Don’t you get it? I am afraid of you, afraid of myself, even. I don’t like what I am. I didn’t like Making Mystikite earlier, either. I hated doing that. I only did it to save his life, because there was no other choice.”

  “Very well,” said Giova, and lowered her hand. “But you will come around. Eventually. And when you do, we will be waiting.”

  “No, I won’t,” said Jetta. “I’m sorry, but I won’t.”

  “We all come around to their point-of-view, eventually,” said Elphion. “It’s inevitable. Just ask me. I’ve been seeing things their way for years.”

  “Heh,” said Buffy under her breath, her arms still crossed. “I’ll just bet you have.”

  “Now what’s that supposed to mean?” asked Mystikite.

  “You know exactly what it’s supposed to mean,” said Buffy, standing up to face him. “You went off for five minutes, were gone maybe a couple of hours, and hooked up with little miss Green Skin here behind my back! That’s what that’s ’supposed to mean!’ How could you!”

  “Well, what was I supposed to think?” he said. “I thought I had made it clear that we were breaking-up, at that point, at least.”

  “Oh? What?” she said, clearly taken aback. “Wait, that was you breaking up with me, back there? Is that what you’re saying? That we’re done, Mystikite ‘Mystikite’ Schmidinger?”

  “Well, no,” he said, “but I was angry, and at the time — ”

  “‘At the time?’ So, what, our relationship is just a convenience to you? Something you can turn on and off like a light-switch?”

  Gadget watched them fight, helpless to stop the situation from spiraling out of control, and knowing the whole time that Mystikite was in the wrong. He had been the one to leave, not her, and he had treated it like a “temporary” breakup that he had simply “expected” to be over when he said so, just whenever. Gadget bit his lip, and a nervous sweat broke out on his brow. Then again, he knew what his friend had been through the past few hours, and it was terrible.

  “Well, no,” said Mystikite. “I don’t, not really in those terms!”

  “Well then what do you think, Mystikite?” said Zoe. “Tell me. Because I’d really like to know what you really think of me and our relationship!”

  “Hey, I love you,” he said. “I’ve always loved you. I love you more than anything else in this world, babe, and I always will.”

  Elphion looked like she was about ready to cry. “Good to know you’re so sincere in your affections, Mystikite.”

  “Oh-ho, so your two-timing finally catches up with you!” said Zoe.

  “Oh for God’s sake,” said Mystikite. “I didn’t do anything with Elphion! I fed from her, yes, but that’s all.”

  “So much for not wanting to ‘hurt’ anybody,” said Zoe. “What, you didn’t want to hurt any of us, but I guess strangers are fair game?”

  “Hey, I'm not a stranger,” said Elphion. “We got to know each other.”

  “Oh, really,” said Zoe, and crossed her arms again. “How well, I wonder.”

  Mystikite pinched his nostrils together. “Elphion, you’re not helping me out here.”

  “Well if you hadn’t left then none of this would be happening!” cried Gadget. Mystikite, Elphion, and Buffy all turned to look at him. He burst open and let loose. “You left us, you fucking asshole! We didn’t think we were ever gonna see you again! Fucking Zoe here was beside herself with worry for you, and so was I! We didn’t know where you were, where you’d gone — if we were even still friends, or what! You walked out on us, man! Oh, what’s that — a homicidal alien creature, trying to kill your friends? What a great time to fucking walk out on them because you can’t deal with who or what you are! Dick!”

  “Hey!” yelled Mystikite. “Don’t you fucking dare lecture me on dealing with ‘who or what I am!’ You and you — !” He shook his finger at Gadget and at Buffy. “You two . . . you two are the ones that did this to me! If you hadn’t asked this one — !” He pointed at Jetta. “If you hadn’t asked her to fucking turn me into one of what she is, I might’ve died, yeah, but I wouldn’t be what I am! And I wouldn’t have to ‘deal’ with it at all! Tell you what — you try it for five damn minutes, Terry! You try wanting to rip your own throat out rather than give into that . . . that . . . that thirst! That gnawing hunger for Human blood! I felt it earlier — I’m feeling it now, right now — and I hate it. I despise it! D’you hear me?” He turned and faced Basil and the other Vampires. “Well, do you? How the hell do you people stand it? And how do you stand the killing? How do you rationalize — !” He gestured to Gadget and the others. “How do you rationalize the trade-off between their lives and your lives? Huh? Can someone please explain that to me? Because I’m really fucking lost on that one!”

  “As I’ve told you . . . we of the Simulacyrica try not to take Human lives,” said Basil, stepping toward him. “And as I’ve also told you, we try to control the thirst, using — ”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” said Mystikite. “The formulas you guys use. They let you ease-off on the blood-hunger and let you walk in daylight, almost like normal people. Hurray, huzzah, problem solved. NOT! What about the others standing behind you there, Basil? They’re not saying anything. They’re not leaping to correct me. Nope. Why not? Because I’m right. And because though some of them won’t admit it, others will, and they’ll confess to it proudly . . . They get off on the killing. They get off on the thrill of the hunt. They like the feel of the wilderness unleashed inside them, the untrammeled beast within breaking out of its cage, free to roam, to hunt, to kill. They don’t feel bad about it. Hell, some of them revel in it!” He turned back around to face Gadget, Buffy, and Jetta. “And that’s what you did to me. You three. You made me one of them. So don’t you dare cop an attitude on me about how well I’m ‘dealing’ with it!”

  Mystikite slumped down and sat on the edge of the nearest bed, and buried his face in his hands for a moment, breathing deeply. No one said anything. Ripley, Dana, Trazeal, and Balthazar all exchanged troubled glances with Basil and with one another, and all fell into a whispering huddle back by the hotel room door. Buffy sat down on one side of Mystikite and put her arm around him, and put a gentle hand on his thigh, and hugged him. Elphion sat down on his other side, and also put an arm around him. Buffy shot her a look that, had she been telekinetic, could’ve bent cold wrought-iron into new and interesting shapes. Elphion ignored her, and ran a hand through Mystikite’s hair. Buffy narrowed her eyes at the woman.

  “Everyone, please!” cried Viktor, putting up his hands between Gadget and Mystikite. “Please! Let there be peace here! I didn’t escape from Ravenkroft just so I could be torn apart by a private war between you people! Get it together! You’re all supposed to be the good guys, right? Since when is it good for the good guys to get ripped apart by internecine warfare over what lies in the past? The past . . . is the past! You must learn to forgive one another! Now come on! The four of you! Shake hands like men and women, and forgive one another! Learn to put your petty differences aside, and fight for what is right! Together. Come on now. Come on.”

  Silence reigned for a moment.

  “I hate to say it,” said Dizzy — she had appeared in the doorway between the two rooms, once more wearing her Evangeliojaeger — “but Viktor . . . is kinda right, guys.”

  “Dude,” said Gadget, quietly, leaning on the doorjamb. “Look, I’m — I’m sorry, alright? Jeeze . . . I was mad at you for leaving, yeah, but only because without you, I don’t have a single fucking clue what I’m doing. I mean, I just . . . You’ve always been the strong one, Mystikite. The source of what little strength I’ve ever had. Without you around I feel . . . well, naked. Vulnerable. Weak. And only halfway ‘there,’ like I’m a ghost, and am going to slip through reality’s fingers any second. You help make the real world an even realer place for me, and given my . . . My illness . . . and what it . . . what it can do to me sometimes . . . that’s . . . that’s a huge thing that you do for me. I don’t want you to go away. Not ever.”

  “In other words,” said Jetta, “you’re worth more to him — to us, I suppose; yeah, I’ll go ahead and throw myself on that list — you’re worth more here and accounted for, even if you are a natural-born killing machine that can’t ever die. Exactly like me.”

  “Really? You want me here? Even if I’m a danger? To everyone?” Mystikite looked up at Gadget. Tears formed in his eyes, threatening to march down his face, but he held them in check. That was big, though — Mystikite never let anyone see him anywhere even close to crying or teary-eyed, yet for some reason, he allowed it now. “I can’t ‘play Vampire’ with you anymore, either. It’s no fun when the curse of the damned is real and flowing through your goddamn veins. Because y’never know, even with Basil’s drugs, I might just lose control and then — ah, fuck, I don’t even wanna think about it. Goddamn it.”

  “Mystikite . . .” began Elphion, hesitant, and casting a sidelong glance at Buffy, “I . . . you can always — well, that is — ” She sighed, and sucked in a deep breath of courage, and then turned to face both him and Buffy. “Okay, look. Both of you. First he tells me one thing, and then I see another. So I gotta ask — just so I can know, alright? Is it — I mean, are you two gonna — ? That is, are you two — ”

  “No. It’s over. We’re over. I think . . . I think we’re done here.” The words sounded as though they had simply fallen out of Mystikite’s mouth, dropping into the atmosphere like a set of lead weights.

  “Yeah,” said Zoe, her voice as hollow as the look on her face suggested she felt. “Yeah, I don’t really . . . I don’t think this can work, the way things are now.” She turned and looked at Elphion, and shrugged. She seemed to try and keep her lower lip from quivering. “Good luck, I suppose.” She stood up and crossed the room to the other bed, where she lied down on the bed, buried her face in her hands, and quietly began to cry.

  “Zoe, my dear — ” began Viktor.

  “No,” said Zoe, rising and putting up a hand. “You especially don’t talk to me. You stole my work. You stole my Physion Bio-Printer. You have no lines in this play. Mystikite. Mystikite. You’re right. We’re done here.”

  Gadget felt his heart sink a little as he watched Buffy as her face had fallen, the sadness in her eyes shining as she’d sat there and faced the finality and inevitability of it all. And as he heard Mystikite’s words to her, and heard her reply, he realized: Mystikite and Zoe’s relationship had been — at least in part — an ongoing, mutually-imagined fantasy that they were both characters in some sweeping, gothic love story unfolding all around them, their lives the events of its narrative. But with Mystikite now an actual Vampire, a real-life gothic creature whose passions could ignite legitimately dangerous, animalistic hunger within him — a hunger that could kill a mortal lover like Zoe — it wasn’t so much a fantasy now as it was a treacherous mine-field of menacing probabilities. One wrong step could mean death in a heartbeat for Zoe, and then a lifetime of guilt, grief, and sorrow for Mystikite. Not to mention, Gadget thought, the feelings her murder would stir up within himself and the others. Also, Zoe was now a full-blown pyrokinetic. She could, in a moment of passion, conjure living flames from the aether; that would mean instant death for Mystikite, as well. How could they ever work that out? They couldn’t. Besides, there were other logistics to consider; for instance how would they ever see each other during the day? They wouldn’t. Their relationship would only exist at night. They would never see one another by the light of the sun again; no more sunsets or mornings for them as a couple — ever. How could they ever go out to dinner? They really couldn’t, unless “out to dinner” meant lurking in an alleyway for some evil-doer to happen by, so that Mystikite could ambush and then feed off of them. And of course, the big question: How could they make love, without the danger of Mystikite losing control and biting into her, feeding off her? And once he had begun, could he stop himself before he killed her? Gadget did not know the answers. He knew that neither of them knew, either. And it was the not-knowing that now tore them from one another’s side, the not-knowing that drove the wedge between them.

  Dizzy walked over and put a hand on Buffy’s shoulder, and sat next to her. Viktor lowered his head. Jetta sat next to her as well, and cast Mystikite a disparaging look. Basil and his Vampires mostly just looked uncomfortable.

  “Buffy,” said Dizzy, in a quiet voice. “Buffy?”

  “Yes?” Buffy didn’t look at her. “What.”

  “Buffy, I’m going to need you at full strength. For what’s ahead of us.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “And I’m going to need you to be able to work with Mystikite.”

  “Yes. I know that too.”

  “Can you?”

  A pause.

  “Yes.” Buffy got up from where she lay, and wiped her eyes off. She glared at Mystikite. “Yeah, I can do that.”

  Gadget didn’t know what to say. He was at a loss for words. Maybe if he had shared Mystikite’s emotions —

  Wait. That was it. It wasn’t too late.

  “Alright,” he said. He had reached his breaking point. “That’s enough. I’ve had it with this shit. With you two, with you — “ He pointed at Elphion, “with me. With all of this.” He switched on the Mind-Weirding Helm.

  “Dude,” said Mystikite. “What are you doing?”

  “What I should’ve done ten minutes ago,” said Gadget. He put both sets of fingers to his temples, and concentrated on Mystikite, on Buffy, and on Elphion. And on himself. On what he knew Mystikite was feeling, and on Buffy’s feelings, and on whatever the hell Elphion was feeling — on the look on her face, for one thing, and on the suggestions of tears at the corners of her eyes. On the red circles under Mystikite’s eyes, and on the tear-stains on Buffy’s pillow. On Viktor’s downcast expression. On Dizzy’s hand on Buffy’s shoulder, and on the way Buffy’s face looked right now; the sadness in her expression, the hang-dog look in her eyes. And on the way he felt, the tormented feeling of being torn in two, the divided loyalty he felt, the fact that he knew what Mystikite had been through yet knew where Buffy was coming from. He imagined a vortex forming in the air, a four-way tunnel between himself, Mystikite, Buffy, and yes, even Elphion. And then . . . he let it all loose. He felt the white light of pure emotion flow from him, and all three of them, back and forth through the flux tube he had constructed. Mystikite threw back his head and stood curiously erect, awash in the stream of energy, and Buffy bent backward, also caught up in the stream of thought and feeling . . . Elphion collapsed to the nearest bed, the electric glow surrounding her, pulling the feelings out of her, sucking out the emotion and blending it in the four-way convolution above her, joining the thoughts and emotions of the others in the intermix.

  And then, as soon as it had begun, it was over. The flow of light dimmed and vanished, and Mystikite and Buffy both collapsed — as did Gadget. Dizzy got up and hurried over to him, to see if he was alright. He had only collapsed to his knees, so he waved her away. He was dizzy, but otherwise okay. His legs a little wobbly, he managed to stand back up.

  “Whoa,” he said. “Don’t know my own strength.”

  “Are you okay?” asked Dizzy.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. “Got a bit of a head-rush, is all.”

  On the bed, Buffy stirred. “Oh God, wow,” she said, holding her head as she sat up. She blinked her eyes, then focused them on Mystikite as he got to his feet. “Mystikite?”

  He stood up and turned to her. “Zoe.”

  They crossed the room and embraced one another. Elphion stood up from where she lay, and ran to the two of them, and they engaged in a gigantic three-way hug that lasted for a full minute.

  “Don’t you ever let me go again,” said Buffy, into Mystikite’s shoulder.

  Gadget smiled.

  “Er, Balthazar?” said Basil.

  “Yes Basil?” said the posh, handsome Vampire in the double-breasted suit.

  “You, Gnarl, Vivacia, and Ripley go back to our suite, and retrieve the Conjuring Gauntlet. I have the feeling we’ll need it soon. But whatever you do, be careful. Vynovich is here; I can practically feel the bastard’s presence. Check in via phone when you make it back to the suite, and let us know you’ve retrieved the Gauntlet. Then head back with it.”

  “Roger that,” said Ripley. “C’mon Balthazar. Let’s go show ‘em why nobody fucks with Covens Iravaban and Anamotika.”

  Vynovich made his way down the cobwebbed, abandoned public stairwell, left here to rot by the builders of the hotel some sixty years before, as he and his lieutenants — the Coven Leaders of the Seven Covens of the New Cabal — made their way toward the sub-basement level of the building, headed toward the equally-abandoned remains of the small subway station that had once, a long time ago, been a selling-point of staying at the Renaissance Regency, their new Geist-Verst?rker units — courtesy of his friend Ravenkroft — affixed to their heads and glowing, casting about them a dim blue pallor that helped light the way amidst all the rot, grime, and neglect. Vynovich and his chief lieutenant, a Vampire named Arkham — a Drogath who had, in his Human life, been a Neo-Nazi — you could tell by the swastika-shaped scar carved into his forehead, and the German writing tattooed on either side of his neck — both carried high-powered flashlights, which also helped. But they soon didn’t need them: As they descended and entered the subway station itself, two others sources of light revealed themselves: All around them, the mortar and grout in the tiled walls began to emit its own illumining glow, and the fluorescent lightning-tubes mounted to the ceiling — which were brand new, unlike the ceilings themselves — began to click on as they approached them. Security cameras — also shiny and new — located in the upper corners of the vaulted ceilings and flying-buttressed archways that led from space to space here whirred as they turned to focus their lenses on the invaders.

  First behind Arkham came Vladimir Toskinov, Leader of Coven Nikrotesko, surgically disfigured in hideous ways, scars and lesions twisting his face half all out of shape; then came Anaztazia Infinia, Coven Leader of Asthisi, her hair a coiffed mane that flowed down over her studded, black leather armor, a portrait of a sixteenth century female Dame come to vivid life here in the present; next came the clinically-insane Leader of Coven Kravenscryln, the white-haired Damocles Herod, forever frozen at age forty, well-muscled with wild eyes, and dressed in a medieval cleric’s black, bottom-flaring robe, armed with a pair of machetes that he kept strapped to his back; next up, the Leader of Coven Dolofoni, Goeth Anaxanar, dressed in a black magician’s tuxedo and a matching black cape, eight daggers in sheaths situated on his belt and two pistols — a pair of Glock nine-millimeters — in holsters strapped to his torso and worn over a dapper waistcoat; after him came Naraneka Nathal, the leader of Coven Veterigus, who wore a long leather dress slit all the way up to her thighs on either side, a studded leather corset with buckles and a large, spiked dog-collar and cuffs, with lace ruffles at the wrists of her sleeves, her large, heavily-shadowed eyes glancing about furtively; finally, there came Azazeal, the tall and lithe Leader of Coven Geistig, with paler-than-usual skin — almost an albino, his flesh nearly alabaster in tone — dressed in the finery of a medieval nobleman, his bald head gleaming, the light winking off of it and the silver-rimmed monocle he wore over one of his sour, petulant eyes. The four Geistig who followed him — Jinx, Tolland, Azimuth, and Draven — could make the best use of the Ravenkroft-engineered Geist-Verst?rker units on their heads, for their Coven alone had, in the deep secrecy that had become their signature, honed and perfected the telepathic — and for some, telekinetic — powers that were a Vampiric birthright, but that so many of their fellow Vampires had forgotten how to cultivate or even use. Azazeal marched behind Arkham, in a line with Vynovich’s other generals. And behind each of them stood one more: Behind Vynovich and Arkham stood a third Drogath, Sabaton; behind Anaztazia, Alcros, another Asthisi; behind Vladimir, Prawln, another Nikrotesko; behind Damocles, another Kravenscryln, Zorina; behind Goeth, the Dolofoni Baelzod; behind Naraneka, a Veterigus named Kitesh; and lastly, another Geistig, Jakal. And of course, floating there, at the end of the line-up, came Vynovich’s private technological contractor, Ravenkroft, the mad scientist with whom he had struck an infernal bargain made of equal parts money and macabre moral alignment.

  They fanned out from a line into a group as they reached the end of the stairwell and entered the subway-station proper, a large open, cathedral-like space with high, vaulted ceilings held up by more flying buttresses. Graffiti covered the walls; upon closer inspection, it consisted not of gang signs or cheap street art, but occult symbols and mystical equations taken, Vynovich supposed, from ancient manuscripts. Arched doorways lead off to entrances and exits to other tunnels on either side, and directly ahead of them by about twenty paces stood the large cave-like tunnel that ran off to either side and vanished into the dark, where once a pair of subway trains themselves had run back and forth. Water filled the lower part of the trains-tunnel that descended to beneath the floor-level of the station. . . but not a dirty, grimy mud or sludge, as one might expect, given the condition of the rest of the place. No, this looked like fresh, clean water, the kind one might find in a well-kept fountain or artificial pond; two mechanical waterfalls fed into it on either side of the trains-tunnel; they constantly recycled the water, seeming to purify it. Beneath the water’s surface, there appeared . . . something, a lurking, hulking mass that breathed at regular intervals, causing bubbles to rise and obscure its size and exact nature. Each time the bubbles cleared for a moment, he could see more of it: It gurgled there in the depths, at least eighty feet long and fifteen wide, and had curled up onto itself with its large, bat-like wings folded around it. It partly-resembled a giant squid with monstrous tentacles, thought Vynovich . . . but then again, it also seemed to have large, powerful ams and legs, and its reflective, horizontally-oriented, teardrop-shaped eyes stretched out to either side of its rounded, metallic skull, the base of its skull blooming out to either side, something like a flowering neck-brace made of bone, out of the center of which the head erupted like a bulb ready to burst. Its skin gleamed a grey, dusty pallor with a slightly-bluish hue to it, and those metallic-surfaced, reflective eyes, he realized, currently lay closed. As the monster slumbered there, breathing in bubbles beneath the surface, it stirred only a little. Sleeping, just as the Orogrü-Nathr?ks had always said. All along the perimeter of the water, a series of giant Tesla coils, antennae, and electrodes — all standing on tripods or suspended from the ceiling, and all of them angled down into the water — were alive with small arcs of lightning traveling between them and tiny bursts of yellow sparks now and then.

  “Well, shit on me,” said Arkham, gazing down at the thing in the water. “You were right, Boss. It’s real. I never would’ve believed it. I though it was all just a bunch of fucking bullshit from a bunch of religious nuts. I never thought this ‘Elder God’ thing was like a real, actual thing. But here it is anyway. Shit.”

  “Yeah. You figure out all sorts of things are real, once you look at them the right way,” said Vynovich. The thing in the water unnerved him. He didn’t like the way its metallic, shut eyelids appeared somewhat translucent, and how beneath them, the things eyes seemed to dart from point to point. REM sleep. It dreamed. But of what?

  Against one wall of the subway station, there stood several banks of electronic machines, mounted in tall, rack-mounted enclosures: Rows and rows of computers and scientific equipment, much of it probably custom-built by those assholes in Coven Simulacyrica. Vynovich bristled, just thinking about those posers. All of the machines’ various circuit-boards faced outward, probably for easy access. Wires, ribbon cables, and interconnecting cords dangled between them, almost like those found upon old telephone switchboards. Lights flickered and blinked across their forward panels. Waveforms fluctuated on screens. A large upright printer, mounted in one of the racks, drew a series of squiggled lines across a roll of paper as it slowly unspooled, tracking several sets of . . . what . . . brainwaves, maybe? Six monitors, also mounted, displayed columns of flickering numbers and various mathematical formulae, waveforms, changing graphs, and lines of scrolling code. Vynovich understood none of it, but didn’t need to in order to know what its ultimate function was. Finally, parked right in the center of the room, as though something like an altar, stood one last device: From left to right, it looked like someone had taken the innards of a jet-engine, plus those of a giant Tesla coil, and had fused them into one machine. In the center of this contraption sat a large glass plasma globe, three-feet in diameter, with a central electrode jutting out into it from the jet-engine part, as well as from the Tesla-coil part on the other side. On the right, also connected to the globe via an electrode extending into it, was what looked like the wire-coil armature of a large electric motor, parts of it suspended in a magnetic field. A fuse-box connected to that along with a small control panel, into which ran a series of cables that connected to a laptop computer precariously balanced on top. From there, more cables snaked out and hung loose beside it, as though waiting for to something else to connect with . . .

  “This thing must be how they talk to it . . . to the Elder,” muttered Vynovich. “But where are the spiritual sons of bitches, I wonder? the Orogrü-Nathr?ks. Where are they?” He looked from left to right. Aside from him and the other leaders of his New Cabal, they seemed alone. The place, it seemed, was deserted. But that couldn’t be. the Orogrü-Nathr?ks would never leave their precious Orogrü-Nathr?k unprotected. Wasn’t going to happen. They were here, alright. It was just a matter of —

  “Hold it right there, Vynovich!” came a loud, disembodied male voice, echoing throughout the chamber. The sound of a dozen rounds chambered in half-a-dozen pistols, and that of half-a-dozen safeties switched off on half-a-dozen submachine-guns — all their clips no doubt loaded with hundreds of silver bullets — echoed throughout, as well. Vynovich smiled to himself. Wherever the Orogrü-Nathr?ks hid, and whatever they had planned, they were in for the surprise of their un-lives.

  Then, they emerged: Melting out of the shadows themselves, the two dimensional shapes cast upon the walls ballooned out and became three dimensional phantoms, as arcs of energy crackled through them and they turned into humanoids with distinct features, each one armed with a gun aimed right at Vynovich and his troops, with the aid of the color-shifting black cloaks they all wore . . . Probably another invention of the Simulacyrica, curse the fuckers. Well, they would soon be his and his army’s, those cloaks.

  One of the attacking Nathraks strode toward him with his gun aimed right at Vynovich’s face, the hood of his cloak pulled back. He had brown, tousled hair and a youngish face that neither experience nor age had blemished much; probably Turned as a teenager, thought Vynovich, his head most likely full of nonsense about a “unified” world of darkness, a single Vampire Nation under one rule — the nonsense of Coven Anamotika and Les Gardiens de Vampires, naturally. A Creation indoctrinated also with the beliefs of the Orogrü-Nathr?ks, whose mythology — while, in part, literally true — spoke of magic and prophecies and ancient wisdom that the Orogrü-Nathr?ks — very dangerously — tried to use to upstage more modern thinking. The Drogath prided themselves on being the historians of record for the Vampire Nation, the keepers of the true wisdom of centuries, yes . . . but, Vynovich thought, the difference was that the Drogath knew the value of keeping history in its place — in the past — and of learning from its mistakes. Those like the Orogrü-Nathr?ks tried to relive history, over and over, with their chants and prayers, their rituals and mystic leanings, even as they used the ultra-modern techno-magic of the Simulacyrica to commune with their fallen “Elder God.” The Creation with the gun pointed right at his head and standing less than two feet away from him — so close that Vynovich could look into his eyes and see the fear and anger burning there like interlacing flames — trembled, the barrel of his gun pressing cooly against Vynovich’s forehead as Vynovich himself stood stoic and unmoving. He refused to show any weakness to this youngling, even that of any nervousness that he might accidentally fire his gun with the way that his hands shook. Vynovich smirked at him instead, though he did put up his hands in a false gesture of surrender.

  “I take it we’re to stand down?” he said to the young punk with the submachine gun.

  “D — damn right,” said the young one. “We heard you were c — coming. The High Priestess and the Changeling Acolytes sent us w — w — warning. Stand down and s — surrender! Th — that goes f — for a — all of you!” He yelled and stammered this last bit as his thirty-three cloaked fellows all surrounded Vynovich and his gang of twenty-one, including Ravenkroft in his floating Evangeliojaeger and his tentacled, also-levitating consort, Morganymuae, whose eyes flashed green in irritation as she watched the Orogrü-Nathr?ks surround them and aim their weapons. Vynovich shot them a look and gave them the signal to hold-off, for now; don’t attack just yet, the gesture said; wait for me to give the go-ahead. Ravenkroft looked pissed; this whole thing grated on his very last nerve. Vynovich didn’t particularly care; all he cared about was whether or not the Geist-Verst?rker device on his head would work when he engaged it in just a few more seconds.

  “Okay, then,” said Vynovich, his hands up. “Now what, Skeeziks? It’s your party; you call the shots, I suppose. What’s your name, anyway, son?”

  “Uh, right,” said the young Vampire. “My name is David.”

  “David!” hissed the young female next to him in the circle they’d formed around Vynovich and his crew. David’s head whipped toward her as she said in a heated whisper, “Do not engage the enemy in conversation!”

  “Well, then,” said Vynovich, ignoring her. “If you’re David, then I guess that kinda makes me Goliath. Which makes it my sad duty . . . to now kill all of you.”

  “W — what? D — David beat Goliath.”

  “Yeah, not where I’m from,” said Vynovich. He then whistled loudly and bellowed: “Alright, people! Go for it! Spare the Elder, but kill everyone else!” His eye twitched as with a thought, he felt his mind join the minds of the others — it felt like what singing a common note of harmony in a choir felt like; a humming resonance, deep inside his gut — as they all thought the same thing. The fabric of reality soon responded to their psionic-harmonic cry: A loud crack of thunder echoed throughout the derelict subway station and a bright blast of light exploded above Vynovich and his crew as a green-glowing umbrella of energy unfolded from a central point above them, coursing down curved, invisible walls around them and surrounding them on all sides, and slicing right between the young fool with the gun and Vynovich. The young fool, surprised, stumbled back a few paces, as did the rest of his thirty-two companions who had their guns aimed at them. Then came the “sucker-punch”: An undulating wave of energy suddenly burst out from the protective walls of the umbrella, rippling out in every direction away from it, and knocking the thirty-three Les Enfant aggressors off their feet, sending them sprawling to the floor, skidding on their butts and backsides away from the umbrella, shocked looks upon their faces. Vynovich smiled, and put two fingers to his temple in concentration as a bolt of lightning leapt from his forehead to the young one before him. The lightning bolt struck him dead-center in the chest, eviscerating his body with a whiff of flame, and left him a smoldering corpse on the ground, his clothes burnt to tatters and his skin melted around the bloody crater in his torso. The others of his crew lashed out similarly — lightning bolts, strong bursts of marshaled air-currents, and invisible fists made of psychokinetic energy took out the Enfant soldiers one by one, throwing them up against the walls, scorching their flesh, tearing them open and cauterizing the wounds in the same breath. Blood flew from the wounds and splashed against the walls and floor. Screams in the dark echoed and then fell silent. None of Vynovich’s men or women had to lift a finger — the Geist-Verst?rkers did it all, transforming their blood-soaked intentions into cold-blooded murder. Vynovich cast a glance back at Ravenkroft and Morganymuae, who both hovered above the fray, simply observing like proud parents. Ravenkroft smiled at Vynovich and raised an eyebrow at him, as if to say, “Did I not tell you? The devices work as promised, do they not?”

  After a minute and a half, Vynovich’s men and women stood alone in the cavernous space, with all thirty-two of the Orogrü-Nathr?ks dead at their feet in a circle around them. More were on the way, he was sure. The Coven Les Orogrü-Nathr?ks were populous; it helped their cause that they had a tangible, observable god figure to bolster their religious bullshit, Vynovich thought. After tonight, though, that god would be his to command; especially if what he’d heard from his informants Balthazar and Ripley was true, and that grating geek Basil had truly invented what the informants said he had. If Balthazar and Ripley’s facts were correct, then holy shit . . . Basil might’ve just practically handed him rule of the entire fucking planet in one fell-swoop. Vynovich grinned. This would all be much easier than he’d first thought.

  “You two, quick,” he said to Anaztazia and Arkham. “Grab that device and use your minds to levitate it out of here. If it’s what I think it is, we’ll need it soon.” He pointed to the altar-like machine, the one that looked like a cross between a jet-engine and a large, horizontally-laid Tesla-coil, with the plasma-globe stuck in the center and the laptop computer balanced on top of it. “We need to get that thing topside, fast, before the rest of the Orogrü-Nathr?ks show up.”

  “But we can take them, boss,” said Arkham. Sweat beaded on his forehead and he looked pale, almost sallow. He breathed heavily, and his eyes looked wild and ferocious — as though he hadn’t slept in days. He didn’t look at Vynovich directly; instead, he focused on the altar-like machine, as he and Anaztazia both stared it down and it began to lift into the air, like an artifact from a magician’s stage-show.

  Vynovich put a hand on his shoulder. “No. Not now, my friend. Our friend Ravenkroft here tells me that these beanies we’re wearing take a toll on you whenever you use them, and the bigger the job, the higher the toll. We can use them for fighting one-on-one maybe from here on for the next hour or so . . . but we need to give our bodies a chance to recharge before doing anything else big with them. Me, I’m thinking it’s time we went upstairs and fed on a few of these fandom fools.” He grinned. “What say you?”

  Arkham grinned. “That sounds good to me, boss. Now. Where do you want this thing once we get topside?”

  “Oh, I’d say . . . the roof is a good place. We’ll hit the first floor of the hotel and then run it up in the freight elevator to the top floor, then take it up the stairwell to the rooftop. And then . . . well, then we steal what we need from Basil and his rebels . . . and start the countdown to not just a new Vampire Nation, but a whole new idea — the first Vampire Planet.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Basil entered the lobby of the Renaissance Regency Hotel and Convention Center, and immediately smiled at seeing the young woman there. She wore a leather corset and a vinyl miniskirt, a studded choker-collar and pale makeup, a pair of plastic fangs in her mouth, her lips smeared with blood-red lipstick, her blue eye-shadow heavily-applied, her name-tag reading DARK PRINCESS VYNESSA. Next to her stood a man wearing a startlingly realistic pirate outfit, in the spirit of Jack Sparrow, and behind them, there stood a tall, shapely woman in a bright red dress, her short blond hair coming down to her neck in carefully-coiffed curls, her smile a blend of seduction and mystery. Her name-tag read simply, SIX. For his part, Basil had always loved sci-fi and fantasy conventions, even — no, especially — after he’d become a Vampire. It had been — hell, it still was — loads of fun, going to one and signing-up to play in the Live-Action Role-Playing sessions, specifically those involving Vampire: The Masquerade and its various cousins from White Wolf Games, such as Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Seeing young kids — and slightly older “kids” — pour their hearts into acting the way they thought that Vampires acted gave him a weird kind of thrill, as did their heavy-handed — and unknowingly, eerily accurate — impression of the overwrought melodrama and political turmoil in which Vampire society constantly found itself ensconced.

  He only hoped that the others had gotten his message and had made it here alive, as well. Dana, Giova, Ripley . . . And from Covens Anamotika, Asthisi, and Vathias, a trio of Vampires sent by the new Coven Leaders who had risen — in grief, torment, sadness, and now most of all, rage — to replace those whom Vynovich had cut-down and slaughtered. He and his seven newly-realigned Covens of Drogath, Asthisi, Kravenscryln, Dolofoni, Nikrotesko, Veterigus, and Geistig had behaved like animals. Only the remaining six realigned Covens — Anamotika, Iravaban, Artigiana, Orogrü-Nathr?ks, Vathias, and his Coven, Simulacyrica — now stood to oppose the Other seven that had now turned on their brothers of the night. The ideology of Vynovich’s Seven: Take the world from the Humans, once and for all . . . assert total Vampire rule over Earth, and to hell with the Fa?ade and the Prophecies of the Orogrü-Nathr?ks. But, the fallen, slumbering god, the Eidolon, Orogrü-Nathr?k . . . That the evil Seven had an interest in . . . as well as the Simulacyrica and their Daywalker serum, and the Geist-Verst?rker devices. For his part, Basil wasn’t so sure he liked his own plan, now; he felt exposed here, like a sparking live wire downed in a thunderstorm, standing here, out in the open, though he did take some small comfort in that he blended-in well with all the other “vampires” around.

  “Er, I’d like to get a room, please,” he said to the clerk at the front desk, a tallish, large-eyed young man with curly black hair, and dressed in a white shirt, black vest, and dress pants. The young man looked at Basil and his large, black steamer trunk that he dragged behind him on a dolly. Inside it, his hundred Geist-Verst?rkers, along with some of his tools. On top of that sat his suitcase, containing two changes of clothes and a few other supplies. Finally, a largish handbag sat on top of that, containing quite a few spare parts and pieces from his lab back at the Chapterhouse.

  “Shyeah,” said the young man, shaking his head and smiling at Basil. “You and maybe the President of the United States or the Prime Minister of England, pal. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re kinda busy . . . busy runnin’ outta rooms. That’s all we needed — the Executive East burning down, and for our parent company to play the beneficent one and offer to host this con for them. And Jeez, man — your luggage. Moving in for a while? How many?”

  “Er, how many what?”

  “How many people. How many people are you gonna cram into this hypothetical ‘room’ with you? And did you come from FantazmagoriCon? You look like you’re dressed up like one of those live-action Vampire role-players.”

  “Um, oh yes, exactly, that’s exactly what I am, yes,” said Basil. “And I’m not sure . . . maybe a few others. Three or four others, I guess. Perhaps. I won’t know until they arrive.”

  “Figures. Smoking, or nonsmoking?” asked the clerk, typing away at his computer terminal. Basil found himself amazed that the Boston Renaissance Regency Hotel still had separate “smoking” and “nonsmoking” rooms. The clerk then said, “Eh, never mind. Just discovered we’re fresh out of smoking. Anyway. How long will you stay?”

  “Er, for the duration of the con, I suppose. What is it after this, four more days?”

  “Yep, counting today, five more days of ‘fun’ for those of us who work here. Yee-haw, whoopee. Live long and fucking prosper. Okay. Here ya go. Your room key,” said the clerk, pushing a plastic card and a piece of paper across the desk at him, “and your receipt. Room 415. Fourth floor. Have fun there, Lestat.”

  What a strange Human, thought Basil to himself as he made his way through the costumed crowd to the elevators at the rear of the lobby, pulling his dolly-cart of heavy luggage behind him. Once there, he pushed the button for the fourth floor. The elevator doors opened; he got on with his huge trunk and load of baggage; the doors closed, and he felt it ascend. The elevator was fairly crowded with costumed con-goers — everything from a Wookie who held hands with a Fremen from the desert planet of Arakkis, to a muscly Ash, who came complete with a blue chambray shirt and a chainsaw instead of a hand affixed to his left wrist. Basil suddenly realized that of everyone here, he looked the most conservatively-dressed. Damn, if only he’d brought a black cloak, or a tuxedo, or something gothic and dour-seeming, he could’ve fit right in with the con’s other “Vampires,” could’ve joined their game of Masquerade, and no one would’ve been the wiser.

  The elevator dinged as it stopped at his floor. The doors opened, and he got out . . . and was surprised to find that lurking there, near the elevators, stood Ripley Mibs, Dana Zulfridge, and Giova Miskandriska, all of them already here.

  Ripley wore a red-sequined dress with the slit up the thigh, a pair of ruby high heels, and enough eye-shadow and red lipstick to make her look like a bloodthirsty raccoon, and Giova had dressed in a slinky black silk, strapless evening gown with a bunch of crossed lacy strings holding together its low-cut cleavage, her shining blonde hair spilling down her back, her pale skin augmented with rose blush and subtle air-brushed highlights, and a careful touch of eyeliner. Dana wore a biker-queen get-up, all black leather and studs, and denim. All three women looked a portrait of effulgence. And, they had brought along friends, it seemed. The others, from the Covens allied against Vynovich and his ilk, even those from Die Kabale who seemed to have taken well-enough to fighting side-by-side with those they had claimed to hate only a few days ago. They had dressed in a combination of bondage gear and tight leather outfits, as extreme as any human’s taste in outfits that mingled pleasure and pain, their faces resolute, despite the minor wounds they bore. One had a burn mark across his face where a bullet had grazed him. Another had a nasty cut running up the length of the underside of her arm, where a knife had dug into her flesh and then yanked backward from the wrist. The wound sat, healing rapidly, but the scar still seemed freshly red and blistered. Their faces all held the same hate, resolve, and anger as they stood looking at him — or rather, looking to him, as though asking him what to do next, as another of the males cradled one of the females as she cried silently on his shoulder, her eyes holding back a furious, soul-deep look of sufferance.

  “Well. I see that Giova delivered my message,” he said to them all. “Thank the gods you all got here safely. Well, as safely as you could, I suppose. Thank you so much for coming.” He gestured to the others, who all stood behind the female trio, a look of puzzled wonder on his face. The elevator doors closed behind him, a perplexed pair of mortal, Human Mundanes onboard looking as though they feared for their lives. They were right to.

  “You were right, Basil," said Giova. "With so many humans dressed-up and acting like Vampires here, this will be the perfect place to lay low and take cover. It will give Vynovich’s blood-hunters one more inconvenience, one more stumbling block. We’ve waited for you here, just like you asked. Me personally, though I want to strike back. Those bastards burned my theatre, Basil. My theatre.”

  "I know," he said. "I heard about the fire on the news. I'm so sorry, Giova."

  "Spare me the apologies, and bring on the chance to wreak some vengeance," she said. "What's in the trunk?"

  "Your chance to wreak some vengeance," he said with a shrug. "At least, I hope so. If they work. I haven't tested them out yet, to see if they all work. Probably stupid of me. But there was no time."

  "Haven't tested what out yet?" asked Ripley. "By the way, I should say we're being extremely rude. We haven't introduced you to the others here gathered, yet, and they're very anxious to meet you."

  “Anxious to meet me? But why?” he asked. But he thought he already knew. The others all gazed at him intently, as though looking to him for leadership. Whoa boy. Leading the remaining Covens — the way Vincent Telluré had led them, through the assemblage of Covens in Les Gardiens de Vampires — was going to be one hell of a big job. This was a job he didn’t necessarily want, but one he now recognized needed filling — and they all looked to him to step into those shoes. This would be the Champion’s first job, he decided — if they could ever locate him or her. Until then, he supposed he would have to shoulder the burden of leadership. He hoped it wouldn’t be his for long . . . he didn’t count himself a particularly effective Leader of even his own Coven, singular.

  “I should think the reason is fairly obvious, Basil,” said Dana. “Someone has to coordinate the fight against Vynovich and his Seven. The other Six that he’s targeting . . . we need a single name to call ourselves by, a single banner to fly . . . and a single leader we can get behind. There’s been a vote taken among the other Coven Leaders, those who’ve replaced those who fell . . . And the vote was decisive. We all — or at least a large majority of us — think you’re the best vamp for the job. At least until the prophesied ‘Champion’ — whoever that is — comes forward.”

  “Great minds think alike, it seems,” he said, in as droll a tone he could muster. “But, why, though? I mean . . . why me? What makes you think I deserve such an . . . er, um . . . honor?”

  “Because,” said Dana, “you solve problems, Basil. You and your Coven are, all of you, rational people, down to a person. You think before you act. You deliberate. You consider. You look at evidence; you’re scientists and engineers . . . you look at the world and see a rational place, explainable by rational means. And we need that right now. By the soul of Orogrü-Nathr?k himself, do we ever need that!”

  “Vynovich and his followers act on pure emotion . . . pure hate . . . pure bloodlust,” said Giova. “They’re myopic in their thirst for power, and will do anything to get it.”

  “Even wake up Orogrü-Nathr?k, which we cannot allow,” said Dana. “Roused from slumber, there’s no telling what our deity, no longer dreaming, but awakened, might do to the world he is bound to the flesh of — the entirety of Earth, in other words. We cannot make the mistake of responding to Vynovich’s Seven with haste and hate and fast, reactive moves. We need logic and thought just now. Cool intellect and reason. Not red-hot, enflamed rage and fury.”

  “We can’t afford to do as some wish,” said Ripley, casting a glance at Giova, “and strike back with ten times the venom, in the heat of the right-now. Yes, violence — and lots of it — is going to be the only way to solve this, eventually. But we must find a way to end this decisively when we do strike, which means we must first and foremost be cleverer and smarter than our foes. You and your Coven are the smartest of all of us, Basil.”

  “Yes,” said Giova. “You are. That much is certain.”

  “Hmm, well,” he said. “I don’t know that we’re smarter, but most of us do tend to think like engineers — in terms of problems and solutions. So there is that.” He turned his attention to the Vampires who had shown up with her and Ripley and Giova, who so far had remained dutifully quiet, not saying a word. “Well, then. Aren’t you going to introduce me to these new Coven Leaders, those who’ve come with you this night?” He turned to face them and smiled. He supposed he should say something motivating, reassuring. He cleared his throat. “And to whom I am — believe me — grateful to for having decided to make an appearance here. Together, I know we can take back the Vampire Nation. I’m certain of it. It won’t be easy. But I think we can do it. But first, we have to stop Vynovich from awakening the Orogrü-Nathr?ks’ ancient deity, and, we must find the Chosen One and her offspring, the Champion — if he even exists yet. Now, then. Giova, if you would?” He gestured to the other Coven Leaders.

  “Certainly,” said Giova. “This is Trazeal Wolfenstein, of Coven Vathias.” She gestured to the first of them, a tall, well-muscled man wearing leather pants, combat boots, a chainmail Haubergeon, spiked bracers, a similarly-decorated choker collar, with his head shorn bald and a strange glyph-like tattoo on his right cheek. His face was angular, hard, and bore several scars on the other cheek, one of which crossed paths with his eye. He carried a pair of large daggers on his hips and a gas-powered, Gatling-gun-style crossbow harnessed on his back, plus a spare, rounded clip full of silver arrows that dangled from a leather strap looped through his belt-loops. He inclined his head toward Basil, a bow of respect and acknowledgement, one hand on his heart. The look on his face was a dangerous one . . . but also a sincere and determined one, one which said, I will have my vengeance on those who took my Coven Leader’s life.

  “You’re the new Leader of Coven Vathias?” asked Basil.

  “That’s what the lady said, isn’t it?” said Trazeal.

  Basil nodded. “Yes, it is. Your Coven believes that the Fa?ade is unnecessary, and that Vampires and Humans can and should live in harmony together. Your Coven is unique in that unlike most of the others, you also all practice deeply-held spiritual beliefs, if I am not mistaken, yes?”

  “I believe in Christ, the Lord, who strengthens me and delivers us all from the forces of the Demiurge and the weaknesses of His flesh, and through whom all things are made possible in the Heaven beyond Heaven.”

  “Ah, so you are a Gnostic,” said Basil.

  “We each of us keep to our own spiritual paradigm,” said Trazeal. “Some among us are Shinto; some are Christian. Others are Muslim. Me, I am a Gnostic. That is what I chose. So long as I respect the faiths of my brothers-in-arms, we ride into combat with our enemies as One force to be reckoned with, united in our fury. It’s . . . good to meet you, at last, if I may say so, sir. I’ve heard a lot about you. They say you know more about science and tech than anybody else, dead or alive. Hopefully, you also know how to lead us to Viktory against Vynovich. He killed our former Coven Leader right in front of me. I was . . . powerless to stop him.”

  “I hope I can lead us to Viktory, too,” said Basil, shaking the Vampire’s hand. He had a strong grip, but he didn’t get the sense that the Vampire deliberately tried to show off his strength.

  “And this,” said Giova, turning to the woman with her arms draped around Trazeal’s neck, a similarly-dressed goth-queen wearing a biker jacket like Ripley's, her paleness enhanced by powdered makeup and black lipstick and eyeshadow, “is Trazeal’s second-in-command, Thrallia Tanhauser.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” she said, and extended a hand — but not for shaking; for kissing, instead. Basil took the hint, gracefully accepted her hand, raised it to his lips, and kissed it. She smiled at him. “I’ve heard much about you, too. I hope what I have heard is true. And I hope some other things I have heard are not true. As it is with the universe itself, perception is everything. I suppose we will have to fight by each other’s side, and see for ourselves where the truth truly lies.”

  “Er — uh — likewise, I’m sure,” he replied. What had that meant, exactly?

  “And these two gentlemen are two of my own Acolytes from the Temple,” said Dana, “hand-picked for their loyalty and devotion to the Coven. Razor Eyres, and Bryce Hawthorne.” She gestured to the next set of Vampires, a pair of young men who looked like identical twins. They both wore what looked like ceremonial martial-arts robes, but with matching boots and gloves; these were robes designed for traveling, for taking the fight beyond the Dojo and out into the world. They had handsome features, even if they looked a tad severe. They offered him a salute, standing at attention and then thumping their right fists to their hearts. Dana said, “They are can kick a whole lot of ass in very short order. And they are yours to command, if you need them. And there’s more where they came from. Lots more.”

  “Good to get to know you,” said the one on the left. “I’m Razor. This is Bryce.”

  “No, I’m Razor,” said the one on the right. “He’s Bryce. Little joke we like to play on unsuspecting strangers. You’ll get used to it. Eventually. Dana is our Coven Leader, but we’re her numbers two and three. We came along because we don’t want to lose her. She’s simply too precious and snazzy for us to give her up without a fight. You see, if she gets into a scrape, well, she’ll need rescuing. And we just can’t bear the thought of anyone else taking credit for getting her out of trouble. Hence, our presence.”

  “Yeah,” said Bryce. “Our swords are at your command, Dr. Wrothisbane. Think nothing of asking us to chop some Drogath or Kravenscryln in half. We might’ve been allied with them — what — yesterday? But they’ve gone and turned against everything they ever might have stood for that was good when they joined-up with Vynovich. My opinion? Waste ‘em on sight. The lot of ‘em. Unless of course we can cow them back into submission and make them see the colossal error of their ways. Then maybe we don’t waste ‘em. But that’s a big ‘if,’ if you ask me. They must’ve been plotting this for a long time in order for whole Covens to have gone over to his side. It couldn’t have happened all at once.”

  Basil had not thought of that until now. He didn’t know why, but he hadn’t. It was true. In order for an entire Coven — especially in order for multiple Covens — of Vampires to have defected over to Vynovich’s ranks, there must have, for some considerable amount of time, been talk of doing so within that Coven or those Covens. Years, even. Talk that had stayed hidden from the ears of Les Gardiens. Dear gods, how long had this corruption been festering within the Vampire Nation? How long had it been since the rot had taken hold? The sheer scope of it hit him all at once; this vile betrayal of their own kind had to have been spreading like a virus throughout the entirety of all seven of those Covens for years at a time, growing slowly, like a cancer, until it had swollen to bursting, about to break through the surface, until just yesterday, when Vynovich had chosen to pop the festering sores open and release the puss within. Dear gods, it was truly unthinkable, the massive scale of the whole thing. There could be no easy Viktory over such a depth of ruination. The balance had been tipped toward chaos in such a way as it could never be un-tipped, now; for better or for worse, his Six Covens would forevermore — or at least for the foreseeable future — be at war with these Seven, diametrically opposed to them in every way, their bitter blood-enemies at every turn. It wasn’t just one issue, nor was it multiple “issues.” It was something at the very core of their beings, a burning hatred for their brethren, that spurred these Seven Covens onward, that propelled them to War. He had to be ready for the long, long fight ahead, because that was what he now faced , he realized; no short, decisive skirmish . . . but a long, protracted struggle that would stretch for an Ravenkroft into the future.

  Finally, Dana introduced the last three Vampires, two men and a woman. The first man wore a dress-coat and tie; the standard nine-to-five monkey-suit — but with oh-so-much more class, style, and grace. He wore a finely-tailored, three-piece, double-breasted silk business suit, his tie held in place by a golden clip, his shoes polished to an immaculate reflectiveness, his clothing thoroughly pressed and unwrinkled. His dark brown hair, cut short and neatly combed to one side, did not get in the way of his piercing blue eyes, which sat above a slender nose and a strong, masculine jaw. He stood with his feet apart, back straight, and hands behind his back. The other man, situated behind him, wore a much plainer suit and tie, colored grey, and a pair of dark sunglasses; he wore no adornments or jewelry, and carried a tablet computer in a leather case in his hand. He stood almost at attention next to the woman, who stood in a relaxed pose, leaning against the hallway wall, idly studying the costumed con-goers as they made their way around her. She had bright red hair with blue highlights — almost an opal swirl of colors — and stood five foot six, had a strong, muscular, athletic build to her, and a heart-shaped face with bee-stung lips and wide, curious, steely blue eyes. She seemed to study Basil carefully as Dana spoke, her neoprene catsuit — her pair of katanas lay stowed on her back, the two crisscrossed with each other — gleaming in the light.

  “This,” said Dana — and Basil caught a brief tone of admiration and an undertone of physical attraction in her voice as she gestured to the snazzily, classily-dressed Vampire — “This is Balthazar Kingman, the new Leader of Coven Anamotika. The male Vampire on his left is Gnarl Attaché, his secretary . . . The female Vampire on his right is Vivacia Betelgeuse, his bodyguard.”

  “What’s the matter,” said Vivacia, working out a crick in her neck as she stared at him. “You never seen a female bodyguard before? We do exist, you know. Do you know I could end you with one punch to the ribcage? The bones would shatter, the fragments of them would splinter and cut your heart to pieces. Your powers of regeneration would not work fast enough to heal the internal wound between then and the moment I hit you with a silver stake through that very same organ. You would die within seconds.”

  “A pleasure to meet you as well, I’m sure,” said Basil, bowing slightly.

  “Good to finally meet you, Dr. Wrothisbane,” said Balthazar. He had a slight Greek accent, Basil noticed. Balthazar stuck out a hand meant for shaking. Basil grasped it and did so. The other Vampire’s muscular strength felt tremendous compared to his own as he squeezed Basil’s hand tightly. A subtle intimidation tactic, but unmistakably just that. Basil merely smiled, wearing his best poker-face. Balthazar seemed disappointed that he hadn’t gotten more of a rise out of him — a subtle change in his features, but Basil caught it nonetheless. Some days, it paid great dividends to be a psychiatrist, a master cartographer of the human mind.

  “I’m afraid I must apologize for Vivacia,” said Balthazar, and smiled sincerely. Or at least sincerely enough, Basil thought. “She be can be blunt, at times. I am pleased to finally make your acquaintance. I’ll be honest — I’m a bit jealous of your new job. I was the second choice of leader if you didn’t accept the nomination. But all that aside, I suppose I should ask you: Firstly, what do you want us to do, now that we’re semi-organized — the various Covens, I mean? What should we do?”

  “I’m . . . not entirely sure myself,” said Basil. “But, several things are clear. For one, it appears we are — all of us — outlaws from Vynovich’s New World Order. As are all of our fellow Covensmen and Covenswomen. No one is safe. I take it you left surrogates in charge, people you trust?”

  The others all nodded. “Yes,” said Trazeal. “We would not have left to come here, had we not made sure our Covens’ affairs were in good hands.”

  “I meant no offense,” said Basil. “I simply wanted to make sure . . . but then again, I suppose I must, at some point, trust in your wisdom if I’m to ask you to trust mine.”

  “And you have our trust,” said Thrallia. “At least for now. It remains to be seen if it is deserved. If you can lead us.”

  “What I’m saying,” said Basil, “is that we, and our Covens, are outlaws now . . . rebels against a common totalitarian enemy who we know stirs the cauldron of a fascist regime, right here amidst our own society’s democratic ruins. We must stop them if we are to save Vampire-kind. All that, and the Chosen One and her Champion must be found, and protected. So that is what we will call ourselves. That is the name we shall call ourselves by: The Rebellion. And we shall name our enemies The New Cabal. The banner we will unite under will be one that promises freedom — and at the same time, a kind of unity and harmony, the bond of family — for all Vampires, everywhere on Earth. And that promises a coming day of enlightenment and reckoning when the Champion comes to lead us in my place.”

  “Hmm,” said Balthazar, nodding slowly, appearing to think carefully. “Yes, I like the sound of that.” The others nodded solemnly in agreement, exchanging meaningful glances with wowed, impressed looks upon their faces. Basil actually felt fairly impressed himself; he hadn’t known he’d had such speechifying abilities buried deep within himself, just waiting to move people. Balthazar whispered something in Giova’s ear, and then in Ripley’s. They both nodded, and Ripley then whispered to Dana, who nodded.

  “I think we made a good choice with you,” said Ripley, nodding and smiling. “No offense, of course, Balthazar. You were runner up, after all.”

  “Oh, none taken,” he replied and smiled — a tight, strained smile from what Basil could see, but a smile nonetheless — “I think he’ll do fine, as well.”

  “So how do we actually find this Chosen One and this Champion she’s supposed to Maker?” asked Trazeal.

  “First things first,” said Basil, noticing how every pair of eyes belonging to a convention-goer had slowed down to ogle the shapes of the women of their little group here for several minutes now, and that they became more and more conspicuous the longer they stood here talking. “Let’s get to the room I just paid for, where we can talk in a more . . . private capacity. I have an idea of how to do find the Champion, but it’s complex. It involves building a device I intend to construct, but it will take a while to work out all the details and have all the parts for it delivered here. Come, I will explain.”

  He set off down the hallway, headed for Room 415, pulling his baggage, and the others fell in behind him. He could scarcely credit what had just happened . . . it had to be some kind of dream . . . only it couldn’t be; it felt too real, too immediate and threatening a prospect. Plus, it felt too damned weird to be just a dream; no, only actual, real life could feature a plot-twist of this magnitude, sprung on him like this all of a sudden: Him, a Vampire who had always strived to work in the shadows despite being a Coven Leader, now thrust into the position of Leading not just one, but six Covens, all united against a common enemy of seven other Covens. And, hanging in the balance, the entire fate of all of Vampire-kind, as well as the fate of the Human race. Vynovich had drawn new battle-lines across the old ones, severing old ties and giving rise to new allegiances. Basil only hoped he was up to the task of deciding the fates of millions.

  Basil slipped the keycard for the room into the lock on Room 415, and pushed down on the handle to open the door. Once inside, he flipped on the lights, and held the door for the others as one by one, they filed inside. Once they had all ventured inside, he closed it. It latched closed the a satisfying clicking sound.

  And here is where things get complicated, he thought to himself. There can be no going back from this point forward; now, we commit to our course. And if that course leads to our deaths — to the death of the Vampiric race and the Human race, as well — then it is our failure, and ours alone, that will be to blame. No pressure, though; no pressure . . .

  As the Marvin’s ship made its way to Fantazmacon’s new location, Dr. Joseph “Misto Lazarus Long Mephistopheles” Michaelson lay on the operating table in the Zarcturean ship’s medical bay. No longer in wolfen man-beast form, he had returned to his “human” state once more. And, he was no longer out-cold: Over the past few minutes, he had gradually, groggily begun to wake up. This made Ravenkroft nervous. Misto was larger and stronger than him, even when he wasn’t in the form of a wolfen man-beast . . . but that wasn’t what made Ravenkroft nervous; with the serum and the Evangeliojaeger in play, Ravenkroft could easily squash Michaelson like a bug. And while it had been years since they had enjoyed an actual conversation with each other, and while this was not an ideal time to get reacquainted, given their “unique” circumstances, that was also not the reason Ravenkroft was nervous. No, Ravenkroft supposed the reason for his fear was that even before he had existed, in Viktor’s youth, Misto had always been smarter and cleverer than Viktor . . . always one step ahead of him, every step of the way; there had been many a time when Misto had had to help Viktor with his math. Therefore, Ravenkroft not only admired Misto a little, but — though he would never admit it — he respected him. Not only that, but it had been Walter

  (Viktor)

  who had shot Alicia and plunged her into the Almost-Death of the cryostasis chamber . . . and it was Walter’s daughter, Desirée, “Dizzy,” who now had to help her father pay for his sins. Misto, on the other hand, had only helped create the formula, just as Viktor had . . . and that night in the old asylum, Joseph hadn’t been the one to fire upon Alicia. He had, in fact, not fought back when she’d briefly taken him prisoner and injected him with a variation on the serum . . . the one that had cursed him to his current “transformative” condition. So in a way, Misto had already paid his dues for his part in the whole affair. He didn’t need to die, as Ravenkroft saw things, for he already dwelled in a living Hell of his own making . . . and that was good enough to satisfy Ravenkroft’s appetite for revenge against him. Yes, he had allied himself with the Weatherspark girl . . . but what of that? That was only a matter of aiming at one’s target more carefully, was it not?

  — There is no reason to fear this human, said Marvin, its voice echoing in his head. There is little probability that he can break the restraints. And even if he did, we would destroy him before he could escape, yes? Relax, my friend. He changed back into Human form once we properly sedated him, did he not?

  — Er, yes. Once we properly sedated him, he did indeed change back. But that’s no guarantee that —

  — You sound doubtful and afraid, Ravenkroft, sent Morganymuae, who stood next to him. Where is the courage of the man who brought me back from oblivion?

  — No, no. I’m not ‘doubtful.’ Nor am I frightened, he lied, with great mental effort. It’s just that this particular . . . Human . . . I know him, is all. You knew him, too, Ali — Morganymuae. He and my . . . other half . . . Viktor . . . shared a past that was not always . . . unpleasant. They are — or were, at one time — friends . . . in what is now so long ago that it feels like another life entirely.

  — That ‘other half’ of your psyche was weak, sent Marvin. You are far stronger than that Other part of you ever was or could have been. That is why you exorcised him from your mind, remember?

  — Yes. I remember, sent Ravenkroft. And I have not felt . . . entirely myself since doing so.

  — That is an illusion, sent Morganymuae. You are every bit yourself! Even more so now, with the joining and symbiosis between you and . . . ‘Marvin’ . . . growing stronger, the bond strengthening as you continue to connect in new ways. I am so proud of you both. You warm my . . . pulmonary system.

  — And I am glad of that, sent Ravenkroft. But I still think we should release this specimen. For one thing, thanks to your actions when you were Alicia, Morganymuae, he is not really a suitable research subject for Marvin’s work.

  — And why is that? asked Marvin.

  — Because . . . well, because he is not in his natural state, sent Ravenkroft. His genome — the life-describing chemical in his cells that we Humans call deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, for short — has been reprogrammed by wholly artificial means . . . by the use of cellular-level robots that I helped invent, called nanogenes. This is why he transforms into the beast you saw earlier. This transformation is not a part of his natural cycle of organic development.

  — Interesting, sent Marvin. I should like to study these “nanogenes” you speak of . . . perhaps he will be useful for that purpose alone.

  — I can provide you with a sample from my own blood, sent Morganymuae. Or rather the blood of Alicia Alexander, or what now remains of her at Viktor’s parents’ summer home.

  — But you could study that with just blood and tissue samples from the specimen, sent Ravenkroft. And it would be wasteful and inefficient to perform such trivial procedures on the specimen, and then waste the rest of him, would it not? Better to do the procedures and then release him back into the wild, so that his movements and behavior patterns can be tracked, analyzed from afar, and better understood. Besides. He will, if released, lead us straight to wherever Weatherspark is hiding. And once we find her . . .

  — Hmm. Yes. There is wisdom in what you say, Human, sent Marvin. But, I am not satisfied that sentiment does not cloud your logic. I must vote ‘nay’ on releasing this Human. We will retain the creature for further study, especially study of these “nanogenes” and the effects they have on its biology. Besides, this is one of the creatures who injured me earlier. This is one of the “friends” of the one you call Weatherspark. Did you not promise me that we would destroy them?

  — Yes, Ravenkroft, said Morganymuae. It’s wrong to make promises that one does not intend to keep, you know.

  — Well, er, yes, I did say that, but I’ve changed my mind. He has already paid for his crimes. The transformation you witnessed the reverse of earlier is the cross he bears for his wrongdoings.

  — And what if this caricature of cosmic justice does not satisfy me? sent Morganymuae, raising one eyebrow and frowning at him.

  — Better to let him live a life cursed with such a monstrous deformity, afraid to let others see him, always afraid to go among his fellow men, for fear of the beast being spotted and killed, than to end his suffering prematurely . . . Is that not a more fitting punishment for the wounds he has dealt to your pride, Marvin? Is it not proper retribution for his part in the attack on Alicia, those twenty years ago, Morganymuae?

  He felt the Visitor bristle at this, as did Morganymuae . . . but he also sensed thought; they cogitated over it, actually thinking it through, deciding. Finally, he felt the Zarcturean Visitor inside him make up its mind, and Morganymuae make up hers. They agreed, but not with him, and told him so. His heart sank a little in his chest. He hadn’t wanted to kill Michaelson; he had actually wanted to let him go. Where the sudden attack of sympathy for the man had come from, Ravenkroft would never know, but what mattered was that he had felt it, and that for a moment, Michaelson’s life had mattered to him. He straightened his mechanical spine and steeled himself against these feelings. Meaningless, wretched, without significance . . . and especially without cosmic significance, of no real import in the grand scheme of things. A weakness to be overcome. He nodded to Morganymuae, and felt the Zarcturean Visitor “smile” — or something close to it — as he made his final decision. Michaelson wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, their fun together was just beginning.

  Just then, his cell-phone rang. Peculiar, as it almost never rang. Viktor — and Ravenkroft, too — were the sort of people who did not have many friends or allies or family. Thus few people had any reason to ever call either of them. Ravenkroft fished in his pocket for the device, got it out, and answered. “Yes, hello?”

  “Ravenkroft,” came the familiar Russian-American voice. “Is that you? Long time no speak, comrade. How have you been?”

  “Vynovich?” asked Ravenkroft. “Is that you?”

  “Shh! Cut that out!” came the voice in a hissed whisper. “I’ve told you before: Don’t use my real name. We need to meet, Ravenkroft. I am in need of your . . . services again.”

  “Ah. I see. Where?”

  “Do you know where the Renaissance Regency is?”

  “Yes, I was just — ”

  “Then meet me there . . . in the hotel bar, downstairs, in two hours’ time. The New Cabal has need of your . . . scientific expertise and your . . . assistance. And it needs both rather urgently.”

  “Ah, yes, I see. Yes. I will be there.”

  “Thank you. See you then.”

  The phone clicked in his ear. Now just what had that been about? Frustrated, he said aloud, “We need to go to the Renaissance Regency. But first . . . we must deal with a few other issues, first. Namely, this impasse we have come to regarding — ”

  “Ugh, my head,” complained Misto, blinking his eyes open blearily. “Uh, hello? Hello? Where the hell is . . . Hey, where the hell am I?” He tried to sit up, but the restraints held him. Ravenkroft watched him carefully as he spoke: “Hey — uh — whoever’s here, and wherever here is, and whoever clamped me to this table — I, uh — could ya please gimme a hint as to where the fuck I am, and maybe gimme a hint as to the safety word we agreed on ahead of time?” He fell silent for a moment. “What the hell is going on here? What the — ! Hello? Is . . . is anybody even out there? Could somebody please tell me what the fuck is up with these restraints? And why am I still wrapped-up in my bed-sheet toga? I mean, I know it looks good on me, but, shit . . .” Silence again. Then a frustrated sigh. “Goddamn it, where am I? Where is everybody? Hello?” He turned his head to the side, and Ravenkroft saw his eyes focus-in on him. He froze like a deer in front of a mag-lev train. “Viktor!” cried Misto. “Professor Viktor Arkenvalen . . . is that you over there? Well, hot-damned if it isn’t. What the fuck are you doing here, Vic? It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Ugh, look, never mind. I’m just glad to see somebody, anybody I know . . . even if it is you. Man, listen, you gotta help me get outta here. I’m seriously starting to freak out, here. I think the alien’s around here, somewhere . . . and it might come back here, too. Because unless I miss my guess . . . we’re onboard the alien ship right now, aren’t we. So c’mon, help me get these . . .” He paused, and then in a wary, somewhat worried tone, he went on, seeming to weigh every word with caution. “Unless, of course . . . you . . . aren’t Viktor right now. I mean, are you . . . Viktor? Or are you the . . . uh, Other you . . . the . . . Other guy. The One you are sometimes instead of . . . y’know . . . Viktor. That other guy. Ravenkroft.”

  “An astutely-educated guess,” said Ravenkroft, smiling and stepping toward him. “As a matter of fact, you are correct. Viktor’s not home just now . . . In fact, Viktor doesn’t even live here anymore, period. So yes, I’m afraid you’ll just have to deal with me instead, Misto. Professor Ravenkroft, at your service.” He gave him a mock bow and grinned at him, knowing that his eyes flashed like green razorblades and proud of it. “I am also more than that, now. More than Viktor ever was. More than just Ravenkroft, too. I am also that which you seek . . . that which brought you here. I am — we are, together — the Zarcturean. There is no hope for you or the Human race, Michaelson. You are doomed, all of you, to be their servitors, their slaves, our lab-rats, our laborers . . . now and forever. Once they — we — arrive on your planet, your conversion can — and will — begin. It may be clichéd in science fiction circles to say so, but resistance . . . is futile. You cannot defeat them. Us. We will live inside you and you will rejoice at our lordship over your bodies and your planet. Not to mention . . .” He turned toward Morganymuae with a loving, doting smile and teary eyes, and gestured to her with a small bow. Her purple-and-yellow, overlarge eyes flashed green as well, and she blinked her sideways-eyelids at him and smiled, her tentacles writhing like cats’ tails. Misto’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head; he looked terrified. “Not to mention their creators and benefactors, the Eidolon, the new Gods of the New World Order . . . the Great Old Ones, who ruled this Earth long before the dinosaurs were even a twinkle in evolution’s eye.”

  “Oh great, just freakin’ wonderful,” groaned Misto, rolling his eyes and letting out a huge sigh. “I wake up tied to a lab table on an alien spaceship, half buck-ass naked except for a friggin’ toga made from a bed-sheet, and the only two people within shouting distance are Ravenkroft, who’s fused himself with an alien, extraterrestrial, hive-mind intelligence somehow, and his almost-wife, an Elder God from some eldritch crypto-dimension or something.” He cast his gaze upward, toward the ceiling, and muttered: “This is your revenge for me not believing in you, isn’t it. This is what I get for being such an ardent atheist all my life, right Big Man? Well you just wait ’til I get up there, you sick fuck. I’ll have your ass for this, you miserable, all-powerful cunt.” He turned his attention back to Ravenkroft and Morganymuae. “So . . . if I’m here as some kind of science project . . . what the hell makes you so special that you think these aliens — either of ‘em — see you any differently than they do me, Ravenkroft? What kind of line have you sold them, anyway? What are you to them, other than just another Human, standing in their way, and about to get mowed down?”

  “Because I am different than you!” cried Ravenkroft, his frustration reaching a boiling point. He banged his fist on the control panel to his left. He hated Michaelson’s attitude. Always had. The man thought he was so smart. He took another step toward the operating table; it seemed that Michaelson had begun to get nervous, starting to sweat a bit. Well, good. Let him be the one outsmarted for a change! Morganymuae kept her distance from him, but so what? He, Ravenkroft, was unafraid, now. “I am every bit the better man than you! Functionally, of us both, I am the better Human being! And now, with our Visitor inside me . . . Ha, ah ha-ha, Heh-heh-heh . . . ” he laughed almost absently with the visceral thrill of being able to cut-loose like this — without Viktor inside him cowering in terror, without fear of retribution from the restrained Dr. Michaelson, and with the knowledge — the certainty — that Morganymuae had his back if he needed help. Michaelson clenched his fists together, and Ravenkroft could see that he was — ever so slightly — trembling. Even better! Were these tremors of fear? Oh, he hoped so! Maybe now, the oaf would fear him, instead of the other way around for once. “With the Zarcturean Visitor inside of me,” he continued, “I am more than you ever will or could be, Michaelson! By allowing the Visitor to . . . Live within me, to achieve symbiosis with me, to not just use me as a host, but to merge its consciousness with mine, I have found something akin to godhood, compared to the ordinary ‘Human Condition’ . . . The paradigms of thought possible are . . . truly staggering! Astounding!” He noticed that Michaelson tried to regulate his breathing; tried to calm himself. It would do him no good. “The grandeur and elegance of the thoughts I can think, now,” he went on, disregarding the man’s obvious discomfort, “and the echelons of complexity, the plateaus of sheer concept within my reach are . . . stunning! Beyond anything any Human could ever touch with his or her scrawny little ape-brain, you included. Why, the problems I can solve! The ideas I can formulate! The technical plans I can devise, and visualize, without having to draw them out or even write them down!” He laughed again; he knew he sounded unhinged, but he did not care. What was am madman, except a man who thought thoughts too big to fit into tiny minds? Let the genius sound like a madman to the ears of the uninitiated! “I’d dare say that a symbiotic relationship with the Zarcturean is, in fact, the next inevitable phase of Human evolution . . . far beyond the advances that even Walter’s serum heralded! What’ve you to say to that, Misto?”

  “I say ooh-kay, al-righty then,” said Michaelson, breathing heavily now, and sweating heavily, his fists still clenched beneath the wrist-restraints. “Yep. Alrighty. So I guess, you’re not just gonna lemme go anytime soon, right?”

  “Oh no, no, no,” said Ravenkroft. “Marvin doesn’t want — ”

  “Wait. Marvin?” said Michaelson, as he continued to hyperventilate, tremble, and sweat, his eyes dilating, and all his muscles flexed and clenched, flexed and clenched. He started to laugh, despite the rest of his condition. “You named . . . the thing inside you . . . Marvin? As in . . . Marvin the Martian? Dude . . . you have so many . . . issues it’s — ” He cracked up laughing, growing more and more hysterical. Ravenkroft sensed something deeply wrong, and took a step back.

  “Never mind that now!” cried Ravenkroft, as Michaelson’s suffering grew worse, his eyes twitching back and forth now. “The Visitor doesn’t want you to leave just yet. It wants to keep you around . . . and study the nanogenes that Morganymuae here put inside you, lo those twenty years ago. To study your . . . transformative nature, as it were. To see what makes you tick. I’ll have you know that I voted to let you go upon your merry way after a few blood and tissue samples. But oh no, they wouldn’t hear of it, the Visitor nor Morganymuae. I am sorry, but though we may seem, to you, to be Evil, we are at least democratic about it. I say, what is the trouble, Michaelson? What’s wrong with you?”

  “That’s too bad . . .” said Michaelson, gritting his teeth through his hysteria, his voice still tremulous, sweat now dripping from every inch of him, his fists still clenched tight, his eyes wild and feral. “Too bad for you, that is.”

  “Oh, and why is that?” asked Ravenkroft.

  “Because,” said Michaelson, and he smiled through the intense pain he looked to be in. “They’e gonna get their wish. It’s been more than twelve hours since I had a dose of the antidote to ‘Morganymuae’ here’s little alchemical concoction. Now you . . . have got a beast of a problem on your hands here, ol’ Ravenkroft Ravenkroft, pal. And this time, the problem is awake and pissed off. So the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is . . . whatta you gonna do about it?”

  Misto felt his heart begin to beat faster and faster, and then faster still, then even faster than that. He felt his blood-pressure skyrocketing, his face growing hot with anger and panic. Sweat stood out on his forehead, and he clenched his fists again, pushing hard against the restraints that held him. His vision blurred. That was it, then — the final warning sign that the Transformation was upon him. But how could it be? He had only changed back an hour or so ago, or at least it only felt like an hour or so. Maybe it had been longer, who knew. The strap on his wristwatch had broken the last time he’d transformed.

  His eyes snapped back open, their pupils an iridescent gold floating in twin pools of sunlight. A low growl came from deep in his throat. He howled in pain as his bones began to crunch, shift, and rearrange beneath his makeshift toga, his fists clenched until his palms bled from the claws that erupted from his fingernails. Then, the first sudden growth-spurts hit him. His arms and legs lengthened and new muscles developed in them, as though they the stars of some time-lapse hologram showing a body-builder’s physique as he or she trained with heavier and heavier weights over the course of days shortened to mere minutes. The cords in his neck stood out as his shoulders broadened, more bones breaking and then re-forging, the blood-vessels in his face and forehead practically bulging out of the skin as they pulsed and palpitated. Blood dripped from his nose and trickled from his ears as they and his face both elongated and rearranged their shapes, his jaw making muffled crackling noises as it unhinged and grew, tapering to a rounded point. His snout formed and lengthened, the lips of his mouth changing shape, size, and location; his teeth ached as they grew in size and his misshapen, wolfen head and clawed hands trembled with the enormous stress of the transformation as his gums bent into a new shape and bled for it. His pectoral muscles crunched with agony as they inflated like water balloons, his abdominal muscles pinching and popping out of his retracting stomach, as though he were an unfinished sculpture, and the artisan responsible only now, in some mad panic to finish, chiseled away at his outward proportions. As he neared the final stages, he collapsed onto the operating table for only a brief moment or two before he convulsed and yanked on — and summarily snapped — his restraints. He then whipped his head around to give Ravenkroft a baleful, golden-eyed stare made of raw fury and rage. He sat up, then hopped down from the operating table and landed on his clawed feet, growling and snarling, the makeshift toga had somehow managing to stay tied around him, with Dizzy’s communicator pin still pinned to the shoulder harness. Ravenkroft — wisely — backed up a few paces, and aimed both his Evangeliojaeger’s Interphase Pistols at Misto’s beastly form as Misto stalked toward him, his teeth bared as he growled, his golden eyes fixed firmly upon him.

  “Back, back!” Ravenkroft cried to the brute, brandishing the Interphase Pistol mounted on his Evangeliojaeger’s left wrist, as he retreated another step, and got behind the ship’s main control pedestal. All four of his spine-mounted metal tentacles rose into the air, their main claws extending and opening, then snapping shut menacingly; the hydraulic pressure that operated them hissed, making them sound like a series of rattlesnakes than a foursome of machines. “I’m warning you, Michaelson! Don’t make me put you down! I will if I have to . . . So help me, I will!”

  — This is not an optimal strategy, advised Marvin.

  — I know, I know!

  — What do you propose we do now?

  — I’m thinking of something.

  — Think harder.

  “Heh. Looks like you’re the one losing ground, Ravenkroft,” said Misto, that eerily-articulate mouth of his defying all laws of biology when he spoke. “What’re you afraid of? That I might eat you? Hmm? That I might tear you limb from limb? That I might crush your bones into biscuit flour, tear your muscles into hotdog meat, and make wieners-in-a-blanket out of you? Man, I tell ya, with all the trouble you’ve given Dizzy, the threat you’ve posed to her all these years . . . I swear, I oughta do all three . . .”

  — I’ve got a plan, Ravenkroft thought to Marvin.

  — What kind of a plan?

  — A good one, I hope.

  Before Ravenkroft could properly train his weapon on Michaelson, Morganymuae whisked past him and put herself between them. The beast Michaelson had become growled at her as she raised her writhing tentacles, her eyes glowing a bright green, even the tentacles mixed in with her hair standing at attention, readying to strike. The scar beneath her lower lip cleaved in twain, and her triangular jaw split open, revealing rows of teeth on all three sides, and her spiked tongue with a tiny mouth all its own, wriggling inside the larger one, as though possessed of a life all its own. Michaelson clenched his fists, lowered his head, and glared at Morganymuae as she approached.

  “You wanna throw down, Alexander?” he asked. “Fine. Here I am. Your tentacles and the . . . well, whatever the hell is inside you . . . don’t scare me one damn bit. You forget . . . I’ve seen you at your worst. And as far as that little injection you gave me, all those years ago? Yeah. Still lookin’ for a little payback on that score. And here it comes.”

  He hauled back a blue-furred fist and took a swing at her. It connected. Her head whipped to one side, but she recovered instantly. A pair of large tentacle-arms rose up from the “skirt” they formed around her lower half and struck at his legs, wrapping around the blue-furred man-beast’s shins. She pulled them forward, and knocked him off of his feet and slammed him down onto his backside. He cursed and winced in pain as his buttocks hit the metal floor — nailing his tailbone in the process — and Morganymuae floated above him, hovering in a field of telekinetic force. As he tried to recover, she loosed the tentacles she had wrapped around his legs and wound two others around his arms. He fought against them, but the Elder God fused with Alicia was simply too strong for him. She spun in the air with her arm-tentacles wrapped around his forearms, and picked him up from where he lay and got him airborne, swinging him around her like an orbiting moon or shot-put. She let go the tentacles and he flew away from her, and crashed into the nearly-invisible curved wall of the ship’s command center, hitting it hard with a solid THUD! Grunting and groaning, he slid down the slight concavity of the wall and landed in a heap to where it joined the metal flooring. He looked dazed, confused, and he bled from the nostrils of his wolfen snout from where his face had impacted the wall. He tried to right himself, tried to sit up straight. But it appeared that Morganymuae wasn’t done with him just yet.

  She swooped in, floating closer, and wrapped another of her tentacles around his throat. She lifted him up against the wall, pinning him there with three other tentacles wrapped around his arms and his muscular midsection. Michaelson found himself only half-conscious at this point; he could barely struggle against her, let alone fight her. Ravenkroft almost felt sorry for him . . . though almost was the key word. Morganymuae floated upward, taking Michaelson with her. He grasped at the tentacle she had wrapped around his throat, trying to breathe, his yellow eyes bugging out as he uttered futile choking noises. Morganymuae grinned at him, and then turned toward Ravenkroft.

  — Are you positive, she sent down to him, that you want this one to live?

  Ravenkroft started to answer, but then stopped and thought. Did he? He saw no reason for Michaelson to die. If he were to die, it would hurt Desirée Weatherspark — and Walter Weatherspark — immensely . . . both Weathersparks would wind up paying a king’s ransom in tears and heartache if anything happened to their precious “Misto,” Desirée’s mentor and her father’s oldest friend. That alone made the prospect oh-so-tempting, a practically irresistible stratagem. On the other hand: He saw no other reason to kill Michaelson, since Michaelson had tried to intervene peacefully in Alicia’s case . . . he hadn’t tried to kill her, as Walter had. They had been friends, once, Viktor and Michaelson. And Michaelson, despite being smarter and cleverer than Viktor at . . . well, everything . . . had actually been a good friend to him in that long-lost time of far-ago . . . One, he supposed, worth remembering and — possibly due to some residual, sickening sentiment of Viktor’s — made that time, in the end, a far-ago one worth treasuring. Ravenkroft did what he could to hide these thoughts from Marvin and Morganymuae; they would, of course, not approve of his indulgence in such nostalgic sentimentality. He wasn’t sure he even approved of it.

  — Yes, he sent back to Morganymuae, and sighed. I am sure. He needn’t die. At least, not yet. It would be wasteful to kill him now. We must find a way of containing him, until his death can cause the maximum amount of damage to our enemies. He looked around for what he needed. Surely, the med-lab had what he . . . Ah, there. Yes, perfect, and right there in front of him. Directly above the operating table in the med-lab sat an overhead, dome-shaped compartment with a robotic arm that extended from it. According to the Visitor’s knowledge, the robotic arm had attached to it an Interdimensional Matter-Shifter, activated via the ship’s main controls. Perfect. He sent to Morganymuae: I think I have an idea of how that can be done. Bring him before me.

  — Ah, sent Marvin, in his head. I understand, as well. We do not, however, have time to dwell on theory . . .

  Morganymuae, who expression spoke of great disappointment, loosed her tentacle’s hold on Michaelson’s throat — he sucked in a deep breath and then panted for air when she finally let go, gulping down air as though drowning in the deep and having finally reached the ocean’s surface — and once again whipped him through the air with the hold she had on his blue-furred torso and arms. He tried to fight her — kicking at her, trying to wrestle free of the hold she had on him, but none of it did any good. Her slimy tentacles’ solid grip on him was like that of a small family of boa constrictors. Despite his protests, she brought him back down to the metal floor of the place and stood him in front of Ravenkroft . . . right in the line of fire of the robot arm situated in the med-lab. Ravenkroft put his hand on the ship’s main control console, and closed his eyes . . . And together, he and the Visitor concentrated their combined force of will on the Interdimensional Matter-Shifter, Michaelson, the robotic arm, and on what they both wanted to happen. Sure enough, the robotic arm leapt into action, aimed itself, and the purple-and-green bolt of energy flew right at Michaelson, just as Morganymuae’s tentacles disengaged from him. The beam impacted his body — causing arcs of electricity to swirl and weave around it — and in just two seconds’ time, it had reduced the hulking brute to roughly the size of a tennis ball. The miniaturized Mini-Michaelson took one look at his surroundings, looked confused for a moment, then looked up at Ravenkroft and shook his fist at him.

  “Goddamn it, Ravenkroft!” shrieked Mini-Michaelson. “I’ll get you back for this, you asshole! You dunder-headed fuck-muppet! You pickle-puffin’ ass-hat!”

  “Ha! Ha-ha!” laughed Ravenkroft, pointing at Mini-Misto and turning to Morganymuae, who smiled back at him. “Amusing, isn’t he?” He walked to the operating table and picked up one of the tall, glass, ventilated sample-jars the Visitor had set out earlier, and unscrewed the top. Then, he walked back to where Mini-Michaelson stood on the metal plating beneath them, still yelling, cursing, and rudely gesticulating at him. Ravenkroft bent down, and scooped Mini-Michaelson up off of his feet and into the jar, and then screwed the lid on tightly, and set the sample jar there on the main control console. “Now then,” he said. “You make a great dashboard ornament, Michaelson. Has anyone ever told you know that before? Now, then. Marvin, Morganymuae, and myself have some business to attend to . . . such as improving my Evangeliojaeger’s weaponry and defensive capabilities, and readying for the safari of a lifetime. You see, we’re going Weatherspark hunting. But not to kill. Oh no. To corrupt. When I return for you, will be discuss the terms of your . . . ah, release.”

  “Oh yeah?” snorted Misto through his snout. “Well, I’ve got your ‘terms’ right here.” He grabbed his crotch with his left hand, and with his right, he flipped Ravenkroft the bird. “And I swear to you — so help me, if you hurt Dizzy, or any of her friends — then I swear — all three of you — I will fuck you up sideways, no matter what size I am. And that’s not a threat — it’s a goddamn promise, you sick fuck!”

  Ravenkroft snickered. “Well, well, well. Who’s losing ground now, Joseph? Doesn’t look like it’s me. You’re in no position to threaten anyone, least of all the man who just beat you and who now holds your fate in his hands. Why, if I wanted to, I could crush you right now . . . right in the palm of my hand. You’re only alive now because I choose to allow it. Think on that for a while. For now, wish me luck. The mood I am in when I return determines whether you live or die . . . ‘Misto.’”

  Inside the jar, Mini-Misto clenched his fists and glared at Ravenkroft’s back as he turned and walked away, his Evangeliojaeger whirring and his repulsivator boots clanging on the metal grating below with each step.

  — Well, that ended well, thought Ravenkroft. Better than I’d expected, at least.

  — Indeed, Marvin thought to him. For a moment, I doubted your sanity.

  — As have many before you. Now, can you help me improve my defenses? Get the forcefield on my Evangeliojaeger working properly? Increase the strength of my weaponry?

  — Yes. I can.

  — Ah, good. You are a scholar and a gentleman.

  — I assume you mean that as a compliment.

  — Er, yes. Let me rephrase that. You’re a loyal soldier to your Queen Mother and possess a brilliant scientific mind.

  — Ah, now for that, I thank you. We will need parts. Electronic. Positronic. To build with, work with. Where can we secure parts?

  — The Weatherspark girl — the one who hurt you. Her family owns the ‘Builder It Yourself’ chain of electronics stores, present all across the country. We will journey to one of those, one nearby, break in, and ransack it for what we need.

  — And then we will return to this place? Or rather, to this “Convention” event?

  — Yes. We shall. You do need more Humans to study, do you not?

  — Yes. That is good. I also wish to acquire the Vampire for further study. She interests me. I should like to study her physiology at length.

  — Then you shall have her. But for now, let us go . . . and then let us return, and toast our impending, respective Viktories over those we so despise.

  — Yes, let us do that. And then let us be about the business of collecting this ‘Desirée Weatherspark’ for the purposes of your experiment . . . so that the invasion can begin. I have spoken of you to the Queen I was wrong.She wishes to meet with you, to see you in person, to understand why a Human would betray all his fellow Humans, and seek to favor our purpose . . . I told her about your proposal. She believes it is . . . acceptable. And she is excited about the possibility of all the Zarcturean joining with all Humans symbiotically . . . as an evolutionary step forward for both species, just as the Eidolon have foretold, and as you yourself have theorized. She is also excited to hear that we will be . . . sharing the Planet Earth with our gods and benefactors, the wise and powerful Eidolon. Strange, I did not predict that reaction from her.

  — Well, good, then, sent Ravenkroft. Another . . . er, another reason to celebrate, I suppose.

  — In fact, the Queen that with your help, the invasion could begin as soon as tomorrow.

  Ravenkroft stopped in his tracks. Tomorrow? As in . . . the day after today? With my help?

  — Yes, replied Marvin. Tomorrow. At midnight by the atomic clock that keeps your Greenwich Mean-Time. Eight o’clock PM, your Eastern Standard Time.

  Ravenkroft swallowed a lump in his throat that had suddenly materialized there, and wiped off the beads of sweat that had just started to form on his forehead.

  — I . . . I see, he sent. How. . . er, how wonderful. Of course I will meet with your Queen.

  — Splendid.

  — And once the Zarcturean have colonized and joined symbiotically with Humans, sent Morganymuae, then it is our turn to come aboard. Your Queen also will want to meet with me . . .

  — But of course, said Marvin. I have told her of your presence here, and she is in awe of it. She says she is not worthy, but I have told her that you insist that she sees you. She wants to speak to you about sharing the Humans’ world with us . . . about what our races’ respective roles will be, insofar as the Humans are concerned, and our roles with respect to each other.

  — Our roles ‘with respect to each other?’ sent Morganymuae. She looked both puzzled and amused. We are your gods, Soldier THX-6783746. We created you. We have shaped and molded your bodies, your society, everything about you, since the days when you were but one-celled organisms crawling through the primordial muck of your planet. Our ‘role’ with respect to you is to rule you, and your ‘role’ with respect to us is to obey us, as is only right and proper for those who wish to worship and pay tribute to their gods.

  The telepathic link fell silent for a moment.

  — You are correct, of course, O Glorious Morganymuae, sent the Visitor, but he didn't sound nearly as enthusiastic about it as he had before. Please forgive my presumption, and the Queen’s, if she displayed any. I will . . . speak with her again, and will relay what you have said.

  — See that you do, said Morganymuae . . . and a bit coldly, or so Ravenkroft thought to himself.

  — Alright, then, he sent to the two of them, let’s get on with this . . . let us be about our business. First stop — Builder It Yourself, local store number 4529, just a few miles from here. And then after I’ve made a few upgrades to my Evangeliojaeger, we find Desirée Weatherspark, and we abduct her, and take her back to my parents’ summer-home, where I can begin the experiment. But first, we eighty-six her friends, and we do so such that she can stumble upon their remains. Fear, grief, and terror. For the future. And we will begin . . . with Mini-Misto over there. Then, and only then, do we start planning for the twin invasions, the Zarcturean and the Elder Gods, the long-lost parents and their grown-up children, once again united in their conquest of the Earth! And I get to be a part of that. I can’t tell you how special that makes me feel. Gets me right here. It really does. He lightly thumped on his chest with his fist.

  “Goddamn it, Ravenkroft,” said Michaelson, from inside the sample jar. “I can hear your friggin’ telepathic transmissions in my head, too. Y’do know that, right? You people aren’t very subtle with that. And if you think you’re gonna have an easy time takin’ me out, then you’re like young-Earth creationism or homeopathic remedies: Not even wrong, man, not even wrong. Dizzy will get to you first, and when she does, she’s gonna make you pay. And you don’t exactly have Viktor’s existence to protect you from her wrath anymore. Now, if you face her, you’re doing so on your own, bud, as who and what you really are.”

  “Yes, I suppose I am,” said Ravenkroft, and then he laughed. “But I guess that’s why it’s a good thing that there’s two of me! One out here . . . and one in the NeuroScape. Me, and then Virtual Me. Both capable of being up to no good in glorious, synchronous harmony with each other. And I can always print another copy if something happens to this fleshy shell, now can’t I. Now, then. You sit right there, ‘Misto,’ and be a good boy, while I and the Visitor and Morganymuae here fly this ship someplace where I can get the parts I need to go up against your favorite student and take her down . . . I don’t wish to kill her. But I do wish to incapacitate her, long enough to hook her up to my Psychotronic Transcendimensional Transmogrificator and ‘inject’ the essence of one of Morganymuae’s Elder God brethren into her.”

  Outside, through the main viewer, Ravenkroft saw tiny amounts of sunlight had just begun to leak through the thinning fabric of the previous night’s gloom. He sucked in a deep breath — the air on Marvin’s ship, though the Visitor had adjusted its atmospherics to be more Earth-like — felt artificial and stuffy, and far too “clean” . . . Normally, all around him in the city, he found the smells of progress, innovation, and industry: Carbon monoxide and dioxide, methane, and other pollutants; dirty water and its treatment plants; trash and fast food debris, and other signs of human dominion over the planet. To him, these were indicators of humanity’s ongoing race with itself to the top. True, it meant that in due course, Humanity — or whatever race ended up inheriting the planet — perhaps the Zarcturean, perhaps the Eidolon, perhaps none of the above — would eventually have to flee the planet to escape its total ruination. But, that also meant a chance for a new beginning for some other lucky species, or a rebirth of Humanity on some other planet. Maybe it even meant that his precious Creations, the Teenage Mutant Biomechanoid Samurai — back safe and sound in the basement of Viktor’s parents’ summer home — would maybe one day roam the Earth, reigning supreme in Humanity’s wake. Perhaps they could survive in the inhospitable environment that Humanity would leave behind it. Perhaps they were even a key to one day defeating the coming invaders. All things served the forces of natural selection, which Humanity had learned how to dodge, mock, and hustle over the Ravenkrofts. Well, not anymore. Not once he, Ravenkroft, was done with it. No, when he was done, Humanity would be a lean, finely-tuned, highly-evolved fighting force ready to battle their by-then Zarcturean and Elder God conquerers — the Marvins and Morganymuaes of the cosmos. He played the Long Game. Let them make him their “slave master” over all of Humanity. And, let him work in secret . . . Reforging humanity in his perfect image . . . Until the Human race would be ready to turn on their new rulers . . . ready to rob them blind of all their tech and magic and power . . . and then, use it against them . . . and eventually, take back the planet. With him in charge of the place — and in charge of humanity’s grand destiny, all of it laid out according to his design, of course. Was it playing God? Of course. Someone had to.

  But first — he would acquire this Jetta “vampire” for further study, and then he would attend to Weatherspark. Whose neurology and physiology he wound play with, in order to see if it could tolerate fusing with the essence of the Eidolon. His other half had synthesized Morganymuae through the magic of the Physion Bio-Printer, a true hybrid between a Human genome and that of a fully-developed Eidolon. What wonders, he thought, might be in store if he tried to fuse an already-fully-formed Human with an already-fully-formed Eidolon? The procedure would be simple: He would suck Weatherspark’s consciousness out of her biological body, and implant it into a NeuroScape Avatar that he designed for her; then, he would open the quantum-scale interdimensional portal inside the Positronic Metacognitive Processor via the NeuroScape . . . and when the Eidolon came through, it would do to Weatherspark what it had done to Alicia . . . and then, he would use the Physion Bio-Printer to output the results. He grinned at the genius of his plan. This was going to be glorious.