A little while ago Carole had left Lacey and made a quick trip back to the church to see if Father Joe had been found. He hadn't. But one of the parties searching for him had returned with his large silver cross. He'd had it with him when he'd gone out earlier this evening. They'd found it on the roof of a nearby office building.

Carole had asked if she might take the cross back to Lacey and let her keep it until her uncle returned. Because Father Joe would return. He was too good, too strong, too faithful a man of God to fall victim to the undead. He— only a small part of her believed that. She'd seen too much . . . too much. . . . Yet she forced herself to hope. She placed the cross on the windowsill, as a guardian, as a beacon, calling him home.

She closed her eyes and listened. Silence. The convent was virtually empty. The rooms were available to the parishioners but most of them felt safer in the church—in its basement, in the choir loft, anywhere so long as they were within those walls. Carole could understand that from their perspective, but for her the convent was home. Though she felt orphaned now, it would always be home.

She turned back to the window and gripped the upright of his cross, thinking, Come back, Father Joe. We need you. I need you. We—

What was that? By the rectory. .. something taking to the air from the roof. . . something large . . . man-size . . .

Terror gripped Carole's heart in an icy, mailed fist. A vampire, one of the winged kind, flying away from the rectory ...

Somehow she knew in that instant that they'd done something terrible to Father Joe.

"Oh, no!" she whispered. "No! Not him!"

She grabbed the silver cross, pulled a flashlight from her duffel, and ran for the hall. She hurried down the stairs and out into the night. Holding the cross before her as a shield, she ran across the little graveyard, trampling the fresh-turned earth of graves that hadn't been there before, and arrived at the rectory.

A small building, holding only three bedrooms and two offices, it stood dark and empty. This was priest territory and would be the last place the parishioners would think to occupy.

Carole turned the knob and the door swung open. She flicked on her flash and directed the beam up and down and around before stepping inside.

"Father Joe?" she called, knowing that if her worst fears were true he wouldn't be able to answer. "Father Joe, are you here?"

No response. No sound except for the crickets cheeping in the lawn behind her. She moved through the rectory, checking the two downstairs offices first, then the upstairs bedrooms. Empty, just as she'd expected.

Only one place left: the basement.

Knowing what she was almost certain to find, Carole feared to go there. But she had to. Too much depended on this.

She opened the door. Light in one hand, cross in the other, she started down. No blood on the steps. That was good. Maybe it had just been a flyer looking over the church complex, doing reconnaissance for the undead or hunting for stragglers. Carole prayed that was so, but expected that prayer to go unanswered like all her others.

She reached the floor and flashed her light around. She allowed her hopes to rise when she saw nothing on her first pass. But then as she moved to the rear of the space, where old suitcases and cracked mirrors and warped bureaus were sent to die, she spotted something protruding from beneath an old mattress. A step closer and she realized what it was: a bare foot, its toes pointing ceilingward. Too big for a woman's... a man's foot.

"Please, God," she said again, whispering this time. "Please, oh, please. Let it not be him."

She pressed the cross against the foot. No flash of light, no sizzle of flesh. Whoever it was hadn't turned yet. She leaned the cross against the wall, gripped the edge of the mattress. . . and hesitated. Her mouth felt full of sand, her heart pounded in her chest like a trapped animal. She didn't want to do this. Why her? Why did it always seem to fall to her?

Taking a breath and clenching her teeth, Carole tilted the mattress back and aimed her light at the shape beneath it. She found herself staring into the glazed dead eyes of Father Joseph Cahill.

Images leaped at her like a frantic slide show— —his slack, blood-spattered face—

—the wild ruin of his throat—

—his blood-matted chest—

With a cry torn from some deep lost corner of her soul, Carole dropped to her knees beside him. Her arms took on a life of their own and, for some reason her numbed brain couldn't fathom, began pounding her fists on his chest. She heard a voice screaming incoherently. Her own.

After a while, she didn't know how long, she stilled her hands and slumped forward, letting her forehead rest on his bare shoulder, moaning, "God, dear God, why must this be?"

And for a fleeting moment, even as she spoke, she wondered how she could still believe in God, or stay true to a god who could allow this to happen to the finest man she'd ever known. This was it, this was the end of everything. Where could she go from here? She'd only hung on this long in the hope that he'd return. He had, but only for a few days before this—this!

She straightened and looked at Father Joe again, averting her eyes from his genitals. To kill him was bad enough, but to leave him like this: naked, torn, bloodied, with not a shred of dignity . . .

Well, what did she expect from vermin?

And yet, look at his face—ignore the severed arterial stumps protruding from his throat and focus on the face. It seemed at peace, and still held a quiet dignity no one could steal.

Carole lost more time sobbing. Then, from somewhere, she found the strength to rise. She wanted to stay by his side, never leave him, never let anyone else near him, but she knew that couldn't be. She couldn't stay here and neither could he. She knew what had to be done. She had work to do. The Lord's work.

She wandered the basement until she found a dusty old sheet draped over a chair. She pulled it off and, with infinite care, wrapped it around Father Joe . .. her Father Joe. She tried to lift him but he was too heavy. She needed help ...

OLIVIA . . .

"Someone is here. From Franco."

Olivia lifted her mouth from the bloody throat of the spindly old man strapped to the table in the feeding room.

"Who is it?"

Jules, the unofficial leader of her get-guards, shrugged. "I've never seen him before. All I know is that he says his name is Artemis and his eye—"

"I know about his eye."

Artemis . . . one of Franco's closest get. This must be important if he'd sent Artemis. It had to be about Gregor. Damn that fool.

She looked down at the quivering old man, still alive but in shock and not too much longer for this world. His blood was as thin as his scrawny body. She remembered India. She had been with the first wave through the Middle East, through Riyadh and Baghdad and Cairo and Jerusalem. Lots of blood there, but then they'd moved on to India, lovely, overcrowded India . . . she had quite literally bathed in blood in Bombay.

But here, good cattle were hard to come by of late. She wasn't sure whether that was a result of a thinning of the herd or a thinning of the number of serfs at her disposal. Franco was either going to have to send her more serfs or widen her territory.

Olivia would have much preferred another territory altogether, a peaceful one with no foment. But, thanks to Gregor's demise, she'd inherited this one and was stuck with it, at least until it was tamed.

She pointed to the old man as she rose. "You can finish him after you bring Artemis to the sleeping room. I wish to meet with him alone."

Jules frowned. "Do you think that's wise? Everything is so unsettled."