"We have nothing to fear from Artemis."

Jules turned and headed back upstairs.

Olivia paced the feeding room. She was going stir crazy down here. She hadn't left the Post Office once throughout this long, long night. She'd been about to go out earlier but Gregor's death changed that. She'd been sequestered in the basement ever since. Only half a night, but she felt humiliated. She was supposed to be the predator, the fox, the wolf, but here she was, cowering like a frightened hare in its burrow.

Yes, she was here at the insistence of her get, but she hadn't put up much of a fight. Gregor was foolish but he'd been tough. If the vigilantes had managed to kill him, they could kill her, and she might well be their next target.

She'd sent serfs and one of her get out to find the source of the explosion, to see if that was what had done in Gregor. They'd returned with a tale of a blasted house with Gregor's head spiked on a piece of splintered wood in the front yard and his body in pieces within.

These vigilantes had taken to making bombs. That was the real reason she was down here in the basement. The Post Office had thick granite walls. Even if they somehow managed to toss a bomb through the front doors—closed, locked, and guarded now—it would have no effect down here.

Jules returned and closed the door behind him. "He's next door, waiting."

Olivia nodded, took a breath, then made her entrance. She found Artemis, his back to her, standing among the beds and cots that her get had moved into what had been a storage space. This was where she spent the daylight hours.

"Bonsoir, Artemis."

Artemis turned. He grinned and stared at her with his one good eye.

"English, Olivia. My French is about as good as your Greek."

Olivia tried not to stare at his ruined eye. With his curly black hair and olive skin, he'd probably been handsome once. Too handsome, perhaps. But that eye—she had bathed in blood and had cut off heads, she'd ripped still-beating hearts from chests, but she found that dead eye repulsive. Olivia had lost her left little finger once—an accident with a sliding glass door—but it had grown back. She, like other undead, could regenerate most lost body parts, except of course a head or a heart. But certain types of injury did not heal.

Artemis had been a real up and comer in Franco's get until he allowed a child he'd been about to sup on to jab a crucifix into his eye. He might have lived it down if the eye had regenerated, but wounds from holy objects never healed. His puckered scar and sunken socket were eternal reminders of his blunder, and he'd sunk to the rank of one of Franco's get-guards and errand boys.

"Very well, Artemis," she said, switching to English. "But I just want you to know that I had no control over Gregor. Whatever he did, he did on his own. I am in no way responsible for what happened to him. You can tell Franco that."

Artemis laughed. "Franco did not send me here about Gregor. He wanted to let you know that he has personally broken the back of the insurrection."

"How, pray, did he do that?"

"By capturing the priest himself, the one who took over your little church here."

"Not my church. It was Gregor's responsibility."

"But it happened while you were here on your inspection tour. Don't worry. That is of no import to Franco."

Olivia seated herself on the bed where she spent her hours of daysleep.

"Broken their backs, has he? What did Franco think of Gregor's idea that the insurgents in the church and the vigilantes were two separate groups?"

"He gave it the amount of consideration it deserved, which is none at all. The priest didn't even bother to deny that he was part of the vigilantes."

Olivia took some small satisfaction in being right, but she wondered . . .

"How is merely capturing the priest going to break the back of this situation?"

Artemis smiled. "Franco has turned the priest—not by himself, but by one of his pet ferals. He was delivered back to his own rectory less than an hour ago. He's been hidden in the basement. Come sundown he'll be one of us and will start to prey on his own followers. And as days go by he'll become increasingly depraved looking, increasingly vicious and feral. Isn't it simply delicious?"

"Perhaps. But it's complicated. I prefer simpler, direct solutions. Why doesn't he just burn them out and capture them?"

"You know Franco. He'd deem a frontal assault unworthy of his intellect. He saw too many Dr. Mabuse films while he was living in Germany, I think. Sees himself as the Grand Manipulator, the Demonic Maestro, the Great Orchestrator of life and death and undeath. He must work his coups with style, with elan."

"Elan is all fine and good, but I'd much prefer to see this over and done with."

"But you're not in charge, are you?"

Olivia didn't dignify that remark with an answer. "So what are we to do then? Sit around and hope this undead priest follows Franco's script?"

"We'll be providing direction. We'll watch after sundown and give him a little help if he needs it. Sometime during the next night or two—before he starts losing his mind—we'll question him about the vigilantes. Just in case there are cells outside the church. After that, he's on his own."

"I'm not so sure I like the idea of a feral running loose."

"Good point. He may become uncontrollable. If his followers don't get him first, we may have to put him down ourselves."

Olivia had to smile. "Not much of a future for this priest. What's his name, by the way?"

Artemis shrugged. "You know, I never thought to ask."

"Well, whoever he is, he deserves everything that's coming to him."

LACEY . . .

Startled out of sleep by a hand shaking her shoulder and a strange voice whispering in her ear, Lacey came up swinging.

"Easy, Lacey," said a woman's voice. "Easy. You're safe. No one's going to hurt you."

Lacey blinked. A small room, a single candle, and some stranger bending over her. No . . . not a stranger . . . she recognized her now. The one who'd led her back to the church, who'd said she was a nun. Lacey groaned. Her head throbbed, she hurt all over, especially between her legs.

"Where—?"

"You're in the convent. Listen to me. Something terrible has happened and—" Her voice broke. She blinked, swallowed, then said. "I need your help."

Lacey glanced at the window. Still dark out there. "Can't it wait till morning?"

The nun—what was her name? Carrie? No, Carole with an e—shook her head. "Morning will be too late. We have to act now before anyone finds out."

"About what?"

"Your uncle."

Lacey listened in a daze, struggling to understand Carole's story, but the words seemed to congeal in the air, clumping together into indecipherable masses. Something about her Uncle Joe ... something about him being—

"Dead? No, no! No! You can't be serious! He can't be! He can't!"

"He is," Carol said. A tear ran down her cheek. "Believe me, Lacey, he is."

"No!" She wanted to smash this crazy woman's face for lying to her. Her Uncle Joe couldn't be dead!

"But he won't stay dead. By tomorrow night he'll be one of them."

"Not Unk! He'd never!"

"He'll have no choice."

Lacey tried to stand but crumbled back onto the bed. Her legs didn't want to support her. "But if they can turn him ... make him one of them, then what's the use?"

"That's exactly how they want you to feel. And that's exactly why we must move him away from here and save him from that hell."

"We?" Lacey's stomach twisted and bile rose in her throat. "You mean ... ?"

Carole was nodding. "There's no other way."

"No! I can't!"

"I can't move him alone, Lacey. The parishioners must never know, must never find him. They must think he died fighting for them. If they learn he's become the enemy, that he's preying on them ..."