Gas filled the elevator as it sped downward. Serrin desperately cast a barrier for them; if gunfire came streaming into the cramped elevator when the doors opened below, they'd be rats caught in a trap. Their respirators bought them safety until the doors opened. Then they poured out of the elevator and paused for half a second, trying to take in where they were. Serrin sensed Mathilde strengthening herself, magically boosting her reflexes, he guessed. He would have followed her example if he'd gotten the chance.

The passage led only one way, straight ahead to a pair of open metal doors gleaming with brilliant metal and glass. Tom had his machine gun aimed to blow away whatever was in front of him, but his finger couldn't even reach the trigger. They all stood, stupidly, frozen. Serrin could feel the immensity of the thing, paralyzing his mind, holding him in its hand and amused by their hubris.

"Excuse me, won't you," the figure before the doors said. He removed the white coat he was wearing and handed it to a red-haired elf who slunk out of the room behind him on all fours. Magellan gibbered and preened in the coat like a child who'd just been given a new toy. Luther ran a hand back over his bald skull, then gestured at them to approach.

"Now, I feel better dressed to receive you," he said, flicking a speck of dust from his immaculate gray Italian suit. "Oh, except for that ork. I do find orks most especially distasteful, to be frank. Magellan, will you do the honors please?"

The elf dropped the coat and got to his feet, drawing a long knife from the inside of his jacket. Stealthily, as if creeping up on something unseen, he slunk forward and drove the blade clean through Mathilde's belly and up into her heart. She dropped to the floor in a lifeless heap. The elf pulled the blade out and licked it clean, cutting his own tongue on the serrated metal as he did.

Tom felt rage unlike anything he'd ever known. Furiously, it tore at the iron grip the nosferatu had on his mind and railed impotently against it. He could hardly see now, the anguish was so intense.

Their feet moved without their willing it. A shambolic, pitiful trio, they lurched forward into Luther's domain, aware of everything and able to do nothing but his command.

Niall watched the battle rage until Luther called the toxics from the earth. Toxic spirits bound into corpses, their fire and acid scorching everything, destroying anyone and everyone in their way. The magical barrier did not extend beyond the building itself. Filled with hate, the elf called spirits of the forest to rise up and destroy these abominations. He had his own power to summon things from the earth, and from the forests they advanced, destroying the toxic creatures, though several were themselves destroyed in the doing.

Niall shook with fury and impotence. He knew he could still not enter the place; the iron defense held firm.

"Wait," the ally spirit said slowly. "There may be something. There may be a way in. Wait, Niall. Hold to the power now. Take everything left to you, and wait."

The grip on Serrin's mind relaxed, infinitesimally. His mouth dropped slightly; he realized he could move his facial muscles as he wanted.

"Is that better? I think it would amuse me to talk with you," Luther said contemptuously. "Please sit down."

He made their bodies sit down on one of the benches. Then he walked up and down before them, strutting, for all the world like an august lecturer before a group of slightly dense students on whom he is about to squander some nuggets of his precious wisdom.

He took Kristen's chin in his right hand and bent down to kiss her. Her face muscles contorted, unable to move away from him. Moving along, he squatted on his haunches to meet Serrin's gaze.

"Quite a pretty one. Perhaps I might have my pleasure with her in front of you? Would that be amusing?"

Serrin would have given his life to be able to strike the thing down at that moment. His head and heart filled with black, bitter hatred.

"But, as you probably know, that wouldn't be of much pleasure for me," Luther smirked, getting to his feet again.

"You can ask questions if you like." Then he corrected himself. "No, from what Magellan has told me of you, that would be a waste of time. So, I will tell you what I have done."

"You fragging bastard," Serrin managed to get through his lips.

"Oh, do hold your tongue," Luther said irritably. "I don't have time to waste on trivial insults. In the next twenty-four hours the world will be forever changed and you trouble yourself with insults? Be silent, I say." Serrin's mouth clamped shut.

Tom felt something within him break irrevocably. Later, he was never able to put it into words that others could understand. It was something like plunging over the summit on a roller coaster ride, at the point where your guts turn inside out. The fury in him seemed almost to invert itself and in that instant he realized what the killing of Mathilde, and the threat to the girl, were for. He's feeding on hate, Tom realized. That's what he wants, to get our emotional energies as cranked up as he can, so he can take it all into himself when he kills us.

He felt the fur on his back and the clamping at the nape of his neck. He knew that the meat body wouldn't work, but he was outside even his own mind. He let it go. It wasn't the same as before, when it had been passivity, surrender, awareness of something else, awareness of Shakala or the call of a dead zone where Serrin was hidden. This time, he emptied into nothing.

He felt himself dissolving. For an instant, he panicked, and then he just totally let go.

"What is it?" Niall cried out. "It's inside. I can reach it!"

His astral body found the minuscule point of light and he wove a tiny strand of power to it, a thin pencil of light stretching into and through the barrier, drawing itself back to his body, through Luther's barrier, creating a breach in the shield wall. He went back into his body and called to Mathanas.

"Take it," he said simply. "Go in through it." He walked up to the shattered, blazing remains of the monastery, leaving Mathanas to weave his own magic. He took up the cauldron and walked through what looked very much like the gates of hell.

"It is theoretically impossible, of course," Luther droned on. "It is not possible for a retrovirus to infect the germ line. That's the point. A virus that has the effect of destroying key neural systems, those involved in will and volition, that's easy enough. One that is engineered only to trigger such an effect when the genome lacks the meta-type gene complex, that takes time. One that also goes back into the germ line and affects all future offspring is almost an impossibility. It took me nearly seventy years to create it.

"That's the wonder, the beauty of it. It will make humanity pliable, will-less, automata in perpetuity. There is no remedy. Gene therapy wouldn't work because the neural damage is irreversible. Oh, well, perhaps certain neural substitution treatments might compensate, but they're tricky to handle and the expense is enormous. Not feasible for billions of people. Especially when no one left would want to do it anyway.

"The virus is irresistible. Stable, reasonably persistent, it lies dormant in a whole variety of mammalian vectors and is agreeably infectious. Samples will arrive with elven groups in twelve countries within six hours, though of course things are at a more advanced stage locally." He pointed to the small metal boxes sealed on a table before him. One, Serrin noticed, had not been filled. Yet?

"The next stage, of course, is to develop the virus to create variants that affect only certain metatypes. Then filth like orks and trolls can be pacified as well. Not that,

in the interim, they're going to be any kind of problem. They simply don't have the intelligence of elves."