Vasilja suppressed a smile as the old man began weaving together strings of obscenities. A long litany of heinous statements which cast doubts on the motives and methods of Christ’s birth.

  On the sexual performance and preferences of God.

  And the validity of Mary as a virgin.

  His monologue crafted some of the most exquisite perversions that once or twice Vasilja raised an eyebrow in surprise at the unholy priest’s imagination.

  Soon, content that he’d blasphemed enough, the old man began to circle the woman on the table. He moved like a jackal with lust in his hips and joyous disbelief on his face. Fingers twitching as he brushed her long hair.

  She was a redhaired beauty, Vasilja thought. Pale freckled skin. Ribs a ladder down her slender torso.

  Mole on hip.

  Thin legs, placed wide apart.

  Fragile. Weak.

  Exposed.

  Body cleaned and washed for ritual.

  She might have been a lady, Vasilja thought, but her rough fingers and split nails were evidence of a pitiful and insignificant life inside a clothing factory.

  The old man dusted her with wet ashes from an urn. Holy wafers charred and burnt then mixed with blood and spit.

  He sprinkled it across her breasts. Paused to reach out and grab each bosom with gnarled hands. Kneading them roughly as he worked the ash into soft skin.

  “I baptise thee in Lucifer’s name,” he intoned. Moving his hands even lower. “I baptise thee in Lucifer’s name…”

  Vasilja smiled, amused by the erection beneath his robe. Plain to see there was nothing else he was wearing beneath.

  The delirious woman moaned when he began rubbing her belly with the dry mixture.

  It was, she thought, almost comical. The rituals Dracula had led were more pagan. Simpler. There was less melodrama. Why Hailwic had chosen this particular ritual to hunt down, Vasilja didn’t know.

  If they’d returned to Castle Dracula, perhaps they’d have found another. His journals had been missing, but surely his lesser grimoires were still in the castle. He couldn’t have taken them all.

  The woman rolled her head, the laudanum beginning to wear off.

  The little boy looked unconcerned.

  Perhaps he’d been in a church before and seen rituals performed.

  Most likely couldn’t tell the difference between a holy and unholy rite.

  He caught her looking at him and smiled. Lifted his toy at her. Showing it off.

  She nodded back at him, returning the smile as Freddy began climbing onto the table between the woman’s legs. His weight made it awkward. The robe lifted too high, showing rough hairs streaking his thighs and buttocks.

  Vasilja winced.

  “I baptise thee,” he said again, words rushing loose. Voice slurring as he felt the woman stir. “In Lucifer’s name.”

  He thrust his hand out and Senka handed him an iron goblet, which he raised high above his head.

  “Lucifer! Prince of Darkness! We dedicate this sacrifice to you. We purge it of its purity. We revoke its ties to Heaven and corrupt its innocence with Absolution. Great Satan, we beseech thee! Bear witness to this, the Revelation of her Sin.”

  He drank from the goblet.

  A heady mix of spices, wine, and the ashes of biblical passages from the Old Testament. To be honest, Vasilja hadn’t cared enough to listen to Senka’s description.

  The woman stirred again, one arm shaking as the unholy priest grabbed her hair and lifted her head. Put the mug to her lips and poured the remaining contents into her mouth.

  She gagged, but swallowed enough to content him

  Then he pushed the goblet back to Senka, who tossed it over her shoulder. It bounced with a sharp clatter before hitting the wall and caused Dimiti to look over his shoulder. Saw everything was fine, so he turned back to the door, peering out into the city’s gloomy streets.

  Frederic huffed a few more obscenities. Voice gruff and excited.

  Groped the young woman’s breasts as he obviously worked himself towards the ritual’s gruesome climax.

  Nervous sweat dribbled off his beard.

  He placed the knife against the woman’s thigh. Wiped his face dry with his sleeve.

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  And read aloud from one of the grimoires.

  A harsh and guttural string of gibberish, she thought. At least, it sounded enough like Latin to appear a gross parody of the language. Dracula had used Sumerian, she remembered. And Hebrew. It had sounded a lot more organised and sensible.

  She tapped her knee with a finger. Impatient now.

  Hector waved at her.

  She waved back.

  He was so little, she thought. Had she ever thought of being a mother? Before Dracula had found her? Had she entertained such thoughts? She couldn’t recall.

  She’d been part of a Devil’s coven. Not witches like Senka would know them. Worshippers.

  Devotees.

  There were three other women. Two crones and a young girl with dirty feet.

  That’s all she could remember about them.

  Dirty feet.

  And a lot of blood.

  Frederic placed the grimoire to his left. Took the second grimoire and continued from that. More mumbled streams of perverted Latin. His pronunciation seemed a bit harsher than it should be.

  Did he understand the meaning of what he was saying?

  She assumed he didn’t. But if it bothered him, he didn’t show it. His cheeks were flush. His eyes roaming the young woman’s naked body as she opened her mouth and let out another long groan from somewhere deep inside. A groan which almost had the strength to become a wail.

  Vasilja realised she’d forgotten to ask for the woman’s name. She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She’d have to ask Frederic later.

  Senka moved around the altar. Eyes glinted in candlelight. Lips drawn back, fangs bared. Slowly, she took off her coat and tossed it across an abandoned pew. Then her shirt.

  Stripped down to nakedness, her powerful shoulders flexed.

  Frederic almost forgot what to say as he caught sight of her, but miraculously didn’t misspeak. And was able to maintain his composure enough to hold out both arms to the younger vampire.

  Who bent slowly and took the boy in her own.

  Then held him out. Reluctantly.

  Vasilja smiled as she understood Senka wanted the boy for herself.

  There is a beat, Vasilja thought, to life. A thrumming beat whose rhythm can be heard to those who have an ear for such things.

  Vasilja fancied herself as one such person.

  She could hear the beat of the drugged woman’s heart.

  Slow.

  Steady. Rising rapidly now and then as her brain surfed the rise and swirl of laudanum’s special kiss.

  And there was the boy’s beat.

  Soft. Faster. But maintained.

  He had no fear. She’d told him not to be afraid, and her control endured even as Frederic took him from Senka’s hands. He had no thought other than how much he wanted to be a good boy.

  His gaze was innocent.

  Steady.

  Trusting.

  Still holding his ridiculous toy.

  Senka moved to stand at the woman’s head. Placed hands on either side, flat on the table. And licked her lips.

  Anticipation coiled inside the young vampire like a snake.

  An adder.

  Bunched and ready to strike.

  Frederic, his life reaching its zenith, was a rushing crash of blood as his veins flooded with adrenaline. Fear and lust merged, forming a miraculous state of being in which he reveled in the evil works he was conspiring to achieve.

  This moment was something he’d been waiting for.

  A moment of complete and utter abandon as he threw aside everything which had constrained him. Threw it aside and held head high, and the boy even higher.

  One hand reached down.

  Grabbed hold of the knife. A knife which had once been blessed but was now corrupted with evil.

  By chance, the boy, held upside down by his feet, was looking at Vasilja. One eye wide. The other still burdened by the ugly wart.

  He smiled.

  Waved his toy.

  And two things happened in one epic crescendo as the music of life abandoned the gentle and sublime rise to descend into the catastrophic chaos of a chorus birthed in the fiery maw of Hell itself.

  First, Dimiti bellowed incoherently and began firing his revolver at someone rushing up the stairs toward the church.

  He kicked the door shut and slammed the bar in place.

  Shouted; “It won’t hold them long!”

  Second, Frederic slit the boy’s scrawny throat.

  Blood sprayed across the old priest’s chest and he quickly turned the wriggling body around to aim the gushing flow onto the writhing body of the drugged woman. Who began to mew as blood wet her pale white skin.

  Vasilja leaned forward. Smell of fresh blood overpowered her senses.

  Senka, standing close, let out a cry of triumph as she was hit with a spray of crimson. It splashed her face. Riddled down her cheek and neck.

  Breasts.

  Arms.

  Belly.

  Howling in glee, the young vampire hadn’t noticed Dimiti’s cries. Or the loud explosive shots of his gun.

  Or the answering blasts which put splintered holes through the wall.

  Frederick, too, was deaf to the world. “I baptise thee in the blood of the innocent! I crown thee in the blood of the innocent! I defile thee in the blood of the innocent!”

  He tossed Hector aside, smearing the woman’s body with the boy’s blood. Covering every inch of her pale white skin. His lustful fingers squeezing.

  Hector landed with a crash among the abandoned pews.

  His whimpering cries were wet gargles as the little body fought for breath through his slashed windpipe. Blood bubbled out of the ruthless cut.

  He arched his back, lungs searching for air.

  Failed.

  He struggled mightily for a few moments, but his body shivered quickly into stillness.

  The little ones, Vasilja sighed regretfully, didn’t have enough blood to last long.

  Frederic, lost to the ritual’s hedonistic lust, pushed his robes aside.

  Took handfuls of the woman’s flesh at her hips.

  And thrust inside her, not knowing this occurred at the precise moment Hector’s heart beat its final beat.

  Wouldn’t have cared if he had.

  In that single moment, carnal lust dragged his reason across coals which flared and burned with the fires of monstrous and inhuman instinct. Any last shred of empathy the man called Frederic may have felt was lost to him. Consumed within the primal beat of a ritual so obscene it should never have been conceived.

  He grunted.

  Didn’t manage more than a few clumsy thrusts before he completed fouling her womb.

  Then scrambled to grab the knife as more bullets smashed through the door. He didn’t look over his shoulder. A bullet screamed past his ear, but he didn’t hear it.

  He raised the knife.

  Shouting wildly in clumsy latin.

  Arms wide.

  The Devil’s laughter pounding in his ears.

  Music of damnation at its most ruinous.

  Dimiti smashed a window and began shooting out into the dark. Reloading as quickly as he could. Eyes wild.

  And Frederic’s voice screamed, loud and clear as he brought the blade plunging into the chest of the woman he’d so eagerly defiled; “Satan! Satan! Satan!”

  Blade slammed home.

  Sheathed in innocent blood made corrupt with the most diabolical sins.

  Silence.

  A deafening rumble of silence.

  The kind which left breaths caught in lungs.

  Then a rush. A scream.

  And the door boomed as something heavy hit it from outside.

  “Lady?” Dimiti called. “They’re almost through!”

  Vasilja stood.

  Sighed.

  Looked to the altar.

  Senka, red with blood from her hair to navel.

  Head bowed across the bloody wound.

  Sucked deep.

  “Senka? There’s really no time for that.”

  The young vampire’s head whipped up. Eyes, black as night, chilled Vasilja’s core even colder than it had been before. They were not Senka’s eyes.

  Not anymore.

  “Senka?”

  And the young vampire’s eyes began to burn with fire. They boiled and bubbled, spitting sparks and molten gore.

  Not just any fire. Green fire.

  Felfire.

  And Senka began to laugh.

  And laugh.