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multiplied tenfold, washed over Rufo. It was the purest feeling of ecstacy the wretch had ever known. He understood and appreciated his power at that moment. This pitiful slob, this man he did not even know, couldn’t begin to resist him!
    Rufo moved slowly, determinedly, knowing that his victim was helpless before the spectacle of the vampire.
    And then he tasted blood, like the nectar he had drawn from the foolish Oghman priest inside the mausoleum before Druzil’s poison had tainted it. This blood was not tainted. Bachy was a dirty thing, but his blood was pure, warm, and sweet.
    The minutes slipped past, and Rufo fed. He understood then that he should stop. Somehow he knew that if he didn’t kill this wretch, the man would rise up in undeath, a lesser creature, to serve him. Instinctively the vampire realized that this one would be his slave-at least until Bachy, too, had fully followed the path to becoming a vampire.
    Rufo continued to feed. He meant to stop, but no level of thought could overrule the pleasure the vampire knew. Sometime later, Bachy’s husk of a corpse tumbled down the slope behind the other discarded garbage.
    By the time the night began to wane, Kierkan Rufo had become comfortable with his new existence. He wandered about like a wolf scouting its domain, thinking always of the kill, of the taste of the dirty man’s blood. Dried brown remnants of the macabre feast stained the vampire’s face and cloak as he stood before the side wall of the Edificant Library, looking up to the gargoyles that lined its gutter system, and past the roof, to the stars of his domain.
    A voice in his head (he knew it was Druzil’s) told him he should return to the mausoleum, to the cool, dark crypt where he might hide from the infernal heat of the coming sun. Yet there was a danger in that plan, Rufo realized. He had taken tilings too far now. The revealing light of day might put the priests on their guard, and they would be formidable opponents.
    They would know where to start looking.
    Death had given Kierkan Rufo new insights and powers beyond anything the order of Deneir had ever promised. He could feel the chaos curse swirling within his body, which he inhabited like a partner, an adviser. Rufo could go and find a place to be safe, but Tuanta Quiro Miancay wanted more than safety.
    Rufo was barely conscious that he had changed form, but the next thing he knew, his bat claws had found a perch on the edge of the library’s roof. Bones crackled and stretched as the vampire resumed his human form, leaving Rufo sitting on the roof’s edge, looking down on a window that he knew well.
    He climbed headfirst down the wall, his strong undead fingers finding secure holds where in life he would have seen only smooth stone, past the third floor, to the second. To Rufo’s surprise, an iron grate had been placed over this window. He reached through the bars and pushed in the glass, then thought of becoming vaporous and simply wafting into the room. For some reason, some instinctive, animalistic urge, as though it occurred to him that the grate had been put there only to hinder his progress, he grabbed an iron bar and, with one hand, tore the grate free and sent it spinning into the night.
    The entire library was open to him, he believed, and the vampire had no intention of leaving.

Well-placed Faith
    Danica stared into the flames of the campfire, watching the orange and white dance and using its hypnotic effects to let her mind wander across the miles. Her thoughts were on Cadderiy and the troubles he would face. He meant to oppose Dean Thobicus, she knew, and to rip apart all the rituals and bureaucracy that the Deneirian order had been built on through the years. The opposition would be wicked and unyielding, and, though Danica did not believe that Cadderly’s life would be in danger, as it had been in Castle Trinity, she knew that his pain, if he lost, would be everlasting.
    Those thoughts inevitably led Danica to