“God!” cried the priest, the word torn from him, from the deep well in which the last of his faith dwelled. He stabbed at the attacker, lunging with his failing strength to try to plunge the needle tip of the dagger into one of those inhuman eyes. But the man—the thing, for it could not possibly be a man—caught the priest’s wrist. Then, with an almost casual jerk, he snapped Father Esteban’s wrist as easily as if the bones were late winter icicles.

Red hot agony erupted in the priest’s arm and he screamed.

He screamed in pain and in fury and in outrage at this attack, and at all that it meant. He knew who and what this man had to be. A Saracen, one of the Hashashin come to murder him, come to silence the voice of the Holy Church.

But he, Father Esteban, was wrong about that, as he was wrong about so many things; and for him, clarity and understanding came far too late.

The intruder released his grip on the priest’s shattered wrist and reached up to his mask, pulling the red cloth slowly away. Revealing his face.

Not a Saracen face.

The skin was pale, the features narrow, the lips thin. A European face.

But not that either.

When the intruder smiled, Father Esteban knew with all certainty that this man did not belong to any country. He did not belong to this world. Thin, colorless lips peeled back to reveal teeth that were yellow and crooked. And wrong.

So wrong.

Each was tapered to a point as needle-sharp as Esteban’s dagger. Not filed the way some of the African cannibals do. No … Father Esteban knew that these teeth, as unnatural as they were, were completely natural to this man.

This creature.

“For the love of God!” cried the priest, his terror and shock greater than the pain in his chest and wrist.

The thing bent closer to him and Esteban could smell the rancid-meat stink of its breath.

“Yes, Father,” said the monster. “All things are done for the love of God.”

That awful mouth stretched open as the red-eyed thing lunged at him.

There was a moment of white-hot pain, and then the colors drained out of the world and took sound and feeling with them, leaving Father Esteban floating in a sea of nothingness. As the darkness wrapped its cloak around him, a single word echoed in his mind, pulsing slowly with the fading beats of his heart.

Vampiro.

Chapter Sixty-eight

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Mustapha’s Daily Goods

Tehran, Iran

June 15, 6:47 p.m.

My cell vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it and looked at the code on the screen. Mr. Church. Jamsheed excused himself and went out to his store so I could take the call.

I doubted it was good news.

“I heard from Bug,” Church said. “He’s located a device here in the States.”

“Where?”

“Louisiana.”

Bang. There it was.