“About damned time,” Elizabeth complained petulantly.

“I had to wait until the drug took effect.”

“I know, I know.” Elizabeth slid to one side, her skin slick against Kristi’s. “Look at her skin. Flawless. Perfect…” She glanced up at Vlad. “She’s the one. Her blood will do it.”

Do what? Save her from aging? “Nope. You’re done,” Kristi managed to say, but they ignored her, and though she tried to wriggle away, she couldn’t. To her disbelief, as if from a long way away, she watched as Vlad very carefully slit her right wrist.

In a swirling plume, her blood began to stain the water.

Mathias was dead. Murdered. Apparently while he’d been praying at his bedside.

A statement? Mai Kwan wondered as she called in a report to her superior, then searched through the priest’s small rooms, trying to come up with a clue as to why the man had become a victim. And why did Kristi Bentz think he was involved with Wagner House and some kind of weird vampire cult?

No vampire had been at this murder scene.

Too much blood left behind.

Montoya was with her every step of the way, through the slashing rain as thunder cracked, backing her up as they’d entered Mathias’s rooms. He hadn’t said much but had taken in the entire gruesome scene.

“What do you think?” he asked as she bent over the body.

“He pissed off the wrong guy. Look at this,” she said, pointing to the priest’s neck. “His throat is slashed, jugular, carotid, hell, nearly to his spine.”

“Almost decapitated,” Montoya said grimly.

“Rage. Whoever did this was in a blind fury.”

“At a priest?”

“This priest. It’s personal.”

Which didn’t bode well for Kristi Bentz and Ariel O’Toole.

Mai stepped over the body, walked to the priest’s desk and started going through his files, all the while wondering what Bentz and McKnight had found. If anything.

Mai hated to think it, but she sensed that Kristi Bentz was already dead. And, judging from the state of Father Mathias’s body, violently murdered.

Kristi tried to force her eyes open, to find some energy to fight, but she could barely stay awake, her muscles refusing to aid her as she lay in the soothing bath, the water turning scarlet.

“I feel it,” Elizabeth said into her ear as Kristi tried to move away from her slick, clinging limbs. “I feel it rejuvenating me.”

Oh, for the love of God. No way! Again she tried to push away even though she thought that without Elizabeth’s arm around her she might sink into the tub, slide beneath the murky surface and drown in her own blood. The mirrors in the room allowed her to watch in horror and disbelief as her own face went white. Vlad the Horrible stood at the edge of the tub, ready to climb in with them.