She had dreamed of rejoining the Gestalt.

The ten of them stood and looked at her. They were all human, their skin a mosaic of tattoos and runic scars just like hers. There were thick needle-track marks on their necks and a dark emptiness in their eyes.

They wore crimson robes and were attended by the healers and technicians who connected their veins to the blood-circulating machines, then to each Gestalt member through heavy-gauge catheters in their necks.

Oscuro motioned for her to take her place among them, and she complied, allowing herself to become part of the blood circle. But as the ceremony began, something in her changed again. As the blood coursed through her, the dark spot on her soul turned foul and rank, blacker than it had ever been. Her lust for blood consumed her, and she began to thrash on the floor, breaking the connecting tube, and circumventing the pattern of blood flow.

The rest of the gathered Gestalt looked at her, a mixture of horror and anger vying for dominance on their faces. Only Oscuro showed no reaction. Moving as if nothing were happening, Oscuro took the first of the chosen victims, and moved the girl into the circle.

Instead of placing her on the altar, Oscuro made the girl kneel at Lucero's feet. As Lucero stood, panting, wild-eyed above the sacrifice, Oscuro had used the tip of his ornamental dagger to draw the finest cut over her jugular vein.

A thin spray of blood shot out, showering Lucero's chest and stomach.

The smell of it, oh, the smell, thought Lucero.

Even as a small part of her mind rebelled, trying to maintain control over her addiction, the rest of her spirit was consumed. In her frail condition, Lucero literally ripped the little girl apart.

Her fingers were like steel claws, her teeth mono-filament razors. She chewed her way through the girl's neck while her fingers ripped open the child's gut. Lucero was filled with the delicious scent of the young one's death, and she reveled in the orgy of sensations.

She lost control then, absorbing the sheer power of the girl's life energy, pulling it into herself like sweet nourishment. She came to a few minutes later to find herself rolling on the floor in a large circle of bone and blood and intestine.

Horror filled her then, and she looked around the circle of mages, her glance finally falling on Oscuro. He stood over her, his face beaming, like a proud father.

An attendant was ordered to take her back to her room while the rest of the Gestalt finished the ceremony. And as she stumbled the way to her small room, the realization of what she'd done, of what she'd become, hit her.

I am just like Oscuro. A monster.

She had betrayed the light, had let her addiction consume again. And now, there was something more. Some dark power had entered her, had taken over that secret place in her where her true self belonged.

She looked around the room that she had once found so comfortable, where she had always found solace. Now, all she saw was tainted by hatred, as if the very things she had found good about this place had turned foul.

Is this how Oscuro sees the world?

Lucero thought it might just be. Everything good seemed disgusting, everything dark and putrid seemed lovely and desirable. Her mind told her to surrender to it, accept it.

After the acolytes left her, Lucero staggered to her feet, still quivering with the power of the girl's life energy. She stumbled to the small foot locker at the base of her bed and tossed the contents on the floor. After a frantic moment of searching, Lucero held the large carved dagger aloft to the light.

It had been a gift from her teacher on the day she had been accepted to the Gestalt. The blade was edged with orichalcum, and it was virgin. The dagger had never tasted blood, and it brought a grim smile to her lips to think that its first victim would be its owner.

Lucero knelt on the floor next to the cot and positioned the blade so that the butt of the handle rested on the bed's wooden frame, the tip pointed to the ceiling. She positioned her chin against the tip, steadying the blade with her hand. All she had to do was relax her posture and the razor-sharp tip would drive straight through her throat and up into her brain.

As she knelt, fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. They weren't tears of fear or self-pity, they were tears of sorrow. "I'm sorry," she whispered to her memory of the music, to the light. "Because of me, you have suffered, and I can't bear to let it continue."

Just as she started to relax her stance, and felt the tip penetrate her skin, the heavy door at her back swung inward.

No!

She tried to throw herself on the blade, but found herself frozen in place.

Lucero waited there, her blood dripping down the knife's edge, and could see him out of the corner of her eye. His dark hand reached beneath her chin and lifted her head.

The knife fell free and dropped to the bed.

His narrow dark eyes held a glint of amusement, and with his free hand, he stroked his thin beard. "My child, you have borne so much. But it is time. You are healed enough for you to return. Body and soul."

Oscuro smiled, and suddenly her heart was glad. She couldn't understand what she'd been thinking. How could she be sc selfish as to try and take her own life when there was so much work to be done?

Oscuro helped her to her feet and cleaned the blood off her scarred body with a damp towel. He smiled all the while, and never said a word about how he had found her.

She realized then that he had expected her attempt at self-sacrifice. That he had perhaps orchestrated it. Now, the foul part of her soul, which had spread to engulf her, was retreating to a small core.

"You are the balance, my child," he said. "The crux, and I hold you very dear."

She found herself admiring him even more, liking the way the dim light cast its shadow over his sharp features. He dressed her in a robe of white linen, and then stood before her holding out his hand. Beckoning for her to join him.

They walked from the room, and as they headed for the altar, Lucero wondered if perhaps Oscuro had planned the whole ordeal. She wondered if maybe he knew that the spot on her soul had become so dark during her blood orgy that she would be unable to return to the bridge. So he had planned her little attempt at redemption just to further his own designs.

She wondered just which thoughts in her head were her own and which had been placed there by Oscuro. Then there was no more time for wondering because they had entered the altar room, and it was time for her to return.

Like her master had said, there was so much work to be done.

31

Ryan sat next to Nadja in the Draco Foundation Mitsubishi Nightsky as they drove past the front of the Watergate Hotel. The area was surrounded by a huge crowd of people-tourists, mourners, media hounds, and even worshippers who considered Dunkelzahn a martyred saint. The blast crater was a massive hole in the center of the boulevard, blocked off by five-meter-tall hurricane fencing and protected by federal security agents.

Above the crater hovered a prismatic cloud that glowed with energy. It writhed and morphed, roiling like an undulating droplet of oil on water, sending out a rainbow of light that was visible even in the middle of the afternoon. Ryan knew that the fabric of physical space had been torn away here. When Dunkelzahn had died in the explosion, the barrier to astral space had been eliminated.

The limo continued its slow and arduous way, through the crowd and up the circle drive to the hotel doors. What a mess, thought Ryan. As gala events go, the intimate gathering at the hotel was a news coverage nightmare.

When the tridsnoops had found out that all press was barred from the gathering, they began spouting about freedom of the press. When that didn't get anywhere, they tried to infiltrate the private luncheon as everything from security personnel to wait staff.