After watching the mayor’s car speed off, the head nurse turned to the front foyer. Her lips parted in a silent expression of surprise. There was the person the mayor had come to see—and missed. The doctor in white.
“Director, when did you get back?”
“This very moment.”
The head nurse stared at him. Five seconds was the limit. Any longer than that and her vision dissolved into a misty rainbow. Her goal that year was to lengthen the time she could look at him by one second. Now at five seconds she must look through the shell of the authentic and the pretense to the physical and the transcendent.
There was nothing wrong, and yet as they stood there in the half-light of morning, something still seemed “off” about him.
“Was there anything else?” Mephisto asked.
“No, nothing. Oh, Director, the mayor was just here to see you.”
“Official business?”
“No. His wife was doing the driving. I told him you were out and he left without giving any reasons.” The head nurse narrowed her eyes and searched her memory. “He was carrying a big duffle bag. I assume it contained something he wished to show you.”
Mephisto turned his gaze toward the car, cruising through the front gate. “Any indication of where he was headed next?”
“No, but if you allow me to hazard a guess, sir—”
“Go right ahead.”
“Coming expressly to see you, and discovering you were not available, he did not seem terribly disappointed and drove off in a hurry. He surely had another resource in mind. In this city, though, any such resources to equal that of yourself would be limited in the extreme.”
“Then it seems I have no choice but to meet with the mayor. Nurse, I’ll be in my room. Please refuse all visitors for the time being.”
“I understand, sir.” She bowed as the hospital director strode toward the doorway, the morning light gradually exposing the shapes and details of the world around them. She couldn’t explain why, but the director seemed to her at that moment to be fleeing the dawn.
✦ ✦ ✦
Shortly before the mayor left the Nuvenberg residence, a strange group of shadows surrounded a flower shop in Yocho. The dark sky was still barely tinged with blue, and the streets were empty except for this particular throng of silhouettes.
Any witnesses would surely describe them as bathed in some sort of acid, and give them a wide berth. And they would have been correct.
Wearing dark suits and fedoras, they all were spouting white smoke. They all knew the fate that awaited them. They wouldn’t die. But the sun would scald them terribly, and they would carry the scars with them as long as they lived—perhaps for eternity.
Even this gentle and wan sunlight was anathema to vampires.
So what were they doing here? Why risk the hellish pain of being burned alive inside their indestructible bodies instead of hastening home to their peaceful abodes?
“You’re sure this is it?” asked one.
They were at the back door of the establishment.
“Yeah,” said somebody else. “Got confirmed reports. Watch your step.”
They all nodded as one. Right hands slid inside their suit coats. Without another word, the signal went out. The door wasn’t locked. They were through it in a flash.
The back of the shop consisted of a rose garden. They searched for their quarry and found it. Those citizens of the city turned into creatures of the night having scattered in all directions, here in this flower garden that should surely be seeing no visitors at this time of day, surrounded by all its gaudy excess.
White roses, yellow roses, red and purple roses—and in the center of the roses warring for supremacy a dark stain was slowly reaching outwards. The color of the flowers themselves were changing.
And in that center more beautiful than any flower, the voluptuous body of a naked woman, dreaming whatever dreams the Demon Princess dreamt.