to trickle out of his eyes like dark tears.
“Just a little blood now,” Caleb said. “I want the pain to start. Convulsions, I think. Do you know that convulsions can break your bones?”
Jelak was falling, his whole body shuddering, shaking with the force of the convulsions.
“Did any ribs break yet?” Caleb asked. “They will, Jelak.”
Jelak was trying to crawl away, but he started howling with pain as the convulsions increased. “Make it—stop.” He looked pleadingly back over his shoulder. “I’ll do anything to—”
“Yes, you will,” Caleb said. “And it will stop soon. I’ve no intention of a having a broken rib shatter and pierce your heart. It would be too easy. Just a minute more.”
Eve flinched as Jelak screamed again. She could almost feel his agony.
“Now it’s time for the blood,” Caleb said.
The convulsions abruptly stopped.
“Give it all back,” Caleb said softly. “All the blood you stole. All the kills, all the lives. First the blood tears, then the rush to the brain that will cause massive strokes.” He was moving slowly toward him again. “Do you feel it? Oh yes, I see that you do. They’re coming. Your eyes are rolling back in your head.”
Jelak was whimpering.
“But you haven’t given up all the blood you took. It has to be everything. Now it’s the end of the game.”
Jelak began to gasp as blood began to pour out of his mouth.
He was choking painfully on the blood, Eve realized. He couldn’t get his breath. She wanted to look away but she couldn’t take her eyes from his face.
He was trying to speak, his gaze fixed on Caleb, blood pouring from his lips. He tried to scream.
“That should do it,” Caleb said. “How’s your resurrection going, Jelak?”
A gurgling, a gasp, and Jelak’s body was jerking, shuddering with the force of the blood leaving his body.
Caleb bent over him and looked deep into his eyes. “It’s over. You’re dying. No power. No immortality. You know that, don’t you? I want you to know that you’re nothing.”
And that desperate realization of final defeat was in Jelak’s eyes.
Caleb straightened. “Burn in hell, Jelak.”
Jelak arched upward, then he was still.
Caleb stood looking down at him for a long moment.
Then he turned and walked out of the cathedral.
“DEAR GOD,” EVE WHISPERED, her gaze on Jelak’s body. “What happened? What did he do to him?”
“I don’t believe there’s any question what he did to him,” Joe said. “Just how he did it.”
She shuddered. “No wonder Jelak was running from him if he thought he could do that to him.”
“Personally, I enjoyed the hell out of it.” Joe got to his knees. “I wanted him dead, and Caleb obliged. Though I’d rather have done it myself.”
“Joe . . .” She had suddenly become aware of the multitude of dagger cuts all over his torso. She put her hand out to touch one on his shoulder. “He did that to you . . .”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re not okay.” She saw a two-inch cut in the flesh on his upper back that looked as if it had been hacked out. Just the pain he’d undergone for that wound alone must have terrible. “We need to get you to a doctor.”
He nodded. “Let’s get it over with. Those stitches may hurt as much as Jelak’s carving.”
“I don’t think so.” She was suddenly not feeling nearly as full of horror as she stared back at Jelak. “Bastard. I wish Caleb had made him suffer more.”
“It was probably sufficient. Stroke, brain hemorrhaging, and suffocation.” He took her arm. “And none of it can be proved in any court of law.”
“But we saw it.”
“Even if we testified, which neither of us is inclined to do, we’d be laughed out of court. Jelak died of natural causes.”
“Blood,” Eve said. “The blood killed him.”
“That’s apparently the way Caleb wanted it. The final irony.”
They had come out of the church, and Eve took a deep breath of the cool night air. Only a short time had passed since she had entered the cathedral, but she felt as if she had been in there for a century.
But Joe was safe. Jelak was dead. There would be no more deaths, no more danger from a man who thought he was destined to be a vampire god.
“Okay?” Joe was looking down at her.
She nodded. “You’re the one who is all cut to pieces. I’m going to call Jane and tell her you’re alive and functioning and to meet us at the hospital. I know you have to call the precinct and tell them about Jelak.” She took his hand. “But then can we just go home?”
