You’re in a hot grotto of some sort, or perhaps a medieval dungeon. You smell niter and soil and you can see water bleeding through walls of uneven bricks lit by wan firelight. The fire gently crackles…
And the woman raises the cup…
She’s robust, beautiful, and nearly nude. The only clothing she wears is hardly clothing at all but the black and white wimple of a nun. She seems parched, her lambent skin glazed with sweat, and the firelight lays moving squiggles on it, like faint tongues of light. And the cup—
Not a cup, really. It’s cereal bowl–sized but of dull brown clay. You can’t see what’s in it. The woman’s breasts jut as she raises it high, as if in offering. Three gemstones mounted on the bowl sparkle, one black, one green, one red.
Behind her, the firelight on the wall…changes. Soon the bricks are squirming with wavering lines of black, green, and red, slowly writhing, snakelike. When the nun lowers the bowl just below her bare breasts, you see its contents: blood.
The luminous black, green, and red lines behind her begin to churn in a fury and then her eyes go wide and she turns her head to gaze right through the mirage—
Right at you—
—and grins, showing two long, narrow, and very sharp fangs…