Minhi awoke in the dark and had no idea what time it was. For the first several hours of her captivity she had wrestled, she had pleaded and screamed. Then had come the—how best to call it? That pep rally of the damned? And since that moment she had sat in her cage, waiting, watching.

Now she could hear a great gathering in the auditorium and he was speaking again.

A great, thick curtain had been drawn on the backstage, so that she and Paul were hidden, as though awaiting the applause that would open the curtains once more.

Minhi was not accepting her fate. She was accepting only that she lacked immediate options. Fate was far from decided.

Paul, meanwhile, had also awoken and was now pressing his back against the bars and trying to break the cage open.

“Are you really trying that again?” Minhi asked.

Paul dropped back to the floor of his cage. “I have to try something.”

“We’ll get a chance to try something,” said Minhi, “but it’ll happen when there’s a change.”

“What do you mean, a change?”

“Listen to that,” she said, indicating the muffled noise of what sounded like a call-and-response meeting. “I mean, we’re not going to sit here forever. They’re going to have to move us eventually.”

“I have news for you; that will not be a good time for us.”

“But,” she said, “that’s when lots of things will happen. Locks will be unlocked, and so on. It won’t be easy, but we might have a chance then.”

Paul looked at Minhi. “So how do we deal with them?”

Minhi was thinking. “What do we know about vampires?” she said, daring to use the word neither seemed comfortable with. “They’re strong, for one thing, like superhero strong.” She sounded like she was making a list.

“They don’t like sunlight,” Paul said. “In those movies Sid makes me watch, the vampire always gets burnt up when the sunlight hits him.”

“That’s in movies,” Minhi said. “We don’t know if that’s true. I mean, for instance, in movies nobody ever has caller ID or cell phones that work. Do you have a cell that works, by the way?”

“Not down here. Are you suggesting that the movies are not a guide for life?” Paul asked. “Whatever will I do now?”

Minhi smirked. “Okay, so that’s an idea, though—if we can trick them into the sunlight—”

A sour, female voice hissed, “That only works sometimes.”

Minhi looked up in horror as a female vampire dropped silently from the rafters to the floor.

She had spiky yellow hair and white robes that fluttered as she descended. She looked no more than sixteen, but Minhi knew that vampires tended to measure their years in decades or even centuries. The vampire girl began to walk in front of the cages. Her bone white skin almost glowed in the dim light behind the stage.

“What’s the game we’re playing, chiclets? How to kill a vampire? You can forget sunlight—the old ones can handle it—and anyway, you’re about two miles underground, sweetheart.”

“Who are you?” Minhi demanded.

“My name’s Elle,” she said.

“So sun doesn’t burn you?” asked Paul, defiant.

Elle raised an eyebrow and came close to Paul’s cage, showing her fangs. “Burn? Me? I’m not telling. Not as much as I’ll bet you do; you’re paler than Casper—but maybe that’s just fear.”

“What do you want?” Minhi asked.

“I’m watching over you,” the vampire answered, “until the moment you’re needed.”

Elle took a moment to study them silently, and then she spoke again. The lusty look in Elle’s eye suggested that she yearned to devour them herself.

Elle licked her lips, looking back and forth, then said, “Let’s play another game.”

Minhi crouched, watching, as Elle continued, “You’ve made me really curious about how much you all know, so I’m going to ask each of you a question: myth or reality.”

“About what?” asked Paul.

“About vampires!” Elle shook her head in disbelief that Paul would even ask. “Vampires are like Americans, we love to talk about ourselves. Myth or reality?”

Paul asked, “What do we win if we get it right?”

“You get to live,” she snarled.

Minhi felt her eyes grow wide but she controlled her fear. “Oh, now, I know we’re here for something more than that. Sounded to me like your fearless vampire leader wants to use us for something else. I’ll bet his instructions were pretty clear.”

Elle looked thoughtful. “It’s amazing, you know; I have the hardest time with clear instructions.” She went back to Paul’s cage. Paul sat there with his arms folded, looking down, and she crouched to his level. “Man, you’re a big dude,” she offered. “You’ll be like two sacrifices’ worth of sacrifice. You’re like a supersize sacrifice. Myth or reality, big guy.” She leaned in. “Vampires can fly.”

Paul stared at her. Minhi started to whisper something and Elle turned around, holding up a shiny black fingernail. “No helping!”

Paul looked around him, then said, “Myth.”

“Not bad.” Elle stood up. “That’s another tough one, so I would have accepted ‘it depends,’ because there are some special cases.”

She went back to Minhi’s cage. Elle poked her through the bars. “Hey. Myth or reality?”

“Come on…”

“Vampires are burned by crosses.”

Minhi shut her eyes, then said, “Reality.”

“Wow,” Elle said. “Usually everyone gets that wrong these days. Yeah. Holy stuff burns like crazy; go figure.” She walked back to Paul.

“This game is totally not fair,” Paul spat.

“Why?” Elle asked, amused.

“Because we’ve seen everything in movies, and it’s all different from movie to movie.”

“Well, then why don’t you just restrict yourself to answers that reflect reality. Myth or reality: Vampires have to sleep in coffins.”

Minhi watched Paul catch this question and stop. He backed up, his eyes flying back and forth. Elle waited a few seconds, then put her hands on the bars, leaning toward him, her long black nails glistening in the dimness. “Well?”

“Myth.”

Elle reached out her arm and grazed a fingernail along Paul’s cheek. “Very good. Mounds of earth, yes—but there’s nothing special about a coffin. Some of the old-timers still like them, though.”

Elle moved again to Minhi. “That brings me back to you. Myth or reality.”

“That’s a stupid name,” Minhi said. “It sounds like Truth or Dare, like you’re asking me to choose. I’ll do a myth, please.”

“Myth or reality,” Elle said, wagging her finger. “Vampires can fall in love.”

Minhi stared for a long moment. “Reality.”

Elle clicked her tongue. “Ohh. No, no. Obsession, but not love. It’s just not there. It’s all burned out. No pity, no empathy. You’d be surprised how much you don’t miss that.”

Then, like a snake striking, Elle reached out, her steely fingers grabbing Minhi by the neck, dragging her to the front of her cage. Minhi was clawing at Elle’s pale arm and Elle hissed as her nails started to draw along Minhi’s neck.

“So let me ask you something,” came the voice of Alex Van Helsing.

Elle gasped and stared up into the rafters. Minhi twisted away from Elle as Alex dropped to the floor.

Alex continued, “Do you paint those nails black, or is that just a bonus that comes with the fangs?”

On the platform, Icemaker stood, the curtains behind him, vampire guards on either side.

“Now you will witness destiny,” he cried, and he reached out his hand, his eyes on the keyhole. With one razor-sharp thumb he cut his hand, and soon a glittering kind of blood, his own cursed clan lord ichor, dripped down into the circle before him, flowing in grooves carved in the ice.

“This blood is not mortal blood,” said he. “It is not the blood you remember.” And he continued:

“Ye know what I have known; and without power

I could not be amongst ye: but there are

Powers deeper still beyond—I come in quest

Of such, to answer unto what I seek.”

After a moment a whisper came, lighting on the frozen air. Frost rose and swirled, up to the keyhole window, swirling in the stone and then bursting out. And then the demon Nemesis herself appeared, robed and winged, a glowing goddesslike humanoid form of clouds and ice. Her eyes were a deep void.

The demon said:

“Prostrate thyself, and thy condemned clay,

Child of the Earth! or dread the worst.”

Icemaker smiled. And stood, coming to his full height before the circle. He looked the demon in the void eyes and said, “I know it, and yet ye see I kneel not.”

“Thou art changed,” said Nemesis. “What wouldst thou?”

Icemaker beheld the grooves and said, “This is not the blood of a mortal, nor the blood of a lowly undead. It is the ichor of a lord, of one who has been tinged with that of the ancients. I make a sacrifice to receive what I desire.”

“And what is it that you desire?” responded the demon.

“At this proper time, at this hour of the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, I wish power over life and death,” he said, “beginning with my beloved, Claire.”

In the air the vampire formed a small image, a cameo of ice and blood that he held in his hand: Claire, treacherous mistress, mother of a child he had taken and then had taken from him, bearer of a love he no longer felt except as obsession.

Icemaker threw the cameo of blood and ice into the flowing grooves, and it hissed.

“Let it be done,” said Nemesis.

Backstage, Alex recognized the vampire he faced. It was the girl who had been spying on him through his window, who had thrown him onto the roof. The glimmering bolt flew through the air, grazing the top of Elle’s shoulder. Elle stumbled back.

“How did you know about me?” he demanded, firing again. This bolt impacted with her shoulder and drove her back, sticking her to the wall.

“You?” she spat. “We’ve been waiting for one of you.”

Alex turned for a brief second to the cages. Minhi and Paul shrank back until Alex pulled down his hood, revealing his face.

Paul suddenly burst out laughing.

“What?” Alex asked.

Paul said, “I’m sorry, it’s just kind of ‘aren’t you a little short to be a stormtrooper?’”

Alex protested, “You should know I got silver bolts right here that—” and then Elle ripped away from the wall, slamming into him, knocking him sideways.

He struck the ground, exhaling sharply. He lost hold of the Polibow and the weapon fell. As he landed on his back, the vampire leapt on top of him and grabbed him by the shoulders, rolling back her head, her mouth open. She bared her fangs. Alex watched her whole body start to come forward.

Suddenly she jerked—Minhi had caught her by the hood that dangled behind her neck. Alex grabbed the bow. As he did so, he saw a fire extinguisher and what he would need: an ax.

The vampire growled, turning toward Minhi. Alex aimed and there was a quiet pumping sound of the Polibow, as two wood-threaded silver bolts went toward Elle’s chest, but she spun, one of the bolts finding solid purchase in her shoulder, where it burned and hissed loudly. Elle growled and leapt backward, grabbing the curtains. She put all her weight into yanking at them viciously. Golden rings at the top of the rafters began to strain and pop as the curtains swayed. Elle disappeared into the dark rafters above.

Alex ran to the ax on the wall. He returned, moving quickly, tearing apart the locks of the cages and setting Minhi and Paul free. Just as their feet hit the boards they heard a thunderous sound.

The heavy red curtains were swaying violently, more of the rings popping and groaning, and then they gave out, crashing violently to the floor.

Alex, Minhi, and Paul turned to face the wrath of Icemaker and five hundred of his closest friends.