Free Of Masques and Martyrs by Christopher Golden

instead joined with that self-righteous bastard Octavian.
    She deserved to suffer. But there was a way Hannibal might have even greater satisfaction, a way he might spit on Octavian, humiliate him and show, for all the undead to see, who was rightful lord of all their kind.
    As Hannibal watched, Erika stared at the wounded, unconscious man. His chest rose and fell with each rasping breath. The man was still bleeding profusely from his hands and wrists, where the wire had cut to the bone. He was naked and stank of fear and sweat. But the blood scent overpowered any other smell.
    Erika glared at Hannibal again, and he smiled. He could almost feel her hunger, and her growing hatred for him.
    “What are you waiting for?” he asked. “He’s already lost a lot of blood. He’s going to die. Why waste what little is left in him? You’re just going to let it soak into the concrete?”
    Her lips curled back and her fangs were visible, but did not lengthen. Nor did she change in any other way. Of course not. She couldn’t. Not after Hannibal had injected her with the serum. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try yet again to change. It was pitiful, in a way, and Hannibal chuckled at the sight. The vampire girl’s nostrils flared and she began to breathe heavily, as if she were in the throes of passion.
    “You hate me,” Hannibal observed. “I want you to hate me. And fear me. I’m sure you’d like more than anything to alter your form, to become something horrible right now—perhaps even some silver-clawed thing, eh? Since you shadows seem so fond of that disgusting, poisonous metal.
    “But you can’t, girl. You can’t change.”
    Still, though, Hannibal had to give her credit. She kept trying until a bloody tear slipped from the corner of her right eye. Erika kept her head down after that. Hannibal assumed it was more so she wouldn’t have to look at the bleeding man in front of her than in order to ignore Hannibal himself.
    “Can you smell the heat from his heart?” Hannibal asked. “Can you taste the copper tang on the tip of your tongue, feel its thickness slide down your throat?”
    “Stop it!” she screamed finally.
    “Ah, perhaps you can, then,” Hannibal said gleefully.
    “Why can’t I change?” the girl asked.
    That was what he’d been waiting for. She was so defiant, but she needed so much from him. Not only blood. Not merely her freedom. But information. She needed to know what had happened to Rolf, why and how he had died. And Hannibal planned to tell her all of it, in good time. For the worst thing he could do to Octavian, and the way in which he might truly soil the memory of Rolf Sechs, would be to make this girl a member of his own family. To take her for his own, to make her a real vampire, instead of this pale shadow of her true nature.
    “To understand what is preventing your change,” Hannibal began, pedantically, “you must understand one important thing: despite the demonic and divine origins of our vampirism, it is still essentially a scientific process. Somehow, we have a molecular consciousness.”
    She stared at him, as did the three lieutenants who were in the room with them. They had never had these things explained to them, either, and Hannibal chose to keep them in the dark. Knowledge is power.
    “Get out,” he said sharply. “All three of you. I will call to you when she is to be removed.”
    The silent vampire warriors glanced at one another, but none of them was foolish enough to question his will. When they had gone, Hannibal turned to address Erika again. She had inched herself, perhaps even unconsciously, ever so slightly closer to the man quietly bleeding to death on the cement floor.
    “As I say . . . somehow,” he began, emphasizing the word. “But the end result is that we can shapeshift because not only can we transform our cells on a molecular level, but the cells themselves have a memory of their structure. From woman to wolf or mist, and back to