Blood Demons. Richard Jeffries

smiled, making him feel even weaker. “Do you think I am a dream?” she asked. “Do you think all of this is a dream?” She motioned gracefully at the surroundings. “Do you think it has all been a dream since the moment you became aware?”

      When she glanced away, it gave him the power to answer, despite the gasping weakness of his reply. “A nightmare.”

      Her smile widened and became more believable. “For you, I’m sure it was.” She lowered, and shook, her head demurely. “But I can assure you it is not.” When she raised her head again, her eyes locked on his. “When your master was beheaded eons ago, a deity took pity on him, for he was once a proud warrior. The deity quickly replaced it with the first head that could be found.” She shrugged sadly. “But what do gods know, or care, of mortals? The result was grotesque, and people became ill and terrified at the sight. So he took refuge in graveyards—”

      “Like me,” Craven realized.

      The woman’s smile became tender and knowing. “Like you. So tell me. You have told him, so now tell me. What is it you want?”

      Craven was not intimidated by her question. In fact, quite the opposite. He suddenly felt superior to her. She must be Tajabana, he realized. Freshly made. Her awakening hunger must be enormous. It had to be the only reason she would dally with him.

      “Power,” he answered, perhaps being truthful for the first time in his life. But not insightful.

      She laughed. Although he reacted at first as if she were mocking him, he immediately realized that her laughter was honest.

      “Oh, my dear fellow,” she said sympathetically as she took her first step toward him. “You’ll have to do better than that. Now really, what is it that you truly want?”

      “Power,” he repeated as her lovely, elegant hand reached for his scalp. “Over innocence.”

      The forefinger of her other hand caressed his cheek, turning his face from hers. “That’s better,” she assured him, her fragrant breath making his flesh crawl. “Although I cannot guarantee you that, there’s one thing I can do—”

      He was tempted to inquire further, but then her tongue was at the back of his head, at the exact spot where his skull met his spine. Then, there, on the banks of the Ganges River where his mother had died, Craven was set free.

      Chapter 1

      Mount Rushmore National Memorial Superintendent Bernard Gensler would never forget the little girl’s face.

      Normally he’d never remember it. He had seen so many faces, every day, since taking the job to manage the Black Hills of South Dakota tourist attraction—in fact, around three million faces a year. But it was the strangest thing. As this blond girl, who he judged to be about three years old, made her way through the crowds, flanked by her mother and father, no one seemed to notice her.

      Instead, if anyone looked down from the awe-inspiring sight of the presidential faces carved into the mountain above them, their eyes seemed to glance off the twelve-ounce orange juice carton she held in both hands in front of her as if she were a flower girl at a citrus wedding. They seemed to focus on that, and not see the angelic face behind it at all.

      But Gensler’s eyes had become sharper in the eight months since he took over the job. His gaze now almost always went to any weak link in a pattern of movement. And while there were always many children at the park, even now when the weather was getting cooler, most were in strollers or their parents’ arms. This little blond child was walking steadily and serenely, the juice carton like a shield.

      Gensler fought the urge to approach the trio, because he also had learned it was never wise to make suggestions to parents on how to treat their offspring. That was one of the reasons he had gotten the job in the first place. The previous superintendent had always erred on the side of overcaution, until the pile of complaint emails and letters had toppled over onto her.

      Instead, he paused in his own walk to study the trio’s progress. Other sightseers seemed to flow around them, like drops of oil in water. Fairly certain that there were no impending collisions for the moment, Gensler’s gaze shifted back to the child’s beatific face.

      It truly was amazing, as if fashioned from every movie, painting, cartoon, and picture he had ever admired. It was so striking and serene that it was only after he managed to move on that he realized he had not even bothered to look at her parents’ faces. At the time, he had shrugged. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have things to do.

      He was proud of the changes he had made that allowed this child to fully enjoy the stirring, even awe-inspiring, attraction he was now responsible for—from the Memorial Grounds, Information Center, Visitor Center, Sculptor’s Studio, Evening Lighting Ceremony Amphitheater, and Rushmore Plaza Civic Center to the paths, trails, restrooms, parking spaces, exhibits, and even scenic roads that all came under the aegis of the National Park Service. He may not have been serving the Marine Corps in an official capacity any longer, but he was honored to be a part of the Department of the Interior—no matter how his old “few and proud” buddies kidded him about the “step down.”

      Gensler continued his unofficial rounds along the Avenue of Flags Walkway, as ever enjoying the fifty-six flags that represented the fifty states, one district, three territories, and two commonwealths of the United States—arranged in alphabetical order with the As near the concession building and the Ws near the Visitor Center and Museum. And they all seemed to be waving at the beautiful, grand sculptures of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln that artist Gutzon Borglum had begun in 1927, and his son Lincoln Borglum had finished in 1941.

      Gensler truly enjoyed taking the long way ’round to the park café, rather than huddling in his office. To be among the people he had done this all for was his best reward. After 2001 and the World Trade Center attack, the security had tightened like disapproving lips all over the country. But here they focused on improving public buildings and viewing area safety rather than restricting access to the mountain itself.

      But that wasn’t as bad as the overreaction in 2009, when a group of Greenpeace protestors had managed to make it to the top of the presidential heads to drape an anti-global-warming banner there. Following that was years of limiting access and clamping down on the circulation of images of the top. National Park Service officials believed distribution of these images constituted an unjustifiable security threat.

      Even then Gensler had come across the report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office that read “preventing individuals seeking to climb to the top of the monument for nefarious purposes is difficult.” But he had found that the real problem was the lack of funds needed to man those surveillance feeds and police the summit.

      The superintendents before him had struggled to balance the visitors’ freedom with park security, but they had neglected to incorporate the human factor. Upon his hiring, he almost immediately realized the key was using their limited funds to their best advantage, as well as steward training.

      These forest rangers were more comfortable with trees than they were with other people and had to have an attitude adjustment to change their preconceptions about “the annoying interlopers.” Once he made it clear that every visitor should be treated like a possible nature lover, and led by example, the mood slowly but steadily changed.

      They all worked to make any visit so enjoyable that few seemed to notice Gensler’s steps to make sure the presidential sculptures themselves were well and truly off-limits. Nobody could get up there, but he did everything in his power to make sure they didn’t even think about wanting to.

      Gensler breathed deeply of the fresh, crisp, autumn air. They were in the weather sweet spot where the southern Chinook winds took on cold Canada air trying to permeate the area, leaving them in a pocket of peace. As he straightened at the crest of his breath, he unavoidably glanced upward. His eyes, sharpened by years of training, narrowed. His brain, sharpened by the same training, slammed down the sudden panic that filled it.

      There were three specks in his vision, where they couldn’t be, moving along