Hammered

activity of their minds and their relative health is clear from their auras, which suffuse their entire being. Vampires are different in that there are only two clear areas of » being « at all. There is activity in the center of their rib cages, and there is activity directly behind the eyes, a dull red pulsing glow like coals in a fire. The rest of them comes across as nothing more than a sterile yet ambulatory collection of carbon, calcium, and iron, though they do have thin gray auras around their heads and torsos.
    Those red lights, whatever they are—the dark magic of vampirism Leif refused to explain—they are fail-safes of a sort. I think of them as resurrection engines. That’s why you can’t just stake a vampire in the heart and assume you’re done; you have to cut off the head as well to prevent regeneration, because if someone removes that stake, it’ll heal up and the vampire will rise again. Even then, if you cut off the head and remove the stake, the heart will grow a new head eventually. You’ll have a thin and wasted-looking vampire, but it will be tremendously hungry and feed incessantly until it gets back to full strength.
    Theories in Druid lore speculate that vampires are completely alien, or else demonic symbionts brought to this plane long ago. It mattered little to me which was true, because the upshot of it was that I could do whatever I wanted to vampires. As far as the earth is concerned, vampires don’t exist as sentient creatures. They are simply collections of minerals and elements that have yet to be reabsorbed, and as such I could unbind them whenever I wished. Druids have absolutely no tabus against using our magic on the dead—it’s only the living we can’t mess with.
    My private theory about the downfall of the Druids—which I didn’t share with Granuaile when she asked, except in passing—has quite a bit to do with vampires. In my opinion, Caesar was simply a sword wielded by the hands of vampires in Rome. There was (and still is) a well-known nest there, and I think they were working behind the scenes, pushing the Senate to have Druidry wiped out. The young vampires wanted to expand northward and carve out territories of their own, but the continental Druids in Gaul were preventing that expansion by unbinding the vampires on sight, turning them into a mush of protoplasm and then setting the mess on fire to prevent any chance of resurrection.
    I would have done the same to Leif when I first met him, if Hal had not introduced us and taken care to warn me ahead of time that he was very nice for a dead guy. Though I was aloof at first, gradually I realized that Hal was right and I came to enjoy Leif’s company—even considering him a friend. I was not sure anymore if Leif’s regard for me had ever been genuine.
    His tale also made me wonder if he knew what I could do to him if I so chose. He became a vampire after the fall of the Druids, and most likely his maker, Zdenik, had as well—though I was basing that guess entirely on his ethnic name and the conjecture that vampires had not yet penetrated into Bohemia by the sixth century. But Zdenik had probably been made by one of the Romans, and they could have told him what Druids could do, and he in turn could have told Leif. I suspected that asking Leif about it would be wasted breath, so I cleared it from my mind. Something else leaped in to occupy it, a horrible gestalt that had been bubbling up to the surface all the while.
    Leif knew I’d have doubts after he said those things, and he also knew with full certainty that I’d take him to Asgard anyway. Why?
    The chilling conclusion I reached was that I had given Leif my word, and any creature capable of waiting for centuries to get his revenge would not hesitate to use any leverage he could to ensure I followed through. Any creature capable of suffering what he had suffered would not blanch at inflicting a bit of suffering on others. He knew who my loved ones were. He knew where they lived.
    Almost as soon as I thought this, I rejected it as unworthy. No one could be so Machiavellian. Not even Machiavelli.
    And the simple solution—to unbind him like any other vampire and have done with it—was not so simple, aside from being completely dishonorable. He had drunk gallons of my blood; it was part of him now. If I unbound him, might I do some damage to myself in the process? I had no way of knowing. There was no precedent for this. And now was not the time for