The plateau looked barren and cold in the moonlight, a place between life and death. If his two companions told the truth, it had become just that. All three of them wore leather kilts and collars of stiffer, thicker leather around their throats, while a mixture of oil and crushed garlic coated their bodies. Menkhaf’s own rank sweat reeked more than the garlic. With fear gripping his bowels, he felt as though he very badly wanted to use a latrine—and Menkhaf had fought both Libyan raiders and lions.

He made no sound. His companions had warned him repeatedly about that. Unlike Menkhaf, they wore masks in the likeness of the sun-falcon. By the bargain he had sworn, he was not to see their faces until this night’s work was done. They carried curious nets of pliant silver mesh and knives of the same metal were sheathed at their girdles. Although young and fit enough, they had not the look of soldiers. Their hands were smooth. They talked like learned men. Priests, was Menkhaf’s guess.

Dazzling in the moonlight rose the pyramid of King Snefru, cased in pure white limestone, and farther away, though still in plain sight, the so-called bent pyramid. Snefru had built that one also. Menkhaf had given them little thought until now, though no Egyptian king had raised such imposing tombs before. King Khufu, of course, appeared set on outdoing his father.

Why, of all places, should they lie in wait for a vampire here?

Menkhaf’s nearer companion gripped his shoulder and pointed to that part of the sky just beneath the moon. A dark flitting speck showed there. It drew swiftly closer, flitting and veering. Only a bat, Menkhaf thought, and what was noteworthy about that, except its nearness? Suddenly his sense of perspective shifted. He was not looking at a small bat very close to him. It had not come closer than a spear’s cast yet, and it was enormously large.

Menkhaf clamped his jaw and remembered his uncle. Rage came to his aid, driving away the fear. He gripped the silver-headed spear in both hands. The huge bat descended. Gusts from its wings blew dust across the mastaba’s gritty surface. Even little pebbles went flying. Some of the dust settled on Menkhaf’s oiled hide where he crouched at the base of the mastaba. Blinking, he peered up. Although he had lost sight of the monster as it settled atop the tomb, he knew where it was, and that he had come to destroy it. Enough for a soldier to know.

With a desperate battle roar he sprang out of the sand and up the side of the mastaba. The men in falcon masks followed him closely, but he reached the top first. The gigantic bat sprawled awkwardly on the flat stone slab. As he rushed upon it, the head turned to glare at him, and its mouth opened, full of broad triangular teeth. Its wing span measured four times Menkhaf’s height, and the body rivaled a spotted hyena’s.

The little eyes blazed red as it saw the spear. Swiftly, incredibly, its shape began to alter, the wings dwindling, but Menkhaf was upon it before the transformation could go farther. Bellowing again, he rammed his silver spear into its body, thrusting for the heart. He felt the soft, heavy resistance of muscles and organs, even though they had told him the vampire had no corporeal substance when it traveled from its tomb. Menkhaf wasted no thought on the contradiction; he had the thing impaled on his spear like some immense moth, but he had missed the heart, the seat of thought and soul. He drove the spear deeper.

Then the hawk-masked men were beside him. They whirled their silver nets. The vampire began to dissolve in a pale mist that merged with the moonlight, but the supple mesh of one net wrapped around it, then the second, and the men drew them inexorably tighter. The vampire thrashed, writhed, shrieked in a way that hurt Menkhaf’s ears, but he twisted the spear about and finally touched the pulsing organ he sought.

The vampire convulsed. Before Menkhaf’s eyes it began subliming in black fumes. In a moment any coherent shape was gone. The thing itself was gone. The silver nets lay flaccid and empty. Nothing stained Menkhaf’s spearhead.

“What?” he croaked. “Where is it? Did it escape?”

“No, friend,” one of the hawk-masked men assured him. “It did not escape. The touch of silver is one thing they cannot escape. It perished. Its physical body is down in this tomb, but it’s just a corpse now, nothing more. The spirit form is destroyed. She will not return.”

“She?” Menkhaf echoed.

“Yes. Before she died she was a woman.”

“Man or woman, you are certain she was the fiend that drained my uncle dry?” Menkhaf asked, and when the priests answered him with simultaneous definite nods, he growled, “Too good for her, then. Now it is over.”

The priests stood rigidly still. Their silence spoke loudly. Menkhaf looked suspiciously from one to the other.

“What?” he demanded.

“It is not over,” the second of them said. “There are more of these demons, and now that you have slain one you have made them all your foes. They will seek you out, believe me. It will not be over until the last one returns to dead dry flesh.”

Menkhaf had never been too fond of priests. He said past the bile in his throat, “You did not tell me that before. I don’t know that I believe it now.”

“You believed us when we swore to lead you to the vampire that drained your uncle, and we have kept that promise fully.” The second priest’s voice grew sardonic. “We would have told you who the vampire was, also, if you had troubled to ask. You had better know now.”

“She was Hetepheres,” the first priest said curtly.

“Hetepheres? King Khufu’s mother? The late queen?”

“The thoroughly late queen, now,” came the dry answer. “Yes. You will see that you cannot just walk away from this matter dusting your hands and saying, ‘It is over.’ For now, though, we must leave this place. It would not be well to be caught here.”

Menkhaf believed that, at least. Minutes later there was nothing under the moon but the bare surface of the tomb, and sand whispering in the breeze as it shifted above the buried vampire. And the pyramids raised at the command of King Snefru, enigmatic, unprecedented, holding a secret no tomb painting or inscription would ever record.

Khufu, son of Snefru, looked arrogantly down upon the building site of his own pyramid from the topmost height it had yet reached; half what its finished altitude would be. That was still high. About four-fifths of the building stone required had gone into that lower half. The rest, of course, narrowed ever more sharply as the monstrous tomb rose higher.

The sights far below Khufu seemed to satisfy him; the temple complex, the wharf and canal by which granite and fine limestone came to his site, the workers dragging stone-laden sledges under the strict direction of foremen, looking no bigger than beetles from his vantage, and the narrow ramps rising up the sides of the pyramid. It was when his dark eyes moved to survey the flat surface around him, where numbered core stones were being levered carefully into place, that Khufu’s face showed misgiving.

He reached a decision. “Halt the labor, kinsman,” he ordered with a snap of his fingers. “This will not do.”

Prince Hemiunu, the king’s nephew, vizier, and grand architect, gave the order immediately. He had expected this from Khufu. Considerably though it irked him, his bland official features stayed inscrutable. He had become practiced in hiding his personal feelings over the years.

“Not do, Great One?”

“By no means! I have reconsidered! The burial chamber will be proof against mortal thieves, no doubt, and my temple will guard it forever, but what if an earthquake should come? The chamber would collapse! My sarcophagus would be crushed! You must design a new burial chamber, higher, with less rock above it and greater safety.”

“At your command, Great One. It can be done.”

“How will you do it?”

Hemiunu had his answer ready. He had planned and discussed the problem with his subordinate builder, Zezi. They had been compelled to revise plans for the immense artificial mountain twice already. First they had constructed a descending passage to a chamber cut from the rock beneath the pyramid. Daunted—though no one said it—by the thought of the gigantic weight of rock that would lie atop him in his sarcophagus, Khufu had called for a burial chamber within the pyramid itself. Therefore a new, rising passage had been cut through blocks already laid, an inconvenient business, then run level to a second burial chamber.

Now Khufu had become dissatisfied with that too.

“Great One, these few freshly-laid courses of stone blocks obstruct us. We shall cut a new passage through them. Then a new ascending gallery, such as I sketch here—” He illustrated what he meant on one of the stone blocks exposed to the daylight, “—will lead to the higher burial chamber we shall construct.”

And I hope that one will satisfy you at last.

“Beware, kinsman, no swift or careless building.” Khufu gave his nephew a menacing glare. He had to look up to do it. They were markedly unlike, despite their relation. The Godking of the Two Lands, Bringer of the Yearly Flood, holder of many other titles, showed quick, impatient vitality in all his speech and movement. His broad face, jutting nose, and narrow eyes were not handsome, but they showed a nature with which one might not trifle safely.

The vizier, larger and younger, big-bellied, big-shouldered, with heavy limbs, owned considerable useful muscle under his sheath of fat. The round, fleshy face was a skilled courtier’s. He had proved himself no mean administrator either.

“My uncle!” Hemiunu protested. “I have planned for this possibility and others. All care shall be taken, I make my oath! The weight above your chamber shall be relieved by a series of hollow compartments, each roofed by a thick slab to maintain strength. If your greatness will honor me by dining with me this evening, I will be pleased to display the plans.”

Khufu accepted. His nephew had thought he would. More than finicky obsession lay behind the king’s concern for the design of his tomb. With his heritage, Khufu had other reasons than religion to know that he would survive death. Hemiunu looked slowly around him at the royal tomb he had charge of building—the mightiest structure ever raised by mortal hands, to house an immortal vampire and protect him, invulnerable, after his body died and was embalmed. Just that, no more. No other purpose.

And no one outside the royal clan knew it.

The vizier gazed out and down at the swarming workers, swiftly taking advantage of the unexpected order to lay down tools. He thought with dry amusement that no matter who else might suffer from the royal vampire’s predations, they were quite safe. The importance of their labor aside, their rations included generous amounts of garlic.

“Have you heard, kinsman, that my mother’s tomb was defiled of late?” the king said abruptly. “Robbers tried to break into it. The side was damaged, but they failed to find ingress. How dared they? I shall find them.”

The king meant that he would hunt them by night in his own way. Thinking of it, Hemiunu required some effort to maintain his stolid manner. A half-breed, he did not have the complete vampire’s power of leaving his body in any form he desired—a bat, a mist, a black dog, or a snake—but he did possess the ability to lay highly effective curses, and he could foresee the future to a certain degree.

“May it be so, Great One,” he murmured.

“My own queens shall rest in lesser pyramids near mine,” Khufu snarled. “My mother’s sarcophagus shall be moved to a new, secret resting place for safety. See to it, O Hemiunu.”

The vizier bowed and assured the king of his efficient obedience.

Vampires did not hunt in the noonday. For that reason, the Brotherhood of Ra, the hidden conspiracy against the night-winged ones, chose noon to bring Menkhaf to its conclave. He was ushered in blindfolded, his arms tied securely by a band of leather.

Because the place was cool, and smelled of slowly burning lamp oil, he assumed it was underground. He also smelled dust, and apart from the arbitrary bite of the strap around his arms, he could feel flat laid stone under his feet. All around him men were breathing, now and then scratching, shifting their weight, though they kept a disciplined silence otherwise. Once someone coughed. Then a voice spoke from directly in front of him. Toneless and measured, it had evidently been disguised.

“Menkhaf, commander of a hundred, you have slain a vampire. Few can boast that! Be assured that she was indeed the murderess of your uncle. You have avenged him.”

Menkhaf said, “Was she truly Hetepheres, the king’s own mother?”

“She was. Do not resent it. Before our brotherhood led you to the demon, with the means to destroy her in your hands, you swore you cared nothing for consequences if you could only repay your kinsman’s murder. We took you at your word. Was it the truth, or mere light talk?”

“The truth!” Menkhaf answered hotly, not liking the blindfold. “Now unhood me. I talk to no one pinioned and blindfolded.”

“Not until you have heard us,” a second, sardonic voice answered. It had the thin sere quality of age. “You may be glad of the blindfold then, and wish you had been deaf, besides. A clan of vampires threatens all Egypt. Soldier, do you truly know what a vampire is?”

“A ghost that nourishes itself on the blood of the living,” Menkhaf answered impatiently.

“Not quite that, and more than that. Vampires begin as living men and women, but of a monstrous, accursed breed. It was ancient before the first brick of Memphis was laid. The trait comes to them in their blood, a dark and evil inheritance flowing like a river, down out of a past we know not. They are born so. While they live, they have great gifts of magic, and their spirit doubles can leave their bodies in the hours of night to work harm in any form that pleases them.”

“I saw that, let me tell you!”

“And having seen, we now expect you to believe. Only a true vampire, a complete vampire, is strong enough to survive death and return from the sepulchre! There are half-breeds and quarter-breeds a plenty about. They may become murderers, magicians, or priests; some turn against and conquer their wicked heritage. O Menkhaf, I myself am a quarter-breed. This it were best that you know at once.”

Menkhaf shivered.

“There are only three ways known that they can be killed forever when outside their bodies. By being caught in sunlight; with silver; and by finding their physical bodies and destroying their hearts. A wooden stake steeped in garlic will serve, or a silver dagger—but silver is an import, the royal clan controls it, and silver weapons are a means we rarely use. They are conspicuous. To be found with one means death.”

The first voice, the younger, heavier voice, resumed. “While a vampire still enjoys the fleshly life of the body, there are other, simpler ways. Cutting out the heart and burning it. Decapitation. These you will learn.”

Menkhaf said slowly, “What, my master, did you mean that the royal clan controls the import of silver?”

“Fool! The true, full vampires today are the royal clan. You destroyed Hetepheres. We had already disposed of King Snefru, her lord. That is the reason he worked so greatly in his day to perfect the vast pyramid tomb. For safety! That is why Khufu today raises a greater pyramid than any of his father’s. It obsesses him; vampires too can become mad. We have carefully laid plans to deal with him in good time which you need not know.”

“You must see now, though,” the other, aged voice resumed, “in what danger the Two Lands are. This breed of monster would rule and rule, having all Egypt’s peasants to work on their tombs in mass conscriptions, building the vile ones impregnable refuges from which they may prey on the living, while their heirs rule in the body and join them after death, swelling their numbers, increasing the misery of Egypt, and affronting the gods forever.”

The word forever had never chilled Menkhaf’s heart as it did then.

“Now we call on you to swear our fatal oath and join us. We have long plotted in secret, and from the time we began to plot, we knew that we are certainly dead men. We conspire against the royal clan, who are believed divine by commoners. But for all that, we can win. The true vampires are few as yet. They were the secret conspiracy once, their filthy seed scattered, until they drew together again and bred. Khufu and his named heir Kawab are two, Radjedef a third, with others—not too many to destroy. We have too few redoubtable warriors in the Brotherhood. We need you. You, assuredly, now need us.”

Menkhaf understood. If he refused, they could do nothing but kill him. Besides, what were his choices, even without that inducement? Leave Egypt—his children and grandchildren, if he survived to have any—to be the prey of vampires, forever?

He swore their oath. It was one from which only death could free a man. An oath which, as the aged voice had said, none but a dead man would take in the first place.

The vizier Hemiunu, large, strong, and corpulent, sat on a balcony in company with King Khufu and the chief court magician, Djedi, an old man who looked little and light as a cricket beside the vizier. Both were part vampires, and well aware that Khufu did not trust them on that account. Khufu trusted nobody. He never forgot that no matter what honors and power he gave to his minions, their human side and their human ties might triumph. Hemiunu’s wife Nibi-nefer believed with all her heart that their children would be of the true breed, as she called it, and able to survive death. She believed equally, though, that she would do so herself, which Hemiunu thought doubtful. Neither of them carried enough of the vampire heritage, and she less than he. Not that he said as much to her. Saying to Nibi-nefer what would be anathema to her dainty ears was always unwise.

Those dainty ears heard nearly everything, though, even at a distance, and carried it to Khufu. That was Nibi-nefer’s gift, no trifle in a court riddled with spying and backbiting. Therefore she also was present.

“Has my mother’s coffin been reburied?” the king demanded.

Hemiunu answered unctuously. “Yes, Great One. Secretly, in a deep shaft-grave. None shall disturb it there, and the offerings at her mortuary temple shall continue forever.”

“Who committed such a vile crime?” Nibi-nefer asked, her little teeth glinting. “I would have them impaled, then restored to life by you, excellent Djedi, to die in manifold other ways.”

She spoke with derisive malice. She knew very well that Khufu had once requested, to amuse him, that Djedi show his powers by restoring a prisoner to life—Khufu’s intention being to have the man beheaded then and there. Djedi had pleaded, with all his decades of wit and tact, to be excused, and made his demonstration on a goose instead. Which, although just as wonderful, to Nibi-nefer seemed a sign of weakness.

“Tomb robbers?” Hemiunu suggested.

“Or the Brotherhood of Ra.” A scowl convoluted the thousand wrinkles of Djedi’s face.

“That accursed Brotherhood!” Khufu said vehemently. “I should have done more than close the temples. I should have wiped out the priests. I may yet.”

His narrow eyes glittered. He sat brooding. In his own palace apartments, among intimates, he laid aside ceremonial headdress and wig. The peculiar slanting shape of his skull showed with striking obviousness above his serpentine eyes. It was one mark of the vampire breed, though not infallible. Hemiunu’s own cranium was broad and rounded, his wife’s small, neat, and feline, short from the crown to the chin.

“And the escape shafts in the great pyramid? How do they progress?”

“Straight and true. One is aligned upon Sirius, one on Orion. The tale for the workers is that they exist to guide the king’s ka to the stars.”

Khufu nodded in brusque approval. “I will inspect it as each course rises. You may now begin the design of a pyramid for my heir Kawab, who will reign after me. It must be raised close to mine.”

Others had discussed the reign and fate of Kawab that same night, and the results of their deliberations were soon carried to Menkhaf. The soldier had been posted to guard duty in the palace. A man of action but no fool, he had immediately seen the hand of the Brotherhood of Ra in that turn of events. Many of them were priests and officials who had turned against King Khufu, or their conspiracy could never function, and some must be wizards also.

He wondered darkly about the real nature of the conspiracy. Was it really as they had told him? Or were they merely seeking to overthrow Khufu’s dynasty and replace it with another? They would be glad to spread monstrous lies about Khufu and his parents in that case. Yes, but Menkhaf had encountered a vampire coming back to a royal tomb, and seen it trapped and killed with silver weapons, had taken a major part in the killing himself. That it had been Hetepheres he did not doubt . . . and such speculation led nowhere but in empty circles. He was committed now. He had pledged it with oaths a god would scarce dare break.

Two days afterward, a fellow palace guard approached him, clasped his hand with a peculiar grip, and then led him to a concealed chamber. A man in a plain white robe gave them their next command through a veil.

“This night you must act together and slay Prince Kawab.”

“The king’s heir?” Menkhaf said, astounded. “How can we even come near him?”

“He will be with a woman. One of his father’s own harem women, so naturally he will be clandestine. You must behead him, then cut out his heart, and bring it with you to this room.”

“That was not required with Hetepheres!”

“The accursed queen was dead, and could travel only in spirit form. Nothing can kill them then but silver or sunlight. When they still have life in the flesh, the ways I have described will do. That you are green to the Brotherhood I know, but I had thought you grasped as much.”

“There’ll be much blood,” Menkhaf said stubbornly, in case his new masters had missed the obvious—or simply did not care if their assassins were captured.

“Eye of the Sun! You must do the deed naked. There will be water nearby to wash you clean. Be quick and silent and all will go well.”

Menkhaf thought of a dozen more questions. In the end he asked none of them. His comrade, walking with him in a known part of the palace again, said quietly, “The woman will not scream. She is part of the plan, one of us. All we need do is silence . . . the man.”

Menkhaf thought, If that proves to be untrue I will not be captured alive. The weapon that slays Kawab can do me a last service too.

That evening he and his fellow assassin moved through the palace shadows toward a lovely pleasure kiosk in the gardens, beside an ornamental lake. A lamp gleamed through fretted copper screens. Neither of them whispered a word during their approach, for the vampire breed had uncannily sharp ears, even in their fleshly housing.

Menkhaf and his companion discarded their clothes, even their sandals. Holding heavy bronze blades and small round shields fashioned from hardwood and bound with leather, they crept nearer. Certain sounds emanated from the kiosk on the perfumed air. Prince Kawab was indeed there, it appeared, and certainly with a woman.

The assassins rushed in. Prince Kawab reacted as swiftly as a leopard. He sought to detach himself from the woman gasping and squealing beneath him, but she clung to him with all the strength of her arms and legs. Rising upward, he thrust her violently away, so that she crashed into an ornamental screen. It toppled over.

Looking like any naked young noble surprised on the wrong couch, the prince opened his mouth to yell. Menkhaf swung his round shield, caving in the prince’s throat. A normal man would have collapsed to the floor with a death gurgle coming from his ruined larynx. Kawab seized a heavy sword from a nearby stand and attacked the two intruders. He had not come unprepared to his illicit tryst.

Menkhaf and his companion caught the prince’s strokes on their shields, first one and then the other, waiting for their chance. With blood on his mouth and his face blackened, the prince had no aspect of the human about him now. His straining attempts to cry out from his ruined throat were ghastly to see.

Setting his teeth, Menkhaf rammed his blade deep between the prince’s ribs and twisted. Then he warded off a terrible stroke with his shield, which split straight across as Prince Kawab’s weapon also broke. Menkhaf’s companion hacked into the prince’s neck, and an instant later Menkhaf’s blade grated unpleasantly upon it within slashed, bleeding flesh.

Kawab’s head came off with a little more twisting and chopping. Blood sprayed wildly, splashing his killers, the couch, and the royal concubine. She had neither moved nor screamed, just as Menkhaf’s companion had told him. Nor did she look away while they bent and cut out Kawab’s heart.

Horribly, the decapitated corpse fought them with both hands, while the head glared and mouthed silent curses for a while. Menkhaf rose with the red heart in his hand as the corpse gave its last twitches. His skin crawled with horror.

His companion was looking at the woman. “Cousin, Nemaathep—”

“I make you free and I bless you,” she said calmly. “Now!”

He killed her with one quick stroke.

Menkhaf’s horror increased. He would not have believed that could happen, not on this night, but it did, and yet there was no time to remonstrate. Fleeing outside, they ducked in the lake to sluice the vampire’s blood from their skins, and then recovered their clothes. It was some time before they were sure no pursuit had begun, and a longer time before Menkhaf could find anything to say. Then it was only the bald, obvious, “You called her cousin.”

“She was,” the man said wearily. “She was also with child, by Khufu or his whelp, what does it matter? And since she carried the vampire taint herself—half vampire; I am a quarter—she could well have borne such a monster. She preferred to die.”

Tears ran down his face, thick among the lake water.

Menkhaf said slowly, “There are no words.”

“There are not.” His companion added some, nevertheless, in a savage tone. “I hope I die in this cause before too long.”

Hemiunu and Djedi sat together under an awning by the pyramid site, dust and noise and sweat powerful in the hot air. The vizier’s big broad face, smooth as a pomegranate, made a ludicrous contrast with the magician’s little wrinkled visage. Djedi carried a scroll of spells to be incorporated into the upper part of the pyramid. He had also cast some effective ones against being overheard.

“I have lived long and seen purges of the court and bureaucracy, but none like this,” Djedi said somberly. “The murder of his heir has enraged the king out of reason. He craves blood, and more blood. Even you and I are in danger.”

“Huh! If you think you and I are shitting rocks,” Hemiunu said crudely, “take good note of Prince Radjedef. Many suspect that he slew Kawab to become the new heir, his sire included, O most efficacious wizard.”

“Even if the king suspects him, he will not execute him, no matter what Radjedef may be fearing. There are too few of the full breed as yet.”

“Yeees. And none of them doubt any longer that the Brotherhood of Ra is real, and a menace. Not after Kawab’s death and the concubine Nemaathep’s. They ought to have been certain of it before. I have been telling them so, and presenting evidence, for long enough.”

The vizier of all men was in a position to know for certain. He and Djedi led the Brotherhood of Ra. By slaying Prince Kawab, or having him slain, they had reduced the number of full-breed vampires by one; two, perhaps, counting the child in unlucky Nemaathep’s womb, and they had made the royal clan suspicious of each other. The action had its disadvantages, though, and Djedi mentioned one.

“Slaying the prince may yet prove a mistake. The opportunity was there, yes, but taking it may have been too hasty, too ill-considered. How much suspicion has fallen on you?”

“No more than on every other high official. I am closely watched by spies, my sweet wife included. My voyage upstream to inspect the realm was canceled by the king himself. He says, with many words of praise, that he will not risk my life. He means that he will not let me out of his sight. And you, Djedi? Have you cast auguries as to my future?”

“Thrice. Each time the result was the same.”

Hemiunu heard the old man’s tone, and studied him long with his heavy-lidded gaze.

“Not auspicious, eh?”

“I am sorry. Far from it. You will be denounced. One of your subordinates will bring the charges, and Nibi-nefer will support him to save her own skin and, to be just, the lives of your children.”

Hemiunu’s laugh was bitter. “The ass! Does she think that will save her, or them? You are sure this will be?”

“Alas, I am sure, Hemiunu.”

“Well, I have foreseen that strong possibility without magic, but now we are sure. I shall at least not wait for the king’s torturers to question me.”

“If you take poison, it will be as though you confessed the truth to Khufu.”

“And doom my family no less. Not to mention my closest associates and the Brotherhood itself. Yes, old friend, I know. Well, from the time I joined I knew I was a dead man. Meseems I have a way of turning this to useful account. Suspicion of me should certainly vanish if I myself am assassinated by the Brotherhood.”

Tears had not wet Djedi’s ancient eyes in so long that the ducts had shriveled. Yet the urge came now. He rested a hand on Hemiunu’s heavy shoulder.

“It is a cleaner way to die.”

“By Horus and Set, but that’s true!” Hemiunu agreed with the bleakest of smiles. “It will confuse the accursed ones, and I hope make them afraid. Kawab, then the vizier—why, who is safe, and who can avoid the avenger’s blade? Better yet, it will lead them to look in wrong directions. Nothing must overturn our plans for Khufu himself.”

“Nothing will,” Djedi promised. “Nothing. By the time of his death all the embalmers will be suborned, and it will be I who presides over his mummification. I will remove his heart along with the other organs and replace it with the heart of a pig. The secret will be kept forever once his body is wrapped, plastered, and coffined. Khufu may lie at rest in his magnificent pyramid. Never through all of time will he leave it seeking blood. Not once his heart has burned on a fire of herbs and ebony.”

“I hold you to it.”

Laid and carried out with care, the plan would succeed. With Ra’s favor, the same could be done to at least a couple of Khufu’s successors until the pure vampire breed was extinct, their monstrous heritage diluted and spread among the swarms of normal human beings. After that, hopefully, it would never be gathered together again. The custom of pyramid building should fade away too, the true reason for it forgotten in the dust of centuries, and that was a thing worth dying for.

Hemiunu did not set his affairs in order. He forbore even to make a fresh will. He gave no sign that he expected his own murder, or any other event out of the common. Hemiunu had never been that kind of fool, even before years of directing the Brotherhood of Ra had sharpened his wits relentlessly.

In a secret conclave, wearing his hawk mask as head of the Brotherhood, he commanded the slaying of Hemiunu, the demon King Khufu’s demon vizier. There was irony in that. Then he did what was necessary to make the assassins’ task easy.

At the arranged time he sat alone, unguarded. Under his hand lay some of the multitudinous reports and orders that were his responsibility, and soon would be someone else’s. He wrote on with a steady hand.

He sensed rather than heard the competently soft footstep behind him, the stir of air pushed in front of an approaching person.

Hemiunu never turned his head.