The island of Kefi was a hollow place, where nothing stirred but the warm breeze off the ocean and the ghosts of the moldering dead. At sunrise, though, the spirits were laid to rest for another day, leaving only the wind. It was strong enough, at times, to ring the three bells that sat in their whitewashed arches, one straddling the others, on the stony cliff overlooking the Sea of Crete.

Sometimes, like this morning, the bells were enough to rouse the attention of the presence that haunted the tainted church, built into the cliffside. Once, the faithful of the tiny isle had worshiped there. But there were no more faithful on Kefi.

Within the white walls of the church, Veronique's mind whispered to life. She heard the bells, and the wind rattling the rotting, empty window frames, and the surf pounding the cliff far below. What there was of her -- not much more than a spirit, really, but far greater than those memories that flitted about the island at night -- drifted amid the pews and out toward the doors, shattered so long ago.

Veronique had no eyes with which to see the sun, and yet she was witness to its magnificent beauty. Bound here to the church, she had watched as the decades passed and the sunlight had bleached the church and its crosses and the little bell tower the color of bone. So perversely appropriate for something so brittle and dead.

When first she had been trapped here, one hundred and twenty-seven years earlier, the sun had been a precious gift, a novelty. With her own bones turned to dust, her lingering essence had not needed to fear the rays of the sun. But the novelty had worn off quickly. The sun was not an equal trade for her freedom, for the ability to traverse the world in service to her masters.

She had been foolish, coming here, allowing that girl to lead her to such a remote place. The Triumvirate had punished Veronique for her foolishness by leaving her bound to the island, unaided.

But this morning, this final morning, she relished the sparkle of the sun on the sea and the way the very air shimmered above the white roof of the church with its heat. For she knew her punishment was about to come to an end. The Triumvirate had need of her once more and so would forgive her vanity and find some way to free her.

They would find her a shell, a vessel into which she might pour her essence. Then she would serve them once more. With all the omens finally coming to pass, the stars told the tale: it was time for her masters to walk the Earth. And Veronique would be their harbinger, announcing the doom of the world, preparing the way, performing the ritual. She would baptize the world in the blood of her victims, in the name of the Triumvirate. She would feast until she could not bear another drop of blood.

Veronique would not miss the sun. Not when there was so much pleasure to be had by moonlight.

On the deck of the Charybdis, Cheryl Yeates raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun and studied the crescent-shaped coastline of Kefi. The boat had been a fishing trawler, once upon a time, but its owner had converted it for sightseeing in the Greek islands. From the look and smell of it, the conversion hadn't been made all that long ago.

"What do you think, honey?"

Cheryl looked at the island a moment longer before turning to face her husband, Steve. He sat, legs astride the bow, with a beer in his hand. His skin was a painful red, already peeling in some places from their days traveling around Greece. Cheryl's own skin was a deep brown by now, but Steve never seemed to tan. He just 0burned and then burned on top of that.

All in all, he was a good sport.

"I don't know," she told him. "Dimitri was pretty insistent, or I wouldn't have agreed to come out here at all. I'm not getting paid by the day, y'know?"

Steve climbed to his feet, careful not to slip on the deck, and moved up beside her, holding his beer bottle by its neck. He squinted, even beneath his sunglasses, to get a clearer look at the island.

"You don't have to tell me," he told his wife. "We've already spent the first half of your advance, and I've used up all the vacation I'll get this year. But it's been worth it, hasn't it? I mean, doing this with you has probably been the greatest time of my life."

Cheryl smiled, shook her head, and looked at her husband. She reached for his hand just as the boat hit a swell, and she lost her balance. Just as she began to fall to starboard, Steve grabbed her and went down on his knees, pulling her down with him. Despite the fear that had momentarily surged up within her, Cheryl started to laugh.

"Y'know, what I was just saying?" Steve asked. "Drowning would ruin it."

"It has been something, hasn't it?" she said, nodding to herself. "What an adventure."

"Frank and Julie said we'd be killing each other by the third day," Steve reminded her. "Seven weeks, honey, and I don't want to go home. I wish we didn't have to."

Cheryl nodded regretfully. "Well, then," she said, "one more little adventure can't hurt. Hell, we're already here. Might as well see what we can see."

Steve turned to face the island, and Cheryl slipped over to sit in front of him, leaning against his chest. It felt so good, just to have him with her. And he was right: they had fought hardly at all. This trip had been such a wonderful reminder of what they could be to each other when the rest of the world didn't get in the way. He was a junior partner at a small but well-respected law firm in Philadelphia. Cheryl had only recently received her Ph. D. in anthropology, the same week, in fact, that she had signed the contract for her first book. It was going to be called Myths and Legends of Greece: From Antiquity to the Modern World, and she hoped it would be the first in a long series.

Just as she hoped this would be the first in a long series of adventures she shared with her husband.

"I see something," Steve said, pointing.

Indeed, there was some kind of structure atop a cliff almost directly ahead. As Cheryl tried to focus, she realized that it wasn't alone. There were a number of other smaller buildings -- all the same glaring white as the first -- that dotted the island.

"Must be the village," Cheryl said. "The bigger building could be the church, I guess." Even as she said it, she could make out something atop the white dome that could have been a cross.

"Looks like," Steve agreed. He paused a moment, then kissed the top of her head. "A creepy little story, if it's true."

Cheryl couldn't agree more. Local legend held that the island of Kefi had been attacked by a bucolac -- a vampire -- more than a century before. The islanders fled one sunrise, taking everything that would float, leaving the vampire trapped on the island.

"What's fascinating is the way in which this legend differs from other vampire lore. Not just here in Greece but all over the world. I mean, you leave a vampire alone on an island for ten or twelve decades, you've got to figure they starve to death, right? But if you believe Dimitri, nobody's been out here except for day-trippers in all that time. Okay, the island's remote, but it's not that remote."

Now that she thought about it, Cheryl was glad they'd come. It was a long way for just one story, but it was an oddity that would add something to the book. Before this trip -- in fact, before Dimitri, the scholar they'd met in Athens, had told them about Kefi -- she'd never even heard of the island.

"What I don't understand," Steve said, "is why the vampire didn't just swim for it."

Cheryl turned around far enough to see him trying not to smile. She laughed and punched him lightly in the shoulder.

"What?" he protested. "It's a legitimate question."

She shrugged. "All right, then, smart guy. Any theories?"

"Yes, in fact, I have a theory," Steve said archly. "Vampires are basically corpses, right? Okay, a short swim, no problem. But a while in the water, the fish start coming around, taking a nip here or there. Dead flesh in the water, he's basically shark bait. Nothing but chum."

"That's gross," Cheryl said, frowning.

"It's your book," Steve reminded her.

"Besides, this vampire's a she, not a he."

"I like this trip better already."

"Yeah, if only they were real, honey," she said. "I'm sure all those vampire chicks would love you."

Eyebrows raised, Steve leaned in to kiss her. "Want to suck my blood?" he asked.

"We'll see," she replied, and kissed him back.

A short time later, the couple watched in silence as the boat drew close to the island. The captain, a thin, muscular Greek named Konstantin, came out of the cabin briefly to inform them that they'd be mooring in a small cove to the east, where the cliffs turned to sloping hills.

They made their way up the coast a little way, until they were almost out of sight of the church. Just as the captain dropped anchor, Steve turned to Cheryl with an odd look on his face.

"What?" she asked.

"Are you sure we need to spend the night?"

She smiled. "It's not much of a story if we don't," she told him. "Why? Scared?"

"Nah. Just not very romantic with Konstantin along as chaperone."

Cheryl looked over at the captain, who was lowering the dinghy over the side. "He's not coming along," she said. "He's staying with the boat. We're on our own up there."

"Great," Steve mumbled.

They didn't speak as they dropped their packs into the boat and then slipped over the side.

Cheryl had gotten some extraordinary pictures. The landscape was just beautiful, and the view of the ocean from the top of the cliffs by the church was breathtaking. But what remained of the village itself was chilling. Haunting. The island ought to have been a Club Med or something by now. Instead, it was a ghost town.

"I feel like the last man on Earth," Steve said quietly.

She turned to see her husband standing next to a small structure that housed a trio of bells. They were curiously free of rust, and when Steve had hauled on them, the clappers had gonged within, the bells pealing clearly, reaching across the water below.

Cheryl walked up behind him. "If that means I'm the last woman on Earth, I guess I got pretty lucky to end up with you."

He turned, and they embraced. Cheryl kissed him. But she felt as though Steve was holding something back. Something was lurking behind those baby blues, and she didn't know what it was.

"Hey," she said. "You all right?"

"I'm okay," he promised. "Just... it's so remote here. So far from anyone else. Look out at the horizon."

She did.

"What don't you see?"

"Land?"

"Besides that."

"Boats. I don't see any boats."

"Exactly." Steve nodded. "It isn't that nobody comes here. Nobody even comes near here. But here we are..." He spun around to face the church, arms raised. "I feel like we're desecrating a graveyard or something. Overturning tombstones."

Cheryl laughed. "We're taking pictures, Steve. Come on. Are you really that spooked?"

He glanced down, chewed his lip thoughtfully. Then he nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I am." Then he turned to look at Cheryl, gestured toward the camera. "You have everything you came for?"

She thought about it. They'd been in several of the homes, all through the church. She had plenty of pictures, and they were losing their light anyway. Cheryl had been sort of looking forward to snuggling up inside the church for the night, maybe getting some sunrise photos. But she could see how much the place was really getting to Steve.

"I never thought of you as the superstitious type, hon," she told him. "This stuff has never bothered you before."

He looked embarrassed. "We can stay," he said, as though it meant nothing.

But Cheryl could tell it did.

"That's okay," she said. "By the time we walk all the way back to the boat, it'll be dark anyway," she reasoned. "We can say we were here until nightfall. That's more than enough investigation for this particular myth. Besides, maybe we can wake up in Mykonos tomorrow. That'd be nice."

"Yeah," he agreed, smiling at last. "I can live with that."

Together, they gathered up their things and started the long trek down off the cliff to the cove where the Charybdis was moored.

The sky was an angry pink, bruised with blue, where the last bit of sun burned the ocean. Cheryl and Steve were both exhausted by the time they came in sight of the cove and the boat bobbing just offshore. There were no lights on the Charybdis. No lights anywhere, save for what remained in the sky and what little the stars would provide now that dusk had come.

The moon was barely a sliver up above.

Cheryl reached into her pack and grabbed her flashlight. Steve didn't bother. He seemed much more relaxed now. Had, in fact, since the moment they'd started down from the island's peak.

"I guess we should just try to signal Konstantin," she said.

"Some shouting might help, if the light doesn't work," Steve told her. "I can't imagine he'd be sleeping already. It's barely dinnertime."

Her flashlight on, Cheryl began to sweep the beam across the water, its light splashing across the boat again and again. For a moment, Cheryl had a horrible thought, that the Charybdis was as abandoned as the island itself.

Steve shouted the captain's name several times, but Konstantin did not appear.

"Keep it up with the light," he said after a bit. "I'm going to drag the dinghy down to the water. We might as well just head out there. He'll hear us as we get closer, and the water isn't very rough. I don't think there's much of a chance of our being carried away on the tides."

Cheryl didn't argue, but now it was her turn to grow anxious. Steve grabbed hold of the dinghy and dragged it over the sand as she swept the light back and forth across the water. She was about to stop, to help him with the little boat, when her arm dipped down, and the beam of the flashlight splashed across something that was moving.

In the water.

In fact, it was two somethings. Two men, to be exact, swimming to shore from the boat.

"Steve..."

He came up beside her, staring at where the flashlight beam illuminated the two men moving toward them in the surf.

"Konstantin?" Steve called out again.

The captain paused in his swimming and raised a hand to wave amiably at them.

"He must not have wanted to shout back before to save his breath," Steve reasoned, looking at Cheryl.

"Maybe," she said dubiously. "But who the hell's the other guy, and why are they coming ashore?"

She kept the beam focused on the second man, the one they'd never seen before. He was swarthy and bearded, but she could barely make out his face in the surf. He was a fast swimmer, too.

"Some kind of problem with the boat?" Steve suggested.

Cheryl's stomach did a little flip. "God, I hope not. We're in the middle of nowhere. But what about this guy? He didn't swim here from Crete."

"We were gone all day," Steve said. "Konstantin could have gone and picked him up somewhere."

But even as he said it, Cheryl could tell from his tone that Steve didn't believe it. Together, they watched the two men moving toward the sand. Even now, Konstantin stood up in the water, and it only came midway up his chest.

"He must have been belowdeck all that time," Cheryl said.

"If all they wanted was to rob us, there are easier ways," Steve contended.

He was right about that, but he didn't sound all that convinced. Cheryl didn't understand it, either, but there was something very off about this whole thing.

Steve reached down and grabbed one of the oars off the dinghy. He held it in one hand as the two men walked, sodden with seawater, up the sand toward them. Both were clad only in their pants.

"Konstantin, what's going on?" Cheryl asked in Greek, trying to mask her nervousness.

Steve nodded toward the other man. "Who's your friend?" he asked the captain of the Charybdis.

The man nodded toward the bearded newcomer and smiled. "Ephialtes," he said.

"That's your name?" Cheryl asked the man in Greek.

In response, Ephialtes moved closer to Cheryl, studying her face. He reached out to touch her. She slapped his hand away and stepped back. Ephialtes looked angry and moved after her. Steve stepped between them, holding the oar out in front of him in both hands.

"That's a mistake," Konstantin said.

In English.

Cheryl didn't know the man could even speak the language.

That was the moment when Ephialtes snarled. He reached out for the oar in Steve's hands, and when her husband wouldn't give it up, the dark, bearded man struck him with the back of his fist, knocking Steve to one side. The oar fell to the sand between them. Even as Steve scrambled to get back to his feet, Ephialtes grabbed the oar.

When she saw what was about to happen, Cheryl screamed. She leaped for Ephialtes, but Konstantin grabbed her from behind and held her. From behind, she watched Ephialtes bring the oar down on her husband's head. Again and again. It cracked on the third stroke. Shattered on the fourth. Ephialtes did not stop.

The thick, broken shaft of wood was covered with blood.

Cheryl sank to the sand, mind numb. Hot tears streamed down her face, and she made an effort to free herself, but Konstantin was a man of the sea. Though thin, his body was covered with muscles thick as heavy cables. She could not free herself.

Finally, Ephialtes let the oar drop to the sand. Cheryl stiffened, for she believed she knew what was to come next.

But then Ephialtes turned, and she realized she had no idea. His face was inhuman, his brow ridged and protruding. His eyes blazed yellow in the dark, and his lips were curled back in a snarl that revealed horrible fangs.

"Bucolac," she whispered, the truth shattering what remained of her rational mind.

Ephialtes sank down onto his knees on the sand before her. Konstantin released Cheryl, and Ephialtes drew her to him. For one brief instant, she screamed and tried to squirm away from him, but he was even stronger than Konstantin. There was logic to that, in her mind. Konstantin had captained the boat. Konstantin was human.

Holding her tight, Ephialtes sank his fangs into the soft flesh of her throat and began to drink.

The wind blew hard across the cliffs, and the bells rang loudly. In the darkness of the church, the spirit and memory, the invisible, Hellish thing that was all that remained of the vampire sorceress Veronique, shuddered with pleasure.

"At last," she said to herself.

"At last."

Veronique's eyes fluttered open. Her eyes now. And yet only hours before, they had belonged to a woman named Cheryl Yeates. From the traces that remained in Cheryl's mind, Veronique quickly assimilated much of what she would need to know to survive what the world had become. Not merely to survive but to thrive.

For a moment, she only looked up at the stars, looked at the lovely night and felt it caressing her flesh. It was a sensation she had forgotten many years before, and now it filled her with a lust for the shadows.

Finally, Veronique noticed the two creatures before her. A vampire and a man. Both servants of the Triumvirate. She could sense that from their mere presence.

"Your name?" she demanded of the vampire.

"Ephialtes," he replied.

Veronique smiled. "An excellent jest, young one," she said. For he had named himself after another Greek, one who had betrayed his people millennia before. Ephialtes had been at Thermopylae, where a handful of Spartans held hordes of Persians off for days before finally falling. The Persian king, Xerxes, who fancied himself a god, called his elite guard the Immortals. Ephialtes betrayed his own people to the Immortals, and they were slaughtered.

"Yes," Veronique repeated. "An excellent jest."

"Thank you, mistress." He stared at her. "I am your descendant," he told her in an awed tone. "I was made by one you made, long ago. I have been searching for you, waiting for you. Waiting to be called."

She touched his face. "And do you know why I am here?"

He nodded slowly, his face radiant. "Yes, mistress."

"Excellent." She was very pleased.

For a moment, she studied the human, then she looked at the boat and the ocean beyond.

"How far to Crete in this vessel?" she asked.

"Two, perhaps three hours," Ephialtes told her.

With another glance at the sky, Veronique estimated at least eight hours until dawn. More than enough time to reach Crete and find shelter.

Which meant they didn't need the human.

Veronique smiled at him. "Come here," she instructed. "It is time for you to serve the Triumvirate."

He looked frightened and began to back away.

But he didn't get very far.

The feasting had begun.