His mother’s words returned to him. Watch! Watch, for when they devour the still living offal, they devour the life essence!
His master had never done that before—not in front of him. Now was truly the time to dare more than dream.
“Master, please,” Craven pleaded in agony. “Fulfill my request. Fulfill it now!”
Craven found that his eyes had closed in supplication. When he opened them again, he was alone with a dying fire.
Craven did not know anything else until he found himself standing by the roaring Ganges, directly above the spot where his mother had died. Here, the fifteen-hundred-mile-long river seemed to boil with its own angry life, like the pulsating back of a serpent coiling to strike. As he looked into the broiling current, it seemed to form the face of his mother—both mocking and entreating him.
He took a step to join her but stopped when he heard another voice in his mind’s ear. A deep, soft, soothing, female voice—one that was nothing like his mother’s, even before the disease gripped her.
“What did you want?”
Craven turned to see his master’s companion—the one who had lain at his feet—standing a yard away from him. She wore a thin robe, belted at her waist—a robe that revealed both her shapely legs and astonishing cleavage.
“From your master,” she continued as if the roar of the river were nonexistent. “What did you want?”
All he could do was stare. Her beauty was cathartic, even hormonal.
She 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
