“Oh, Juliet,” he said. “Where did you go?”

He bent down, and the dog came forward, too, snuffling at the corpse. For a moment Rogasz watched, wondering what the dog would do... if the smell of cooked flesh would stir its appetite. But then he thought he didn’t want the dog to do anything to Juliet, so he took a burned chunk of pew and threw it off some distance so the dog would have something else to occupy its attention.

The dog ran to fetch, although it was a small dog and a big piece of wood. Growling happily, the dog began to drag the burned lump back toward the vampire.

Rogasz turned toward the organ pipes rising at the front of the church: a wall of pipes, a barricade that must be hiding something — the god who lurked in this place. “I’d like to mourn,” he called to the god. “I really want to feel that something has happened here. That something important has changed. I knew her, I played music for her, and she died. That should change me. What was it all for, if it didn’t change me?”

The god gave no answer.

“I have a dog now,” Rogasz told the god behind the pipes. “I have a dog named Skeeters and I’ll take good care of him. He’ll love me and I’ll love him, and we’ll play together all day long... in the sun. I’ve spent a day in the sun and I have a dog who loves me. What else do you want?” He grabbed a blackened chunk of brick and stood up suddenly. “What else could you want?”

With all his strength, he heaved the brick at the organ pipes, striking the largest pipe dead center. Metal clanged and crumpled, leaving a teardrop-shaped dent.

“What else do you want?” the vampire screamed. “Isn’t this enough? Juliet’s dead. Isn’t that enough? I’m burned and I have a dog. Isn’t that fucking enough?”

He pulled the knife from his thigh, loosing a spray of burned red blood.