The next time Rogasz looked at the girl, her eyes were half closed.

Outside, the fires spread through the night — fires without noise, without fire chiefs yelling through bullhorns or alarms clanging into the darkness. To be sure, every fire crew in the city was making a stand, staked out around propane tanks, ammonia dumps, chemical manufacturing plants; but that left everything else to burn, spreading the flames unchecked from each building to its neighbors. Dispossessed families simply fled into the night... and none of them could say whether they intended to return, whether they would even file insurance claims on their homes or just wipe the ashes off their shoes and move on.

The stained-glass windows of the church grew brighter as the fires approached. Flickering light wavered behind the faces of saints; the dove of peace shimmered. One window read BEHOLD I STAND AT THE DOOR AND KNOCK... and the light in Christ’s stained-glass lantern glinted with a beam that shone goldenly across the pews.

The light showed a legion of rats, streaming into the church.

They were, of course, fleeing the fires: running from nests behind ancient basement furnaces or dashing from summer lairs inside the garbage heaps that cooked in every alley. Some had flooded up from the sewers — climbing through gratings and road-work sites as the sewer water began to steam from nearby flames. In other parts of the city the animals soon headed for water again, diving into cooler sewers, into the harbor, or even into backyard swimming pools, snorting against the sting of chlorine. But here, in the blocks around the church, they were drawn by the presence of Rogasz, diverted by the vampire’s aura to gather at his side.

Hundreds of rats poured silently into the sanctuary. They did not squeak. Their claws scarcely made a sound on the hardwood floor. Like an audience filing in for a concert, they congregated in a circle around the piano.