Unaware that “Uncle Mike” was facing a lethal nightmare, Dave West and his roommate Malcolm went in to their work at SearchNet Industries, where they were both programmers. Sandra came along, curious to see what they did for work.

  Their boss, Ranesh Makarri, a short, slim man with golden skin, dark wavy hair and dark eyes hidden behind horn rimmed gsses took a break from berating one of the newer coders to confront them as they came in: “Ah, so the elusive David West puts in an appearance at the office? And drags in Mal who is supposed to be on vacation? And what is this? A guest? We do not allow those for security reasons. You should know that, as you have been here since day one, hired alongside me, right out of college. So, what is your excuse?”

  Malcolm pushed past them: “Hello sir! I figured out how to fix that fatal error we kept getting in sector four scans, and my cousin here, Sandra - no don't call her Sandy, she hates that - my cousin is looking for a company to invest her father's money in. She wanted to see what we do in the hopes she could invest in us.”

  “Speaking of investors,” Ranesh said without a pause, though his stern expression softened a little, “we have one due here in about an hour, a Leonard Guerin, of Guerin Capital so no lollygagging. How much money is your uncle looking to invest?”

  Though Ranesh addressed Sandra, Malcolm answered: “I was under the impression it was quite a lot, but he didn’t mention any numbers. You know he’s not quite a billionaire, but close, right?”

  “Ah that Uncle. I didn’t know he had kids. I can show her some of the lower security stuff and leave her in the cafeteria. If Guerin doesn’t object, she can sit in on the presentation with him when he gets here. Sound fair?”

  Malcolm smiled: “should be OK but let me run it by her, please first, sir?”

  “You have ten minutes to get to your workstation. Hope running it by her does not take too much of it.”

  “Thank you, sir!”

  “West, are you working on anything critical today?”

  “That depends on Mal’s fix; If it doesn’t expose any other issues, then no, but if it does, I have a lot of troubleshooting ahead.”

  “Well, if things don’t go kablooie, I want you in on the presentation too; you seem to be able to walk between business speak and tech speak better than anyone I know, even me, and I’d like you as backup.’

  David gnced over at Malcolm and Sandra, and then said: “Thank you sir, sounds like a pn”

  Malcolm took Sandra out of earshot and instructed her to say as little as she could. Answer questions with either single words or other questions to change the subject, pretend to be fascinated by everything, but then bored when asked for opinions. And when in doubt, flirt. She nodded silently as he talked, and then he gave her a friendly peck on the cheek and pushed her over to his boss. Ranesh introduced himself and politely showed her around, then deposited her in the cafeteria as promised, even buying her some food before leaving her.

  It turned out that Malcolm’s patch worked almost as well as he had thought it would; it took barely half an hour to iron out the rough spots, and David was carrying a full report on it to Ranesh when a tall man in a white business suit strolled into the waiting room. The man was powerfully built, with iron gray hair and a thin mustache. The man’s most notable features, however, were his bright green eyes. Seeing him, David nodded to the young man at the reception desk that he would take care of this, and walked up to the man in the suit: “Mr. Guerin?” He asked.

  In a surprisingly high pitched, reedy voice, the man replied: “Leonard, please. And you are?”

  David held out a hand as he said “David West, lead programmer.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, young man,” Leonard said and shook his hand. His grip was firm but something about his touch felt oddly repulsive.

  “I’ll go tell Ranesh you’re here, please take a seat,” David said.

  The tall man in white complied. David headed to Ranesh’s office, only to have Sandra fg him over as he passed the cafeteria. “David, I just heard Elgarin’s voice! There is no mistaking it.”

  “I just met Leonard Guerin… L. Guerin… man that can not be right unless he escaped from a comic book,” David replied, suddenly worried. “Do you think he’ll recognize you?”

  “I hope not. I have trouble sometimes when I see my reflection right now,” she admitted.

  “Well let’s try to py it cool and you get out of here immediately if you suspect he knows.”

  She nodded and sat back down. David went and told Ranesh that Mr. Guerin was here, and his boss insisted that they go back to reception together. After Guerin and Ranesh exchanged pleasantries, Guerin suddenly snapped his fingers and excimed “David West. I knew I had heard the name before - Thengarian the Arch Mage?”

  “Uh, only a Grand Mage,” David said, surprised. “Got the experience to go Arch Mage this year but nobody was running the Trials. But how…?”

  “I was supposed to run your final table but got called out on an emergency,” the man in white answered. Then he turned to Ranesh, and added “Sorry, at times I can be a bit of a nerd. Been pying games all my life and only found Dungeoneers a few years ago, so I get excited about it sometimes. Now you have some tech to show me?”

  His smile never wavering even though his eyes showed confusion, Ramesh replied: “Ah yes, we have another potential investor here, or at least the daughter of one. Do you mind if she sits in on the presentation?”

  “I don’t see any reason to say no,” he replied, and Ranesh told David to go fetch “the girl.”

  David did as requested. Quietly, she asked “have you considered trying to manipute Spirit to pierce illusions?”

  “No, but I'll keep it in mind,” he whispered back, then introduced her to Mr. Guerin as Sandra Eisenstein. Guerin bent down and kissed her hand instead of shaking it, and said “Oh, if you had told me how pretty she was I might have said no - she might distract us all from the presentation!”

  She smiled and politely thanked him for the compliment, and then took a seat in the conference room, as businesslike as she could manage.

  About forty-five minutes ter, Guerin said that he’d seen enough. He had other meetings to go to and would be in touch in a day or, at most two, with a funding offer. He also said that he hoped Sandra’s people would also see value in it and make an offer as well, and he gave David a card with his personal email to discuss possible gaming opportunities, then, as he took his leave, Guerin made an odd warning “I have been told I rely on the undead too much, so keep that in mind.”

  As soon as the man in white was gone, David asked his boss: “is it OK if I take Sandra and Malcolm out to lunch now?”

  Ranesh considered it. “Keep the receipt. If her dad invests, you’ll be reimbursed, but if not, it’s on your own dime. Now, get out of here before I change my mind. And be back in an hour or so.”

  “Got it sir, and thank you,” David replied, hurrying out.

  As Mike had specifically asked to see Malcolm first, they dropped him off in front of Mike’s walk-up. As David parked the car, they both heard something that neither of them ever expected to hear: Malcolm screaming!

  Sandra was off like a shot, running at a speed that seemed super-human to David’s eyes. While running she shifted to her armor before she hit the door and as she raced up the stairs the sword David had kept forgetting to ask about appeared in her hand.

  David had barely reached the foot of the stairs when he heard her cry out and tried to push himself to move faster; he felt a slight wrenching feeling and was suddenly at the top of the stairs, but he thought it was just adrenaline. He opened the door to see Malcolm looking very ill and leaning against the wall, and Sandra kneeling beside: “Uncle Mike!” He cried.

  Even from the door he could tell it was too te for the old man; two other things made him hold back though: first was an awareness that, for the injuries on the body, there was far too little blood on and around the corpse; the second he shouted as soon as he understood what he was sensing, and just barely in time: “I think there's someone else here!”

  At the exact moment he finished saying this, Sandra rocked in pce, then surged to her feet as Malcolm threw up and something emerged from the dark kitchen.

  David could barely tell that the thing had once been Mike’s cleaning person and girlfriend, Kim; her skin now had a blueish gray color, her hands were bckened and twisted into something that looked more like a bird’s talons, all of her teeth were now sharp and pointed and her canines were exceptionally long. There was some sort of scar tissue on her throat, and her clothes and mouth were bloody. She hissed as she moved towards the group.

  Sandra swung her sword and the thing that had been Kim caught it in one of her talons.

  “Mal, can you get out on your own?” David called out.

  Malcolm groaned but nodded and began working his way to the door, not quite steady enough on his feet to let go of the wall.

  The creature exchanged several blows with Sandra, it seemed faster and tougher but to have no skill or finesse in its strikes. David saw a pattern in its movements, as it would ssh with the right cw, then the left, the right again, and then try to bite. Its cws seemed as ineffectual against Sandra’s armor as her sword strikes were against its talons.

  Watching their deadly dance, David finally thought of a course of action; first he grabbed a table mp from a nearby stand, and, using a process simir to what he had done on Carol’s hair, turned the ceramic body into something close to steel, then he maniputed air to grab the mp and hold it in pce until the next time the creature tried to bite. He saw it get one cw swipe past Sandra’s defenses and her armor barely deflected it. That near miss seemed to excite the creature and it lunged in to bite; as it did so, David quickly pushed the mp into its mouth as it tried to bite down.

  Finding unexpected resistance, the monster stepped back, and that was the opening Sandra needed; with a single swift strike, she cut with surprising ease through the creature’s neck, and its head, the mp still enclosed in its jaw, off, rolled off, bounced twice and fell stationary. The body attempted two wild sweeps with those nasty cws, then suddenly colpsed as well and remained unmoving.

  “Gods that thing did not even give me time to grieve,” Sandra said after several seconds of heavy breathing. “That was his friend from yesterday, right?”

  “I think so, but I'm not sure what happened to her. Pretty sure she killed Mike,” David said, moving closer to the man’s corpse.

  “At least decapitation seemed to end it; some creatures do not go down so easily,” Sandra replied, examining the body.

  “I think it was some kind of vampire,” they heard Malcolm’s unsteady voice from the doorway.

  “Ah, Strigoi. That would make some sense,” Sandra replied, thoughtfully.

  “I said vampire, but I have heard that one of the myths or legends Bram Stoker used to create Dracu was a creature called a 'strigoi'. Would have to check my notes from my first semester speech css, where I did a speech on Dracu, to be sure,” Malcolm replied.

  “Whatever word you are using, that is what my Transtion Stone turns to ‘Strigoi,’” Sandra replied, and then moved over to join David at Mike’s side.

  “You do not have anything that brings back the dead, do you?” Malcolm asked, hopefully.

  “There is a ritual, but it requires days, a body in better shape than this, and at least five Temple Elders to perform. I have seen it attempted three times and successful once,” Sandra said, then turned to look at Malcolm before she continued: “my mother was one of the failures.”

  “Oh gee, I’m sorry,” he replied.

  “He did say he’s been accused of relying on the undead too much,” David mused.

  “You guys are sure that Leonard Guerin is Elgarin then?” Malcolm asked, still standing in the doorway, his voice a little more steady

  “I was almost certain before, but now there can be no doubt,” Sandra answered. “There were rumors he had allied with some ancient evil, but this is the only evidence I have seen as to what”

  “Look at these cw marks,” David suddenly said. “I am no expert, but this looks to me like there must have been two of these things.”

  “There would have to be,” Sandra replied. “There are no known spells to create things like this, but they can create their own kind.”

  Malcolm said: “I think we’re going to need help on this.”

  Sandra looked over at him, and then at the floor. Very quietly, she said: “yes, we do.”

  David looked over at her. “Sandra, are you, ah, are those, um?”

  She took a shuddery breath and replied sadly: “Yes, I shed but a single tear over my mother. Felt only rage at my father’s death, but now I must go home, and I cannot stop the tears.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder and she flinched away. “A team will be assembled to take him down, but I will be deemed too close to the issue. He killed my mother and my father. That makes me potentially too emotional.”

  “So?” David asked, puzzled.

  “I will not be allowed to come back here, David,” she said with a sob. “I will never see you again and,” it took her several seconds to stop sobbing, draw a breath, and look David in the eyes. “I love you, David West. More than I ever thought I could love anything. And I will never see you again.”

  “Like Hell you won’t!” He decred. “How do you travel home?”

  She gave him a puzzled look and tapped one of the stones on her neck band. “My travel stone. It only works twice, once each direction.”

  David reached over and plucked the stone out of the neckce. She tried to stop him: “No! That can ruin the magic!” but he was not listening. He studied the stone, and saw symbols in it, through it. He rotated the images in his head and began shuffling them around mentally.

  A rainbow nimbus formed around him. He reached out for Sandra with the hand holding the stone as the other hand darted around as if typing on several invisible keyboards all at once.

  Then all the colors blurred and merged into a single white dome which covered Sandra and David for a moment, and then was gone.

  Sandra and Dave were also gone.

  Malcolm stared at where they had been and said a few words that he was sure David had never heard him - or anyone else - utter, and that probably would confound the Transtion Stone, then, his voice full of sadness, added, a little sourly: “Guess I have to notify the police. And work. This is going to be fun.”

  CharlesEBrown