The Shape Stealer by Lee Carroll

shudder. Dee had seen plenty in his four centuries of dabbling with spirits, but there was no doubt that Marduk had a supreme sort of monstrous entity inside him. Babylonian (as in the evil described in the Book of Revelation), it had been long rumored. Dee was afraid of him.
    Dee stood very still.
    “I could use some water and another glass of the potion! What are you standing here like a grinning monkey for?”
    Dee ushered Marduk back into the lobby, where a water fountain caught his eye. Dee pressed a pair of large square pills into Marduk’s right hand and guided him toward the fountain. “It’s best to take it in this form, in public as we are,” Dee told him. “Dash them down with water. They will certainly take you to this evening’s sunset, probably well beyond.”
    Marduk placed the pills eagerly into his mouth, gulped them down with long swallows of water. His expression brightened. “What a relief,” he told Dee, apparently referring to the lessening of some burning sensation.
    Dee nodded approval, though he hated to use these precious pills, the product of endless hours in his alchemist’s lab back in Ireland. But if these circumstances didn’t justify their use, what ever would? Marduk might have been a monster even to Dee, but he was also the key to a plot aiming at nothing short of world domination, his four-hundred-year-old dream.
    They went back outside, Marduk showing no untoward reaction to sunlight, and made their way to the nearest Metro stop. Dee quieted any worries he was feeling over potion efficacy by reflecting that it was probably just a question of refining the dose. A sunlight suppressant was uncharted water even for an alchemical genius like himself, and perfection would not come easily. Vampires had been under the curse of sunlight peril for eons. That might stem naturally enough from their being creatures of the dark, but it created obstacles for the plot he had hatched, Marduk’s very private impersonation of Will Hughes being its centerpiece. As to how the plot had gone this morning: so far, so good.
    Then, before they got on the Metro, Marduk expressed to him in no uncertain terms his desire not to return to the catacombs as planned but to have a leisurely breakfast at a sidewalk café.
    These liberated vampires, Dee sighed to himself—there might be no limit to their self-centeredness. But this wasn’t the right fight to pick with Marduk; no doubt there would be other, more crucial ones. Aloud, he agreed to Marduk’s plan.
    So they veered away from the Metro entrance at Place Jussieu and lulled away the next couple of hours at Café du Dragon, a sidewalk café on the Rue Linné. On one hand, Dee did take pleasure in Marduk’s ability to be out in the daytime, the culmination of so many years of research. It was an endeavor that had begun in the reign of Oliver Cromwell, when Puritan officials (whose values and religious fervor Dee despised) tended to be difficult targets for vampire assassination because they were out so much more in the daytime than at night. Marduk’s wincing leaving the building had been a setback, as it indicated that the antidote’s effects were disappointingly short, but the pills had so far worked like a wonder.
    On the other hand, Dee was miffed at Marduk’s lack of gratitude for the financial breakthrough with Renoir, irritated by his sullen personality—indeed, appalled by his lack of enthusiasm for the plan. Dee himself was most ebullient with the energy of his audacity. Enlisting a prestigious organization like the Global Financial Fund—or at least, one of its top executives—as an ally was a major achievement. He knew Marduk not to be the warmest of … creatures, but Dee wished that Marduk respected his accomplishment.
    The bustle of crowds hustling past their table, the clamor of traffic, even the brilliance of sunlight glimmering in windows across the street all served as a chorus for his high spirits. Why then, he wondered as he