The vampire lord faced the three dead children, vessels for the ancient gods. "I couldn't agree more. The time for ritual is now. Who of the three will guide me?" he asked as he spread his arms wide in invitation.
Laibach was the first to respond. "It will be I, vampire. Laibach shall lead the way to our unholy supremacy."
"Splendid," the Master said, rubbing his hands slowly together in relish. He turned within the circle to see if his servants were ready. The Order of Aurelius stood prepared, many holding ancient texts that would be required as the Master slowly peeled away the bothersome obstacles of reality to unlock the door that was the Hellmouth.
"All is in readiness," he said with a razor sharp grin filled with confidence, "let us begin."
A vampire wearing scarlet robes embroidered with gold brocade approached the Master with an enormous text bound in the flesh of a great, scaled beast. The lackey bowed in reverence, handed the book to him and stepped away. Holding the book in both hands, the Master lifted the cover. He listened to the binding crack as an aroma of ages long gone wafted up to entice his heightened senses. It was the smell of knowledge lost for countless millennia that excited him, the scent of the forbidden.
The Master began to read aloud from the ancient text, his voice booming in the cavernous, dilapidated house of God. As he recited the lines written in a language not spoken in thousands of years, he looked out over the church to see his followers sitting in the pews, their eyes locked on him in rapt attention.
