“Yes. ‘Hello, Miriam.’”
Chris leaned over Matthew’s shoulder and touched the computer’s trackpad. The image grew larger. “There’s blood on the floor. And she’s chained to the wall.” Chris stared at me. “Who’s Benjamin?”
“My son.” Matthew’s glance flickered to Chris, then returned to the screen.
Chris crossed his arms over his chest and stared, unblinking, at the image.
Soft strains of music came out of the computer speakers. The woman shrank against the wall, her eyes wide.
“No,” she moaned. “Not again. Please. No.” She stared straight at the camera. “Help me.”
My hands flashed with colors, and the knots on my wrists burned. I felt a tingle, dull but unmistakable.
“She’s a witch. That woman is a witch.” I touched the screen. When I drew my finger away, a thin green thread was attached to the tip.
The thread snapped.
“Can she hear us?” I asked Matthew.
“No,” Matthew said grimly. “I don’t believe so. Benjamin wants me to listen to him.”
“No talking to our guests.” There was no sign of Matthew’s son, but I knew that cold voice. The woman instantly subsided, hugging her arms around her body.
Benjamin approached the camera until his face filled most of the screen. The woman was still visible over his shoulder. He’d staged this performance carefully.
“Another visitor has joined us—Matthew, no doubt. How clever of you to mask your location. And dear Miriam is still with us, I see.” Benjamin smiled again. No wonder Miriam was shaken. It was a horrifying sight: those curved lips and the dead eyes I remembered from Prague. Even after more than four centuries, Benjamin was recognizable as the man whom Rabbi Loew had called Herr Fuchs.
“How do you like my laboratory?” Benjamin’s arm swept the room. “Not as well equipped as yours, Matthew, but I don’t need much. Experience is really the best teacher. All I require is a cooperative research subject. And warmbloods are so much more revealing than animals.”
“Christ,” Matthew murmured. “I’d hoped the next time we talked it would be to discuss my latest successful experiment. But things haven’t worked out quite as planned.” Benjamin turned his head, and his voice became menacing.
“Have they?”
The music grew louder, and the woman on the floor moaned and tried to block her ears.
“She used to love Bach,” Benjamin reported with mock sadness. “The St. Matthew Passion in particular. I’m careful to play it whenever I take her. Now the witch becomes unaccountably distressed as soon as she hears the first strains.” He hummed along with the next bars of music.
“Does he mean what I think he means?” Sarah asked uneasily.
“Benjamin is repeatedly raping that woman,” Fernando said with barely controlled fury. It was the first time I’d seen the vampire beneath his easygoing fa?ade.
“Why?” Chris asked. Before anyone could answer, Benjamin resumed.
“As soon as she shows signs of being pregnant, the music stops. It’s the witch’s reward for doing her job and pleasing me. Sometimes nature has other ideas, though.”
The implications of Benjamin’s words sank in. As in long-ago Jerusalem, this witch had to be a weaver. I covered my mouth as the bile rose.
The glint in Benjamin’s eye intensified. He adjusted the angle of the camera and zoomed in on the blood that stained the woman’s legs and the floor.
“Unfortunately, the witch miscarried.” Benjamin’s voice had the detachment of any scientist reporting his research findings. “It was the fourth month—the longest she’s been able to sustain a pregnancy. So far. My son impregnated her last December, but that time she miscarried in the eighth week.”