ips touched that wound, drank thirstily. The girl strode on,
blood gleaming darkly on the white skin. A second drank of the crimson
flow--a third--and the blood ceased gushing forth.

Another knife flashed--and lips closed again and again on a redly
dripping wound. And the girl with the unchanging pace of a robot
climbed the stairway to its very top--climbed while fiendish corpses
drank her life's blood--climbed, to sink down on the altar.

One of the red-clad figures stooped over her, lifted her, buried long
teeth in her throat--and Cliff saw his face.... His own face paled,
and talons of fear raked his brain. Those others on the stairs--they
were abhorrent, zombies freed from the grave. But this monster! A
vampire vested with the lust and cruelty and power of hell!

He lowered her, finally, and she sank down, lay still, beside the
other three.

Another began the hellish climb, a giant of a man with a thickly
muscled torso. Cliff knew him instantly; and his heart seemed to stop.
Leslie Starke! They'd played football together. A brave man--a
fighter. He mounted the stairway with the same little catch step, the
same plodding stiffness. No resistance, no struggle--only a hell of
fear on his face.

The marrow melted from Cliff Darrell's bones. What--what could he do
against a power that did _that_ to Les Starke? He tried to swallow,
but the saliva had dried on his tongue. He wanted to turn to Vilma,
but he could not wrench his eyes from the frightful spectacle.

Up the stone steps Starke strode. And no blade leaped toward him; no
thirsty lips closed on his flesh! In an unwavering line he mounted
toward the cowled monster in the center of the dais, like a puppet on
the end of a string; mounted to pause before the stone altar, to lie
on it, head bent back, throat bared.... Mercifully Cliff regained
enough control to close his eyes.

He opened them at a gasp from Vilma; saw the vampire raise the flaccid
body of Les Starke and hurl it far from him, to crash to the stone
steps, to roll and thud and tumble, down and down, sickeningly, to lie
awkwardly twisted on the floor before his companions!

And another began to climb the long stone steps....

All through the interminable night Cliff and Vilma crouched on the
ledge, staring through the barred window. A hundred times they would
have fled to escape the maddening scene, but they could not move.
Senses reeled before the awful monotony of the ceaseless climbing,
their