Columns of smoke trailed up and braided together in the sky above the crater. Liminiel stood at the edge.

"I had to do it." Liminiel said.

"Of course you did." Cory cawed, accusingly.

"We know what you did, lady. You're under arrest for killing your sister." A QUIETUS agent said; gun shaking and aimed at Liminiel.

"I surrender. No need for any more killing. Let me get my lawyers." Liminiel grinned evilly.

The rest of the remaining FBI and Detective Winters were there to arrest her. As a Triad Killer.

In the back of one of the chief squad vehicles, on a comfortable seat, she sat out of the sudden rain.

"I bet she is doing the rain." Detective Winters complained.

"Of course she is." Cory cawed.

Everyone was soon getting drenched by the rainfall and there was a retreat, as it started to flood the crater. The relentless rain drove the agents into their vehicles which were already mired in mud and water from the horrible rain. One vehicle escaped with the prisoner and the rain followed them.

We could only watch in horror. The vehicles left behind were mired in mud and had to be dug out and the raincloud left us and followed the chief squad vehicle with Liminiel as a passenger.

"They are all going to die." Cory predicted.

"Liminiel said she wanted no more violence." Agent Saint pointed out.

"Well, taking someone prisoner is violence." Agent Cross had something to say.

"That makes sense." Cory agreed.

Agent Saint radioed to the QUIETUS agents to let Liminiel go free. They did and she stopped the deluge and wandered off into the desert, leaving a trail of oasis in her landings. Liminiel had effectively escaped their custody.

"What was that? Just because they didn't have any raincoats or enough sense to park on gravel?" Agent Summer was upset and screamed her questions weirdly.

"Calm down." Agent Cross told Agent Summer.

I had no wonder at Agent Summer; I had seen far worse reactions to the monsters we had met in our investigations. Agent Summer probably believed Liminiel's weird water had led us into a trap. Something almost beyond words in its awfulness, the trap, festering drowned colors of liquid grue.

We wandered after Liminiel and found her after a few days of stopping in the lush oasis where edible fruit was already growing. There were not yet insects or desert creatures, so new were the springs. When we found Liminiel she sat under a waterfall she had made. The spring above looked like a shrine, the stones pulled from the within Earth to serve Water. The mist from it caused a painful ache in my right hand.

"What had happened to you?" Cory asked her.

"I miss the water, the memory in all water." Liminiel told Cory. "You see Water is very old. It remembers being part of other molecules when it is mixed into living things. Water has a memory and it shares that memory with other waters."

"I've heard of this." I told her.

"Have you? Because it is not so simple." Liminiel explained the cosmic joke further. "You, crow, don't remember how you learned Desmodean; you, man, don't remember a lot of things." She told Cory and then me. "You are just food for so many things in the night. You are cattle. Humans are cattle. Yes you have powerful nations but there are simpler and more humble things that live under you and eat you. Demons are the main ones, then there are the vampires."

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Vampires? Again with this?" I asked.

"Long ago there were..." Liminiel began.

"How long ago?" Agent Cross asked.

"Over five hundred million years ago the civilization of the Folk of the Shaded places did fall and the Fen and the Fell learned one of their secrets and came to Earth from their world with that secret. They then exchanged plant species and also corresponding invasive species with them, for their gardens, you see."

"Naturally." I simmered, realizing how I had somehow gone to each of those places. It was no coincidence, I was sure.

"One hundred million years ago the Vampire Bat civilization began and they thrived all the way until now, I would say. They have a perfect set up. We kept them in check and that kept them a secret which made their lives so easy they became immortal and lived for many tens of thousands of years. In massive underground geodes, larger than any mountain on land. In those chambers are cities of bones that became as mountains of bones."

"Horrifying." I blinked.

"Some of those bats are as old as I am, they have always feared my wrath. I am, or was, a pillar of law among such creatures. Now they may run free, as long as they stay in the the darkness. And I have made light, hanging a second sun to blot out the shadows at midnight and make the lands desolate for herd or farm. You shall see how it goes."

"It is a cruel plan." I told her. I noticed everyone else was kneeling. Even Cory. "What have you done to them?"

"Same to all of you. I just want to see why you have come so far to stop me. What is the point?" Liminiel was angry, suddenly.

"Because you are still the remaining pillar." I told Liminiel.

"You are right." She agreed. "Except I have abdicated all of the crowns to Lilith's Tomb."

"And now what? You intend to guard them against intrusion?"

"Not always. I change into three forms at sunrise, midnight and the new dawn of each day. I will set forth a complicated array of fatal riddles that must be solved, remembering that. Whoever can walk across water may take the four crowns or visit the throne, where sits Lilith."

"So you might need someone to take your bones from here to there and not falter." I offered.

"That is what I was getting to." Liminiel shifted into water and evaporated, leaving her bones. I waited until Cory caught on to what had occurred and placed me under an enchanted sleep so I could enter Limbo. There I found the desolation to be still and drooling. I reached the tomb and solved the deadly puzzles with the answer key she had given. For each part of the day the offering was a different form of water. To walk upon water, one merely needed to wait until it had frozen into ice. Patience was required to watch the path condensate from a mist. The ache in my had was an additional agony for me. Once I was in the throneroom of Lilith again: I placed the last bones there. I turned and beheld in the shadows the liquid mass that was Liminiel. She vanished like vapor and was gone as condensation.

I recalled suddenly what Liminiel had said about the vampires, how they were from Vampire Bats. They inherited the creature's strengths and weaknesses gradually as they were fed on and some broke free and escaped the Vampire Bats as living dead creatures of darkness, forced to repeat the cycle on blood donations. Old age made some vampires terribly crafty and impossible to catch, even by the FBI. I recalled their files they had, which somehow everyone had forgotten.

When we got back I looked into the files of QUIETUS, with Agent Saint's approval. The vampire killings went back for a long time in history, always similar blood draining. The cause was wild vampires made from the vampires made by the Vampire Bats. Those third wild vampires were much more vicious than the older and more resilient second thrall vampires which were not as wise as the Vampire Bats, the firsts. It showed in the different kinds of burials and killings. The Vampire Bats had almost no footprint, except in the cases where there were survivors, which were very rare.

Old and new human vampires accounted for two types of vampire serial killings. Old vampires entombed dead vampire blood thralls or other thrall servants while new vampires just mesmerized someone to dig a ditch and mound some dirt over the dead body of someone they had killed by drinking all of their blood. The first type was also quite rare, but old buildings often had dead bodies hidden in them and the FBI had collected a few that matched the vampire type one style of entombing the dead or dying. I put it all together and saw that the pattern it formed showed that the cases were getting further apart and not more frequent. Ironically the vampires had resorted to culling their own, and effectively. Then I realized that was not how it worked. They could not lie among themselves, killing their own wold be a species going extinct. No, it was something else. It was QUIETUS. The vampires were funding it and feeding it information gathering priorities. They guided the FBI to those they wanted eliminated, gravediggers, rogue vampires and even old bats, apparently. I gasped for air.

"It meant that the elimination of the pillars of magic would mean no boundaries for the vampires or any other night crawling things of shadow that are thirsty for blood of humans." I heard myself say. Then I had a complete mental breakdown and went insane, incoherently and violently thrashing and kicking.

For a long time after that I just felt happy and calm and I thought about nothing except wondering where Cory might have gotten to. I didn't see him anymore and I wondered why. I was happily wondering where my crow had flown away to.