"Ponzi scheme?" Vlad had been growing increasingly uncertain of this pair who he had assumed were under his spell. The direction of their discourse was unexpected, understandable only if they were not fully subject to his will. But this latest twist was a puzzle for him.

"Yes, a Ponzi scheme. You promise your victims immortality even as you drain them of their own mortal essence. To gain the existence you promise they must in turn drain others. It is a scheme that is inherently self-defeating, benefiting most only those at the top of the pyramid."

Vlad relaxed and smiled at her in the patronizing way she was coming to detest. "Well of course, my dear. And I am at the top of the pyramid, and my scheme benefits most myself and those around me. Such as, potentially, yourself."

"Vlad, you haven't been listening. I am not one of your sycophants. I am not here to join you. I am not here to grovel at your feet. I am here to defeat you. What you do, your very existence in this form, is inherently evil. It is time for you to move on."

He laughed, and mocked her, "'It is time for you to move on.' Listen to yourself, child. Do you seriously propose to threaten me? It is you who have not been listening. I am immortal, child, immortal. I cannot be killed, certainly not by the likes of you!"

Cern returned to the obvious flaw in this logic. "But Vlad, by your own account you know we are all immortal. We don't want to kill you. That would accomplish nothing. We want to mend the error of your ways." 

 Vlad rose abruptly from his seat to tower over Cern, outraged. "You...judge...me?"

It was Cern's turn to smile indulgently. "Why yes, I do. Vlad, you have done good things here, in restoring the fortress and opening the cavern, offering fine concerts such as the one we enjoyed this evening. But it is not enough. It can never be enough. Because you do it to sustain your own blood lust, your own measureless greed to exist at the expense of your fellows. Such an existence is insupportable. It must end."

In an instant Vlad went from mere outrage to violent anger. The sheer power he exuded was startling. With a swipe of his hand he knocked the table, and Cern with it, off of the platform and down to the floor of the cavern below. He turned on Dema, who had risen to face him. "Would you judge me as well?"

"You judge yourself, Vlad. Your actions speak for you." She was shaken by what he had done to Cern, but tried to hide it as she raised a hand to her collar and turned it back to reveal the ancient symbol of her mother's cross-like caduceus pinned there. 

Vlad's eyes widened for an instant. The expression was quickly replaced by a mocking smile, but Dema said, "Your reaction tells all. You know the truth, and you are not immune to it." In answer Vlad did not attack her physically. Instead he went motionless, as still as stone, and unleashed the full power of his mind. 

The compulsion he projected was irresistible. He was an incubus incarnate, far stronger in this than Avram or Radu or any of the other vampir she and Cern had dealt with had been. Far more powerful than Dema had expected. 

She shrunk inward in the face of his wrath, but at the same time felt herself being inexorably drawn to him. Indeed she had taken several small steps forward before she realized it. Her bodily substance was already being sucked from her, against her will. In fact, it was not her will that was the target of his compulsion. It was her body he wanted. His efforts to subdue her will were only to prevent her from interfering. And in this the very mutability of her body, conditioned as it was by her own shaman shape-shifting experience, was working against her. 

She was, herself, immortal, as she and Cern had pointed out. But her body was not. As she realized this, the awareness of mortal danger communicated itself to her body, and as it had done before in times of peril it instinctively tried to shift to Lamia form. But the very act of shifting left it momentarily more vulnerable, and Vlad subsumed it all.