Lion, Tiger, Bear I 43 their sumptuous black hair knotted tightly and covered in heavily perfumed beeswax that melted slowly in the heat. The room stank, its air thick with garlic, mismatched herbs, perfume, opium, and rank bodily odors. Twelve middle-aged menSerbian, German, English, Venetian, French, Egyptian, othersdressed in off-white hooded robes with embroidered symbols of the Maltese Cross hung below two Xs, their foreheads ashened with a reverse cross, faces behind thin gold wire masks, stood witness, their unvarnished enthusiasm clear to all. One man, an elite surgeon, had left in a hurry, the Alfa man. Family problems he said, auma emergencia, itis own precious child in need of urgent medical attention at home. Three loyal monks, the servers, informers, and chanters, stood far behind everyone in the shadows, bathing in the low vibrational luxury of the event, heads bowed under brown hoods, unanointed but hopeful. They were also the cleaners, and would scour the ritual room spotless after the ceremony. No evidence would remain, none ever had. Tradition. AU anointed ones had helped themselves to the tender pleasures from the children hours before during a slow-moving and laborious demonic mass in the lower chapel, its stone floor carpeted with dried white rose petals and spotted red from brutal rape and torture; men from behind, women in front, the childrens pelvises spread like Monarch butterflies. Athirst, soon they would indulge their sinister spiritual lust, their unquenchable desire for unsullied warm blood and the highly purified occult power it possessed. A gift for their master and his minions of the dark; unpolluted and frightened children produced the purest fear-laden Vril energy, hormones, and adrenaline. It was just business, a transaction, a deal made sound for all. Profitable. Cry not my little ones, said Arruda as he sat at the head. This is a grand feast to celebrate our joyous and generous master. Just imagine how lucky you all are to have fresh meat for dinner when most of Europe is choking on rotten cabbage and dried fish heads. Before them all on silver chargers were two naked adults without feet or hands, one man, one woman, both selected breeders, their legs tied back, their arms twine-tied together behind their heads like geese, mouths stuffed full of herbs and garlic and pine cones, roasted magnificently with generously-applied duck fat to make their crisp brown skin glisten in the dense candlelight. Meat thermometers jutted from their rectums, their eyes cooked to a milky grey. All their genitalia had been surgically removed off before