The Master smiled, sidling closer. "It's quite all right."

He reached up and again stroked Lorimer's chin, gently at first, but then grabbed it firmly in his clawed grasp and turned it to face him. Viciously he wrenched the vampire's jaw to one side and then the other. Lorimer shrieked as the flesh tore and the bone cracked and his lower jaw was ripped from his face.

"Just don't let it become a habit."

The Master tossed the bleeding mandible into the Deacon's waiting arms. As Lorimer attempted to reattach the section of his damaged face, his tongue flapped about, gruesomely exposed. Blood spurted from the terrible wound and sprayed across the altar - and the pale faces of the three dead children. The Master was just about to reprimand the Deacon for making a mess when he noticed the slightest bit of movement behind one of the corpse's closed eyes.

As if awakened from sleep by the falling of a gentle rain, each of the dead children opened its eyes to reveal sockets filled with darkest ebony.

The Master smiled beneath their bottomless gaze. "Ah. From the mouths of babes. I see that we are now in the presence of greatness."

Although her mouth did not move, the little girl in the party dress was the first to address him. "Heinrich Joseph Nest," she said in a guttural language older than recorded history, "we have come to help you pave the way for our return."

"The ritual must be performed precisely," said the second child. "Only then will the barrier between worlds be torn away so we might again walk the earth."