The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Anthology (Начало книги) #1

THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF VAMPIRE STORIES

BY WOMEN

Edited By Stephen Jones

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction:

My Life Among the Undead

INGRID PITT

The Master of Rampling Gate

ANNE RICE

Homewrecker

POPPY Z. BRITE

When Gretchen Was Human

MARY A. TURZILLO

The Vengeful Spirit of Lake Nepeakea

TANYA HUFF

La Diente

NANCY KILPATRICK

Miss Massingberd and the Vampire

TINA RATH

The Raven Bound

FREDA WARRINGTON

Vampire King of the Goth Chicks

NANCY A. COLLINS

Just His Type

STORM CONSTANTINE

Prince of Flowers

ELIZABETH HAND

Services Rendered

LOUISE COOPER

Aftermath

JANET BERLINER

One Among Millions

YVONNE NAVARRO

Luella Miller

MARY E. WILKINS-FREEMAN

Sangre

LISA TUTTLE

A Question of Patronage

CHELSEA QUINN YARBRO

Hisako San

INGRID PITT

Butternut and Blood

KATHRYN PTACEK

Sleeping Cities

WENDY WEBB

The Haunted House

E. NESBIT

Turkish Delight

ROBERTA LANNES

Venus Rising on Water

TANITH LEE

Year Zero

GEMMA FILES

Good Lady Ducayne

MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON

Lunch at Charon's

MELANIE TEM

Forever, Amen

ELIZABETH MASSIE

Night Laughter

ELLEN KUSHNER

Bootleg

CHRISTA FAUST

Outfangthief

GALA BLAU

My Brother's Keeper

PAT CADIGAN

So Runs the World Away

CAITLIN R. KIERNAN

A North Light

GWYNETH JONES

Jack

CONNIE WILLIS

Vampyr

JANE YOLEN

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The Mammoth Book of

Vampire Stories

by Women

Edited by Stephen Jones

Introduction by Ingrid Pitt

CARROLL & GRAF PUBLISHERS

New York

Carroll & Graf Publishers

An imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, Inc.

161 William Street

16th Floor

NY 10038-2607

www.carrollandgraf.com

First published in the UK by Robinson, an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2001

First Carroll & Graf edition 2001

ISBN 0-7867-0918-9

Printed and bound in the EU

Stephen Jones lives in London, England. He is the winner of two World Fantasy Awards, three Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Awards and two International Horror Guild Awards as well as being a thirteen-time recipient of the British Fantasy Award and a Hugo Award nominee. A former television producer/director and genre movie publicist and consultant (the first three Hellraiser movies, Night Life, Nightbreed, Split Second, Mind Ripper, Last Gasp etc.), he is the co-editor of Horror: 100 Best Books, The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales, Gaslight & Ghosts, Now We Are Sick, H.P. Lovecraft's Book of Horror, The Anthology of Fantasy & the Supernatural, Secret City: Strange Tales of London and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Dark Terrors, Dark Voices and Fantasy Tales series. He has written Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide, The Essential Monster Movie Guide, The Illustrated Vampire Movie Guide, The Illustrated Dinosaur Movie Guide, The Illustrated Frankenstein Movie Guide and The Illustrated Werewolf Movie Guide , and compiled The Mammoth Book of Terror, The Mammoth Book of Vampires, The Mammoth Book of Zombies, The Mammoth Book of Werewolves, The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein, The Mammoth Book of Dracula, Shadows Over Innsmouth, Dancing With the Dark, Dark of the Night, Dark Detectives, White of the Moon, Exorcisms and Ecstasies by Karl Edward Wagner, The Vampire Stories of R. Chetwynd-Hayes and Phantoms and Fiends by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, James Herbert: By Horror Haunted, The Conan Chronicles by Robert E. Howard (two volumes), Clive Barker's A-Z of Horror, Clive Barker's Shadows in Eden, Clive Barker's The Nightbreed Chronicles and the Hellraiser Chronicles . You can visit his web site at http://www.herebedragons.co.uk/jones

Acknowledgments

Special thanks for their help and support in compiling this volume to Val and Les Edwards, Randy Broecker, Hugh Lamb, Tina Rath, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Sara Broecker, Kim Newman, Ellen Datlow, The Author's Guild, Mandy Slater, Jo Fletcher, Roger MacBride Allen, John Clute, Robert L. Fleck, Krystyna Green, Nick Robinson and, of course, the incomparable Ingrid Pitt.

"Luella Miller", by Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman. Originally published in The Wind in the Rose-Bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural (1903).

"The Haunted House", by E. Nesbit. Originally published in The Strand Magazine , December 1913.

"Good Lady Ducayne", by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Originally published in The Strand Magazine , February 1896.

Introduction

My Life Among the Undead

Ingrid Pitt

The snow was streaming horizontally along London's Wardour Street as I quit the taxi and cautiously picked my way across the deep slush on the pavement. I had spent quite a lot of time deciding to make the trip and, even now, standing in the shelter of the doorway of Hammer House, I was not sure that the choice had been right.

After all, I had just made a major epic with MGM and it seemed like a step backwards to be considering a cheapo film in the horror genre. I was sure that neither Richard Burton nor Clint Eastwood, with whom I had appeared in Where Eagles Dare , would have considered it for a moment.

I shrugged off the snow and pushed open the door. Who was I trying to kid? Okay, so Where Eagles Dare was great; but since wrapping on that — zilch. It was time to move on. Capitalize on the great publicity I was getting and do something positive.

I ran up the short flight of stairs to the inner door and went through.

The previous evening I had been at an after-premiere party for Alfred the Great and had sat beside Sir James Carreras, the head of Hammer Productions. He told me he was looking for an actress to play the lead in a new vampire film he was making, and asked me if I was interested. I decided to drop the cool pose and looked interested.

And that was why I had braved the snowstorm and was now standing outside his office, dressed to kill and still wondering if I was doing the right thing.

Jimmy was great. He made it sound as if I would be doing him a favour if I took the job. I dimpled prettily and said I would speak to my agent, but we both knew that I was well and truly hooked.

The film was called The Vampire Lovers , and it was scripted by Tudor Gates from J. Sheridan Le Fanu's century-old story "Carmilla".

It was one of the happiest productions I have ever worked on. Hammer Films were well known for the sense of camaraderie they fostered, and The Vampire Lovers was no exception.

However, at times it did get a little out of hand.

The two producers, Harry Fine and Michael Style, always made sure that they were around when an "interesting" scene was about to be shot. Madeleine Smith and I shared a bedroom scene that could be uncomfortable if it was not approached in the right frame of mind. Neither of us had ever been photographed in the nude before, so we asked Jimmy to call Harry and Michael up to London on some pretext.

I was walking along a corridor at Elstree Studios, wearing only a dressing-gown for the scene, when I saw the producers approaching. They looked so unhappy that I could not resist the urge to cheer them up. As we drew level, I threw open the robe! Their step was definitely lighter as they walked on.

One of the best scenes I have ever seen in a vampire film occurs towards the end of The Vampire Lovers . Carmilla, now exposed for what she is and hunted by the avenging vampire hunter General Spielsdorf (Peter Cushing), hurries back to her graveyard tomb. The gravestones stand out as black monoliths in a moon-lit miasma. Carmilla, dressed in a diaphanous white shift, floats through the cemetery no more substantial than the mist that surrounds her.

The atmosphere, at times, was very spooky. But with six young women on the set, it got a little frenetic at times. It was easy to get a fit of the giggles and hold up shooting. Roy Ward Baker, the director, was marvellous. He would wait patiently until everyone had control of themselves, then carry on as if nobody had been rolling around on the floor hooting with laughter.

One particular scene took a lot of work to get "in the can". I was supposed to bite Kate O'Mara. Kate is usually in control, but once she goes — she goes. Although my fangs had been specially fitted by a dentist, they did not fit as well as they might have. I had this big struggle with Kate, and my incisors decided to desert my mouth for the more enticing depths of Kate's cleavage. Of course, all the men on set gallantly jumped forward to retrieve them! Kate started to go. I was too concerned with my wayward teeth to be affected at first.

We tried the scene again. My teeth headed for Kate's cleavage like a rabbit down a hole. Kate corpsed. Everybody tried to keep their cool. Kate managed to simmer down. And, would you believe it, those rotten teeth headed for their new home yet again. This time Kate freaked out with everybody else on the set.

All I got was mad. I noticed one of the grips chewing gum. I called him over, took his gum, and jammed the fangs back into my mouth using the gum as a suction pad. Success. But Kate and the rest of the crew were hooting away even more frenetically by then. That finished work for the day. By that time, even I was rolling around in fits of hysteria.

The next day I made sure that my teeth were secure. And everybody made sure that they did not make eye contact with anyone else. That way led to disaster.

Overall, though, it was a wonderful introduction to the world of the vampire and Gothic overkill.

As we were finishing The Vampire Lovers , I heard that Hammer was setting up another film, called Countess Dracula . It was going to be a big, lavish production and the lead character seemed to be right up my street: a sixteenth-century serial killer called Countess Erzsebet Bathory.

I had also heard that Diana Rigg was up for the part. I could not have that, so I cornered Jimmy Carreras and made him promise to give me a chance.

There were also a couple of other vampire films in the early stages of development at Hammer: Lust for a Vampire and Twins of Evil . I read the first draft scripts. The Carmilla character had another outing, but the part was a tag-on rather than the central role, and that made me even more determined to get the part of Erzsebet Bathory.

I do not know what happened, but one day Jimmy called me into his office and told me that I was to play Bathory.

Unfortunately, Countess Dracula was not quite the happiness factory that The Vampire Lovers had been. For one thing, the management had come to the conclusion that Hammer was in a battle for survival that it would be hard to win. To try and counter this, they had bought up the sets and many of the costumes from the historical film Anne of the Thousand Days . This was to give the production an unaccustomed gloss.

The director, Peter Sasdy, was not at all happy with the title. It was exploitative, and he was not making a vampire film. He wanted a title with more resonance. This caused big arguments on set with the producer, Alexander Paal.

However, there were still the odd moments of light relief. When Sandor Eles, my co-star, was building up to have his wicked way with me in the hay, I looked at his face and shouted, " Cut !" This did not go down well with the frazzle-nerved Sasdy, and he shouted at me that he was the one who said when to say "cut". I did not care, because I was having a fit of the giggles. I pointed to Sandor's face. Half of his false moustache was missing.

A thorough search was made, but it seems that it is as hard to find half a moustache in a haystack as a needle. I went off to my dressing-room and levered myself out of the heavy skirt I was wearing. Then in the mirror I noticed something obscene crawling out of my navel. I gave a high-pitched scream, whacked at it with my corset, and leaped on to the bunk.

My dresser came running. I explained that I had been invested with something Satanic and pointed hysterically to where I had seen the alien item disappear. She bent down and held the hairy object up to the light. It was the missing half of Sandor's moustache!

The Vampire Lovers and Countess Dracula have since become classics of the genre, and I am glad that I braved that cold December morning to meet with Jimmy Carreras.

I did one more outing as a vampire. This was in the Amicus film The House That Dripped Blood with Jon Pertwee. Originally it was going to be a straight horror film, but Jon just worked on director Peter Duffell until he rejigged the script (by horror writer Robert Bloch) and made it into a comedy. I think the film benefited from it.

Although "The Cloak" episode in which I appeared was a comedy, it was played out against a background that was surprisingly real. The coffin in the cellar, where my character Carla was supposed to pass the daylight hours, was the real McCoy. We were shooting a scene when a break for lunch was called. I was lying in the coffin, waiting for the scene where I reared up, fangs exposed, and frightened the life and juice out of a nasty police inspector. The crew thought it would be a splendid wheeze to leave me there.

After a while I cottoned on to the fact that I had been in the coffin a long time and there was no sound of movement getting through to me. I tried pushing the lid up. No go. I tried banging on the sides. Still no reaction.

It is amazing the thoughts that go through your mind at a time like that. The scenario I was looking at was some sort of catastrophe had overtaken the crew and they were all lying around the set in various dramatic attitudes of death. For a moment I panicked, scrabbled at the lid. Then reason cut in and I guessed what had happened. A typical film set prank.

But I was not having that. I settled down to wait. A couple of times the death scenario tried to kick in, but I still was not having any of it. When I at last heard some movement beyond the confining walls of my coffin, I pretended to be asleep. As the lid was lifted, I opened my eyes, gave an exaggerated yawn, and innocently asked what was happening! I think I pulled it off.

On a recent visit to the homeland of that old rogue Dracula, I had a disturbing experience. I thought that the inhabitants of Transylvania would be thrilled that their top export had been acknowledged as one of the most familiar icons of the cinema. Not only was I wrong, but some of the denizens of darkest Sighisoara (the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, also known as Dracula — son of Dracul) were positively hostile to the notion that their heroic Vlad had anything to do with the incarnation of the fictional Dracula. Why they are so opposed to the idea that Bram Stoker's version of the vampire is something to be ashamed of is hard to nail down. In many ways, the nattily-dressed and becloaked film star has much to offer a country still tethered by their communist past to a lifestyle not so different from that described by Stoker.

The vampire, of course, was not a creature conjured up in the nineteenth century. Before it was spruced up and introduced into the British drawing-room it had ranged through history in a number of gruesome disguises, but always with its trademark calling card: the drinking of the victim's blood or essence. The vampires of Anne Rice hark back to the days of the pharaohs, and maybe beyond. They are sophisticated beings who have found themselves a steady food source and live out their tainted existence accordingly.

Until recently, I thought that vampires had been thought up to suit the predilections of the top-hatted, child-molesting, wife-beating, power-crazed males of the 1800s. I was surprised to discover that nearly every country and culture had a variation on the theme of the vampire.

As the vampire became a literary property, its creator was acknowledged as the mad-bad Lord Byron. He only wrote a fragment of a story, but his physician-cum-drug pusher, John Polidori, after an acrimonious bust-up with the fractious peer, left his employ taking the document with him. Polidori himself took up the Gothic theme and substantially rewrote his former employer's story into what was to become the first classic vampire tale: The Vampyre was issued in 1819 by London publisher Constable who originally — and incorrectly — attributed the story to Byron. But Byron's involvement with the genesis of Polidori's story ensured that the vampire stepped straight out of the tomb and into society.

Now I am delighted to find myself introducing this new collection of superior vampire stories, written by talented women from diverse cultures and backgrounds, and initially appearing from the same company who first issued Byron's fragment and who also published Stoker's seminal vampire novel.

However, fashions change, and the urbane vampire created by Byron and cemented in place by Stoker has had to move on. There are now New Age vampires aplenty, waiting in the shadows, just out of sight, ready to slither forth and seek new victims.

Are you, like me, ready for the new dusk ?

The Master of Rampling Gate

Anne Rice

Anne O'Brien Rice is horror's female equivalent to Stephen King. A publishing phenomenon in her own right, she began her acclaimed "Vampire Chronicles" series in 1976 with the novel Interview with the Vampire. Responsible for creating a huge resurgence in the popularity of the undead, the book introduced readers to her sexually powerful bloodsucker, Lestat de Lioncourt .

Described as "The undisputed queen of vampire literature", she has followed it with a string of bestselling sequels and spin-offs, including The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief, Memnoch the Devil, Pandora, The Vampire Armand, Vittorio the Vampire and Merrick.

Her other genre novels include the "Mayfair Witches" series (The Witching Hour, Lasher and Taltos: Lives of the Mayfair Witches), The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned, Servant of the Bones and Violin. She has also published a number of erotic novels under the pseudonyms "Anne Rampling" and "A.N. Roquelaure" .

As with King, a mini-industry of non-fiction books has grown up around her work. Among the most prolific is Katherine Ramsland, whose biography of the author , Prism of the Night, appeared in 1991. She has since followed it with such titles as The Witches' Companion, The Anne Rice Trivia Book and The Anne Rice Reader. Rice's life before she became a writer was profiled in the 1993 BBC TV documentary , Bookmark: The Vampire's Life, and the following year she was awarded the World Horror Convention's Grand Master Award .

Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles was filmed in 1994 by Neil Jordan with an all-star cast that included Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, Christian Slater, and Tom Cruise as Lestat. More recently , The Queen of the Damned featured Stuart Townsend as the undead anti-hero .

"You know, I was not a person who was obsessed with vampires," reveals Rice, "or who had pictures of them around the house. I hadn't seen any vampire movies in recent years, so it didn't grow out of any active obsession with them. It just happened that when I started to write through that image, everything came together for me. I was suddenly able to talk about reality by using fantasy."

The following tale is the author's only vampire short story, originally published in the American magazine Redbook in 1984

Spring 1888.

Rampling Gate. It was so real to us in the old pictures, rising like a fairy-tale castle out of its own dark wood. A wilderness of gables and chimneys between those two immense towers, grey stone walls mantled in ivy, mullioned windows reflecting the drifting clouds.

But why had Father never taken us there? And why, on his deathbed, had he told my brother that Rampling Gate must be torn down, stone by stone? "I should have done it, Richard," he said. "But I was born in that house, as my father was, and his father before him. You must do it now, Richard. It has no claim on you. Tear it down."

Was it any wonder that not two months after Father's passing, Richard and I were on the noon train headed south for the mysterious mansion that had stood upon the rise above the village of Rampling for 400 years? Surely Father would have understood. How could we destroy the old place when we had never seen it?

But, as the train moved slowly through the outskirts of London I can't say we were very sure of ourselves, no matter how curious and excited we were.

Richard had just finished four years at Oxford. Two whirlwind social seasons in London had proved me something of a shy success. I still preferred scribbling poems and stories in my room to dancing the night away, but I'd kept that a good secret. And though we had lost our mother when we were little, Father had given us the best of everything. Now the carefree years were ended. We had to be independent and wise.

The evening before, we had pored over all the old pictures of Rampling Gate, recalling in hushed, tentative voices the night Father had taken those pictures down from the walls.

I couldn't have been more than six and Richard eight when it happened, yet we remembered well the strange incident in Victoria Station that had precipitated Father's uncharacteristic rage. We had gone there after supper to say farewell to a school friend of Richard's, and Father had caught a glimpse, quite unexpectedly, of a young man at the lighted window of an incoming train. I could remember the young man's face clearly to this day: remarkably handsome, with a head of lustrous brown hair, his large black eyes regarding Father with the saddest expression as Father drew back. "Unspeakable horror!" Father had whispered. Richard and I had been too amazed to speak a word.

Later that night, Father and Mother quarrelled, and we crept out of our rooms to listen on the stairs.

"That he should dare to come to London!" Father said over and over. "Is it not enough for him to be the undisputed master of Rampling Gate?"

How we puzzled over it as little ones! Who was this stranger, and how could he be master of a house that belonged to our father, a house that had been left in the care of an old, blind housekeeper for years?

But now after looking at the pictures again, it was too dreadful to think of Father's exhortation. And too exhilarating to think of the house itself. I'd packed my manuscripts, for — who knew? — maybe in that melancholy and exquisite setting I'd find exactly the inspiration I needed for the story I'd been writing in my head.

Yet there was something almost illicit about the excitement I felt. I saw in my mind's eye the pale young man again, with his black greatcoat and red woollen cravat. Like bone china, his complexion had been. Strange to remember so vividly. And I realized now that in those few remarkable moments, he had created for me an ideal of masculine beauty that I had never questioned since. But Father had been so angry. I felt an unmistakable pang of guilt.

It was late afternoon when the old trap carried us up the gentle slope from the little railway station and we had our first real look at the house. The sky had paled to a deep rose hue beyond a bank of softly gilded clouds, and the last rays of the sun struck the uppermost panes of the leaded windows and filled them with solid gold.

"Oh, but it's too majestic," I whispered, "too like a great cathedral, and to think that it belongs to us!"

Richard gave me the smallest kiss on the cheek.

I wanted with all my heart to jump down from the trap and draw near on foot, letting those towers slowly grow larger and larger above me, but our old horse was gaining speed.

When we reached the massive front door Richard and I were spirited into the great hall by the tiny figure of the blind housekeeper Mrs Blessington, our footfalls echoing loudly on the marble tile, and our eyes dazzled by the dusty shafts of light that fell on the long oak table and its heavily carved chairs, on the sombre tapestries that stirred ever so slightly against the soaring walls.

"Richard, it is an enchanted place!" I cried, unable to contain myself.

Mrs Blessington laughed gaily, her dry hand closing tightly on mine.

We found our bedchambers well aired, with snow-white linen on the beds and fires blazing cosily on the hearths. The small, diamond-paned windows opened on a glorious view of the lake and the oaks that enclosed it and the few scattered lights that marked the village beyond.

That night we laughed like children as we supped at the great oak table, our candles giving only a feeble light. And afterwards we had a fierce battle of pocket billiards in the games room and a little too much brandy, I fear.

It was just before I went to bed that I asked Mrs Blessington if there had been anyone in this house since my father left it, years before.

"No, my dear," she said quickly, fluffing the feather pillows. "When your father went away to Oxford, he never came back."

"There was never a young intruder after that?" I pressed her, though in truth I had little appetite for anything that would disturb the happiness I felt. How I loved the spartan cleanliness of this bedchamber, the walls bare of paper and ornament, the high lustre of the walnut-panelled bed.

"A young intruder?" With an unerring certainty about her surroundings, she lifted the poker and stirred the fire. "No, dear. Whatever made you think there was?"

"Are there no ghost stories, Mrs Blessington?" I asked suddenly, startling myself. Unspeakable horror . But what was I thinking — that that young man had not been real?

"Oh, no, darling," she said, smiling. "No ghost would ever dare to trouble Rampling Gate."

Nothing, in fact, troubled the serenity of the days that followed long walks through the overgrown gardens, trips in the little skiff to and fro across the lake, tea under the hot glass of the empty conservatory. Early evening found us reading and writing by the library fire.

All our enquiries in the village met with the same answers: the villagers cherished the house. There was not a single disquieting legend or tale.

How were we going to tell them of Father's edict? How were we going to remind ourselves?

Richard was finding a wealth of classical material on the library shelves and I had the desk in the corner entirely to myself.

Never had I known such quiet. It seemed the atmosphere of Rampling Gate permeated my simplest written descriptions and wove its way richly into the plots and characters I created. The Monday after our arrival I finished my first real short story, and after copying out a fresh draft, I went off to the village on foot to post it boldly to the editors of Blackwood's magazine.

It was a warm afternoon, and I took my time as I came back. What had disturbed our father so about this lovely corner of England? What had so darkened his last hours that he laid his curse upon this spot? My heart opened to his unearthly stillness, to an indisputable magnificence that caused me utterly to forget myself. There were times here when I felt I was a disembodied intellect drifting through a fathomless silence, up and down garden paths and stone corridors that had witnessed too much to take cognizance of one small and fragile young woman who in random moments actually talked aloud to the suits of armour around her, to the broken statues in the garden, the fountain cherubs who had had no water to pour from their conches for years and years.

But was there in this loveliness some malignant force that was eluding us still, some untold story? Unspeakable horror Even in the flood of brilliant sunlight, those words gave me a chill.

As I came slowly up the slope I saw Richard walking lazily along the uneven shore of the lake. Now and then he glanced up at the distant battlements, his expression dreamy, almost blissfully contented.

Rampling Gate had him. And I understood perfectly because it also had me.

With a new sense of determination I went to him and placed my hand gently on his arm.

For a moment he looked at me as if he did not even know me, and then he said softly, "How will I ever do it, Julie? And one way or the other, it will be on my conscience all my life."

"It's time to seek advice, Richard," I said. "Write to our lawyers in London. Write to Father's clergyman, Doctor Matthews. Explain everything. We cannot do this alone."

It was three o'clock in the morning when I opened my eyes. But I had been awake for a long time. And I felt not fear, lying there alone, but something else — some vague and relentless agitation, some sense of emptiness and need that caused me finally to rise from my bed. What was this house, really? A place, or merely a state of mind? What was it doing to my soul?

I felt overwhelmed, yet shut out of some great and dazzling secret. Driven by an unbearable restlessness, I pulled on my woollen wrapper and my slippers and went into the hall.

The moonlight fell full on the oak stairway, and the vestibule far below. Maybe I could write of the confusion I suffered now, put on paper the inexplicable longing I felt. Certainly it was worth the effort, and I made my way soundlessly down the steps.

The great hall gaped before me, the moonlight here and there touching upon a pair of crossed swords or a mounted shield. But far beyond, in the alcove just outside the library, I saw the uneven glow of the fire. So Richard was there. A sense of well-being pervaded me and quieted me. At the same time, the distance between us seemed endless and I became desperate to cross it, hurrying past the long supper table and finally into the alcove before the library doors.

The fire blazed beneath the stone mantelpiece and a figure sat in the leather chair before it, bent over a loose collection of pages that he held in his slender hands. He was reading the pages eagerly, and the fire suffused his face with a warm, golden light.

But it was not Richard. It was the same young man I had seen on the train in Victoria Station fifteen years ago. And not a single aspect of that taut young face had changed. There was the very same hair, thick and lustrous and only carelessly combed as it hung to the collar of his black coat, and those dark eyes that looked up suddenly and fixed me with a most curious expression as I almost screamed.

We stared at each other across that shadowy room, I stranded in the doorway, he visibly and undeniably shaken that I had caught him unawares. My heart stopped.

And in a split second he rose and moved towards me, closing the gap between us, reaching out with those slender white hands.

"Julie!" he whispered, in a voice so low that it seemed my own thoughts were speaking to me. But this was no dream. He was holding me and the scream had broken loose from me, deafening, uncontrollable and echoing from the four walls.

I was alone. Clutching at the door frame, I staggered forward, and then in a moment of perfect clarity I saw the young stranger again, saw him standing in the open door to the garden, looking back over his shoulder; then he was gone.

I could not stop screaming. I could not stop even as I heard Richard's voice calling me, heard his feet pound down that broad, hollow staircase and through the great hall. I could not stop even as he shook me, pleaded with me, settled me in a chair.

Finally I managed to describe what I had seen.

"But you know who it was!" I said almost hysterically. "It was he — the young man from the train!"

"Now, wait," Richard said. "He had his back to the fire, Julie. And you could not see his face clearly "

"Richard, it was he! Don't you understand? He touched me. He called me Julie," I whispered. "Good God, Richard, look at the fire. I didn't light it — he did. He was here!"

All but pushing Richard out of the way, I went to the heap of papers that lay strewn on the carpet before the hearth. "My story" I whispered, snatching up the pages. "He's been reading my story, Richard. And — dear God — he's read your letters, the letters to Mr Partridge and Dr Matthews, about tearing down the house!"

"Surely you don't believe it was the same man, Julie, after all these years ?"

"But he has not changed, Richard, not in the smallest detail. There is no mistake, I tell you. It was the very same man!"

The next day was the most trying since we had come. Together we commenced a search of the house. Darkness found us only half finished, frustrated everywhere by locked doors we could not open and old staircases that were not safe.

And it was also quite clear by suppertime that Richard did not believe I had seen anyone in the study at all. As for the fire — well, he had failed to put it out properly before going to bed; and the pages — well, one of us had put them there and forgotten them, of course

But I knew what I had seen.

And what obsessed me more than anything else was the gentle countenance of the mysterious man I had glimpsed, the innocent eyes that had fixed on me for one moment before I screamed.

"You would be wise to do one very important thing before you retire," I said crossly. "Leave out a note to the effect that you do not intend to tear down the house."

"Julie, you have created an impossible dilemma," Richard declared, the colour rising in his face. "You insist we reassure this apparition that the house will not be destroyed, when in fact you verify the existence of the very creature that drove our father to say what he did."

"Oh, I wish I had never come here!" I burst out suddenly.

"Then we should go, and decide this matter at home."

"No — that's just it. I could never go without knowing. I could never go on living with knowing now!"

Anger must be an excellent antidote to fear, for surely something worked to alleviate my natural alarm. I did not undress that night, but rather sat in the darkened bedroom, gazing at the small square of diamond-paned window until I heard the house fall quiet. When the grandfather clock in the great hall chimed the hour of eleven, Rampling Gate was, as usual, fast asleep.

I felt a dark exultation as I imagined myself going out of the room and down the stairs. But I knew I should wait one more hour. I should let the night reach its peak. My heart was beating too fast, and dreamily I recollected the face I had seen, the voice that had said my name.

Why did it seem in retrospect so intimate, that we had known each other before, spoken together a thousand times? Was it because he had read my story, those words that came from my very soul?

"Who are you?" I believe I whispered aloud. "Where are you at this moment?" I uttered the word, "Come."

The door opened without a sound and he was standing there. He was dressed exactly as he had been the night before and his dark eyes were riveted on me with that same obvious curiosity, his mouth just a little slack, like that of a boy.

I sat forward, and he raised his finger as if to reassure me and gave a little nod.

"Ah, it is you!" I whispered.

"Yes," he said in a soft, unobtrusive voice.

"And you are not a spirit!" I looked at his mud-splattered boots, at the faintest smear of dust on that perfect white cheek.

"A spirit?" he asked almost mournfully. "Would that I were that."

Dazed, I watched him come towards me; the room darkened and I felt his cool, silken hands on my face. I had risen. I was standing before him, and I looked up into his eyes.

I heard my own heartbeat. I heard it as I had the night before, right at the moment I had screamed. Dear God, I was talking to him! He was in my room and I was talking to him! And then suddenly I was in his arms.

"Real, absolutely real!" I whispered, and a low, zinging sensation coursed through me so that I had to steady myself.

He was peering at me as if trying to comprehend something terribly important. His lips had a ruddy look to them, a soft look for all his handsomeness, as if he had never been kissed. A slight dizziness came over me, a slight confusion in which I was not at all sure that he was even there.

"Oh, but I am," he said, as if I had spoken my doubt. I felt his breath against my cheek, and it was almost sweet. "I am here, and I have watched you ever since you came."

"Yes"

My eyes were closing. In a dim flash, as of a match being struck, I saw my father, heard his voice. No, Julie But that was surely a dream.

"Only a little kiss," said the voice of the one who was really here. I felt his lips against my neck. "I would never harm you. No harm ever for the children of this house. Just the little kiss, Julie, and the understanding that it imparts, that you cannot destroy Rampling Gate, Julie — that you can never, never drive me away."

The core of my being, that secret place where all desires and all commandments are nurtured, opened to him without a struggle or a sound. I would have fallen if he had not held me. My arms closed about him, my hands slipping into the soft, silken mass of his hair.

I was floating, and there was, as there had always been at Rampling Gate, an endless peace. It was Rampling Gate I felt enclosing me; it was that timeless and impenetrable secret that had opened itself at last A power within me of enormous ken To see as a god sees, and take the depth of things as nimbly as the outward eyes can size and shape pervade Yes, those very words from Keats, which I had quoted in the pages of my story that he had read.

But in a violent instant he had released me. "Too innocent," he whispered.

I went reeling across the bedroom floor and caught hold of the frame of the window. I rested my forehead against the stone wall.

There was a tingling pain in my throat where his lips had touched me that was almost pleasurable, a delicious throbbing that would not stop. I knew what he was!

I turned and saw all the room clearly — the bed, the fireplace, the chair. And he stood still exactly as I'd left him and there was the most appalling anguish in his face.

"Something of menace, unspeakable menace," I whispered, backing away.

"Something ancient, something that defies understanding," he pleaded. "Something that can and will go on." But he was shaken and he would not look into my eyes.

I touched that pulsing pain with the tips of my fingers and, looking down at them, saw the blood. "Vampire!" I gasped. "And yet you suffer so, and it is as if you can love!"

"Love? I have loved you since you came. I loved you when I read your secret thoughts and had not yet seen your face."

He drew me to him ever so gently, and slipping his arm around me, guided me to the door.

I tried for one desperate moment to resist him. And as any gentleman might, he stepped back respectfully and took my hand.

Through the long upstairs corridor we passed, and through a small wooden doorway to a screw stair that I had not seen before. I soon realized we were ascending in the north tower, a ruined portion of the structure that had been sealed off years before.

Through one tiny window after another I saw the gently rolling landscape and the small cluster of dim lights that marked the village of Rampling and the pale streak of white that was the London road.

Up and up we climbed, until we reached the topmost chamber, and this he opened with an iron key. He held back the door for me to enter and I found myself in a spacious room whose high, narrow windows contained no glass. A flood of moonlight revealed the most curious mixture of furnishings and objects — a writing-table, a great shelf of books, soft leather chairs, and scores of maps and framed pictures affixed to the walls. Candles all about had dripped their wax on every surface, and in the very midst of this chaos lay my poems, my old sketches — early writings that I had brought with me and never even unpacked.

I saw a black silk top hat and a walking-stick, and a bouquet of withered flowers, dry as straw, and daguerreotypes and tintypes in their little velvet cases, and London newspapers and opened books.

There was no place for sleeping in this room.

And when I thought of that, where he must lie when he went to rest, a shudder passed over me and I felt, quite palpably, his lips touching my throat again, and I had the sudden urge to cry.

But he was holding me in his arms; he was kissing my cheeks and my lips ever so softly.

"My father knew what you were!" I whispered.

"Yes," he answered, "and his father before him. And all of them in an unbroken chain over the years. Out of loneliness or rage, I know not which, I always told them. I always made them acknowledge, accept."

I backed away and he didn't try to stop me. He lighted the candles about us one by one.

I was stunned by the sight of him in the light, the gleam in his large black eyes and the gloss of his hair. Not even in the railway station had I seen him so clearly as I did now, amid the radiance of the candles. He broke my heart.

And yet he looked at me as though I were a feast for his eyes, and he said my name again and I felt the blood rush to my face. But there seemed a great break suddenly in the passage of time. What had I been thinking! Yes, never tell, never disturb something ancient, something greater than good and evil But no! I felt dizzy again. I heard Father's voice: Tear it down, Richard, stone by stone .

He had drawn me to the window. And as the lights of Rampling were subtracted from the darkness below, a great wood stretched out in all directions, far older and denser than the forest of Rampling Gate. I was afraid suddenly, as if I were slipping into a maelstrom of visions from which I could never, of my own will, return.

There was that sense of our talking together, talking and talking in low, agitated voices, and I was saying that I should not give in.

"Bear witness — that is all I ask of you, Julie."

And there was in me some dim certainty that by these visions alone I would be fatally changed.

But the very room was losing its substance, as if a soundless wind of terrific force were blowing it apart. The vision had already begun

We were riding horseback through a forest, he and I. And the trees were so high and so thick that scarcely any sun at all broke through to the fragrant, leaf-strewn ground.

Yet we had no time to linger in this magical place. We had come to the fresh-tilled earth that surrounded a village I somehow knew was called Knorwood, with its gabled roofs and its tiny, crooked streets. We saw the monastery of Knorwood and the little church with the bell chiming vespers under the lowering sky. A great, bustling life resided in Knorwood, a thousand voices rising in common prayer.

Far beyond, on the rise above the forest, stood the round tower of a truly ancient castle; and to that ruined castle — no more than a shell of itself any more — as darkness fell in earnest we rode. Through its empty chambers we roamed, impetuous children, the horses and the road quite forgotten, and to the lord of the castle, a gaunt and white-skinned creature standing before the roaring fire of the roofless hall, we came. He turned and fixed us with his narrow and glittering eyes. A dead thing he was, I understood, but he carried within himself a priceless magic. And my companion, my innocent young man, stepped forward into the lord's arms.

I saw the kiss. I saw the young man grow pale and struggle and turn away, and the lord retreated with the wisest, saddest smile.

I understood. I knew. But the castle was dissolving as surely as anything in this dream might dissolve, and we were in some damp and close place.

The stench was unbearable to me; it was that most terrible of all stenches, the stench of death. And I heard my steps on the cobblestones and I reached out to steady myself against a wall. The tiny market-place was deserted; the doors and windows gaped open to the vagrant wind. Up one side and down the other of the crooked street I saw the marks on the houses. And I knew what the marks meant. The Black Death had come to the village of Knorwood. The Black Death had laid it waste. And in a moment of suffocating horror I realized that no one, not a single person, was left alive.

But this was not quite true. There was a young man walking in fits and starts up the narrow alleyway. He was staggering, almost falling, as he pushed in one door after another, and at last came to a hot, reeking place where a child screamed on the floor. Mother and father lay dead in the bed. And the sleek fat cat of the household, unharmed, played with the screaming infant, whose eyes bulged in its tiny, sunken face.

"Stop it!" I heard myself gasp. I was holding my head with both hands. "Stop it — stop it, please!" I was screaming, and my screams would surely pierce the vision and this crude little dwelling would collapse around me and I would rouse the household of Rampling Gate, but I did not. The young man turned and stared at me, and in the close, stinking room I could not see his face.

But I knew it was he, my companion, and I could smell his fever and his sickness, and the stink of the dying infant, and see the gleaming body of the cat as it pawed at the child's outstretched hand.

"Stop it, you've lost control of it!" I screamed, surely with all my strength, but the infant screamed louder. "Make it stop."

"I cannot," he whispered. "It goes on for ever! It will never stop!"

And with a great shriek I kicked at the cat and sent it flying out of the filthy room, overturning the milk pail as it went.

Death in all the houses of Knorwood. Death in the cloister, death in the open fields. It seemed the Judgment of God — I was sobbing, begging to be released — it seemed the very end of Creation itself.

But as night came down over the dead village he was alive still, stumbling up the slopes, through the forest, towards that tower where the lord stood at the broken arch of the window, waiting for him to come.

"Don't go!" I begged him. I ran alongside him, crying, but he didn't hear.

The lord turned and smiled with infinite sadness as the young man on his knees begged for salvation, when it was damnation this lord offered, when it was only damnation that the lord would give.

"Yes, damned, then, but living, breathing!" the young man cried, and the lord opened his arms.

The kiss again, the lethal kiss, the blood drawn out of his dying body, and then the lord lifting the heavy head of the young man so the youth could take the blood back again from the body of the lord himself.

I screamed, "Do not — do not drink!"

He turned, and his face was now so perfectly the visage of death that I couldn't believe there was animation left in him; yet he asked: "What would you do? Would you go back to Knorwood, would you open those doors one after another, would you ring the bell in the empty church — and if you did, who would hear?"

He didn't wait for my answer. And I had none now to give. He locked his innocent mouth to the vein that pulsed with every semblance of life beneath the lord's cold and translucent flesh. And the blood jetted into the young body, vanquishing in one great burst the fever and the sickness that had racked it, driving it out along with the mortal life.

He stood now in the hall of the lord alone. Immortality was his, and the blood thirst he would need to sustain it, and that thirst I could feel with my whole soul.

And each and every thing was transfigured in his vision to the exquisite essence of itself. A wordless voice spoke from the starry veil of heaven; it sang in the wind that rushed through the broken timbers; it sighed in the flames that ate at the sooted stones of the hearth. It was the eternal rhythm of the universe that played beneath every surface as the last living creature in the village — that tiny child — fell silent in the maw of time.

A soft wind sifted and scattered the soil from the newly turned furrows in the empty fields. The rain fell from the black and endless sky.

Years and years passed. And all that had been Knorwood melted into the earth. The forest sent out its silent sentinels, and mighty trunks rose where there had been huts and houses, where there had been monastery walls. And it seemed the horror beyond all horrors that no one should know any more of those who had lived and died in that small and insignificant village, that not anywhere in the great archives in which all history is recorded should a mention of Knorwood exist.

Yet one remained who knew, one who had witnessed, one who had seen the Ramplings come in the years that followed, seen them raise their house upon the very slope where the ancient castle had once stood, one who saw a new village collect itself slowly upon the unmarked grave of the old.

And all through the walls of Rampling Gate were the stones of that old castle, the stones of the forgotten monastery, the stones of that little church.

We were once again back in the tower.

"It is my shrine," he whispered. "My sanctuary. It is the only thing that endures as I endure. And you love it as I love it, Julie. You have written it You love its grandeur. And its gloom."

"Yes, yes as it's always been" I was crying, though I didn't move my lips.

He had turned to me from the window, and I could feel his endless craving with all my heart.

"What else do you want from me!" I pleaded. "What else can I give?"

A torrent of images answered me. It was beginning again. I was once again relinquishing myself, yet in a great rush of lights and noise I was enlivened and made whole as I had been when we rode together through the forest, but it was into the world of now, this hour, that we passed.

We were flying through the rural darkness along the railway towards London, where the night-time city burst like an enormous bubble in a shower of laughter and motion and glaring light. He was walking with me under the gas lamps, his face all but shimmering with that same dark innocence, that same irresistible warmth. It seemed we were holding tight to each other in the very midst of a crowd. And the crowd was a living thing, a writhing thing, and everywhere there came a dark, rich aroma from it, the aroma of fresh blood. Women in white fur and gentlemen in opera capes swept through the brightly lighted doors of the theatre; the blare of the music hall inundated us and then faded away. Only a thin soprano voice was left, singing a high, plaintive song. I was in his arms and his lips were covering mine, and there came that dull, zinging sensation again, that great, uncontrollable opening within myself. Thirst, and the promise of satiation measured only by the intensity of that thirst. Up back staircases we fled together, into high-ceilinged bedrooms papered in red damask, where the loveliest women reclined on brass beds, and the aroma was so strong now that I could not bear it and he said: "Drink. They are your victims! They will give you eternity — you must drink." And I felt the warmth filling me, charging me, blurring my vision until we broke free again, light and invisible, it seemed, as we moved over the rooftops and down again through rain-drenched streets. But the rain did not touch us; the falling snow did not chill us; we had within ourselves a great and indissoluble heat. And together in the carriage we talked to each other in low, exuberant rushes of language; we were lovers; we were constant; we were immortal. We were as enduring as Rampling Gate.

Oh, don't let it stop! I felt his arms around me and I knew we were in the tower room together, and the visions had worked their fatal alchemy.

"Do you understand what I am offering you? To your ancestors I revealed myself, yes; I subjugated them. But I would make you my bride, Julie. I would share with you my power. Come with me. I will not take you against your will, but can you turn away?"

Again I heard my own scream. My hands were on his cool white skin, and his lips were gentle yet hungry, his eyes yielding and ever young. Father's angry countenance blazed before me as if I, too, had the power to conjure. Unspeakable horror . I covered my face.

He stood against the backdrop of the window, against the distant drift of pale clouds. The candlelight glimmered in his eyes. Immense and sad and wise, they seemed — and oh, yes, innocent, as I have said again and again. "You are their fairest flower, Julie. To them I gave my protection always. To you I give my love. Come to me, dearest, and Rampling Gate will truly be yours, and it will finally, truly be mine."

Nights of argument, but finally Richard had come round. He would sign over Rampling Gate to me and I should absolutely refuse to allow the place to be torn down. There would be nothing he could do then to obey Father's command. I had given him the legal impediment he needed, and of course I told him I would leave the house to his male heirs. It should always be in Rampling hands.

A clever solution, it seemed to me, since Father had not told me to destroy the place. I had no scruples in the matter now at all.

And what remained was for him to take me to the little railway station and see me off for London, and not worry about my going home to Mayfair on my own.

"You stay here as long as you wish and do not worry," I said. I felt more tenderly towards him than I could ever express. "You knew as soon as you set foot in the place that Father was quite wrong."

The great black locomotive was chugging past us, the passenger cars slowing to a stop.

"Must go now, darling kiss me," I said.

"But what came over you, Julie what convinced you so quickly —?"

"We've been through all that, Richard," I said. "What matters is that Rampling Gate is safe and we are both happy, my dear."

I waved until I couldn't see him any more. The flickering lamps of the town were lost in the deep lavender light of the early evening, and the dark hulk of Rampling Gate appeared for one uncertain moment like the ghost of itself on the nearby rise.

I sat back and closed my eyes. Then I opened them slowly, savouring this moment for which I had waited so long.

He was smiling, seated in the far corner of the leather seat opposite, as he had been all along, and now he rose with a swift, almost delicate movement and sat beside me and enfolded me in his arms.

"It's five hours to London," he whispered.

"I can wait," I said, feeling the thirst like a fever as I held tight to him, feeling his lips against my eyelids and my hair. "I want to hunt the London streets tonight," I confessed a little shyly, but I saw only approbation in his eyes.

"Beautiful Julie, my Julie" he whispered.

"You'll love the house in Mayfair," I said.

"Yes" he said.

"And when Richard finally tires of Rampling Gate, we shall go home."

Homewrecker

Poppy Z. Brite

Poppy Z. Brite is the author of four novels and two short story collections. Her work has appeared in Best American Erotica, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Disco 2000, and many other markets. Her most recent projects include the novella Plastic Jesus and the non-fiction collection Guilty But Insane, both available from Subterranean Press. She lives in New Orleans with her husband, Christopher .

Although she is often identified as a "vampire author", her novel Lost Souls and the story that follows are the only vampire fiction Brite will admit to having written .

"The vampire is the easiest horror trope to turn into a cliche," she says, "and yet a great many writers try their hands at a vampire tale sooner or later, maybe because the familiar canvas shows off one's individual flourishes To write about a creature that lives off the human life-force requires the ability to plumb one's own darkness."

My Uncle Edna killed hogs. He came home from the slaughter-house every day smelling of shit and pig blood, and if I didn't have his bath drawn with plenty of perfume and bubble stuff, he'd whup my ass until I felt his hard-on poking me in the leg.

Like I said, he killed hogs. At night, though, you'd never have known it to see him in his satin gown. He swished around the old farmhouse like some kind of fairy godmother, swigging from a bottle of JD and cussing the bitch who stole his man.

"Homewrecker!" he'd shriek, pounding his fist on the table and rattling the stack of rhinestone bracelets he wore on his skinny arm. "How could he want her when he had me? How could he do it, boy?"

And you had to wonder, because even with his lipstick smeared and his chest hair poking out of his gown, there was a certain tired glamour to Uncle Edna. Thing was, the bitch hadn't even wanted his man. Uncle Jude, who'd been with Uncle Edna since he was just plain old Ed Slopes, had all of a sudden turned hetero and gone slobbering off after a henna-headed barfly who called herself Verna. What Verna considered a night's amusement, Uncle Jude decided was the grand passion of his life. And that was the last we saw of him. We never could understand it.

Uncle Edna was thirty-six when Uncle Jude left. The years and the whiskey rode him hard after that, but the man knew how to do his make-up, and I thought Uncle Jude would fall back in love with him if they could just see each other again.

I couldn't do anything about it though, and back then I was more interested in catching frogs and snakes than in the affairs of grown-ups' hearts. But a few years later, I heard Verna was back in town.

I knew I couldn't let Uncle Edna find out. He'd want to get out his shotgun and go after her, and then he'd get cornholed to death in jail and who'd take care of me? So I talked to a certain kid at school. He made me suck his dick out behind the cafeteria, but I came home with four Xanax. I ground them up and put them in Uncle Edna's bottle of JD that same night. Pretty soon he was snoring like a chainsaw and drooling on his party dress. I went out to look for Verna. I didn't especially want to see her, but I thought maybe I could find out where she'd last seen Uncle Jude.

I parked my bike across the street from the only bar in town, the Silky Q. Inside, the men stood or danced in pairs. A few wore drag, but most were in jeans and flannels; this was a working man's town.

Then I saw her. She'd slid her meaty ass into a booth and was cuddled up to one of the men in it. The other man sat glaring at her, nearly in tears. I recognized them as Bob and Jim Frenchette, a couple who'd been married as long as I could remember. Verna's red-nailed hand was on Bob's thigh, stroking the worn denim.

I walked up to the table.

Jim and Bob were too far gone to pay me any mind. Verna didn't seem to recognize me. I'd been a little kid when she saw me last, and she'd hardly noticed me then, bent as she was on sucking Uncle Jude's neck. I stared into her eyes. Her lashes were clumped with black mascara, her lids frosted with turquoise shadow. Her mouth was a lipstick wound. Her lips twitched in a scornful smile, then parted.

"What you want, little boy?"

I couldn't think of anything to say. I didn't know what I had meant to do. I stumbled away from the table. My hands were trembling and my cheeks flaming. I was outside, unchaining my bike from the lamp post, when Verna came out of the bar.

She crossed the deserted street, pinning me where I stood with those wolf-pale eyes. I wanted to jump on my bike and speed away, or just run, but I couldn't. I wanted to look away from those slippery red lips that glistened like hog grease. But I couldn't.

"Your uncle" she whispered. "Jules, wasn't it?"

I shook my head, but Verna kept smiling and bending closer until her lips were right against my ear.

"He was a lousy fuck," she said.

Her sharp red nails bit into my shoulder. She pushed me back against the lamp post and sank to her knees in front of me. I felt hot bile rising in my throat, but I couldn't move, even when her other hand undid my pants.

I tried to keep my dick from getting hard, I truly did. But it was like her mouth sucked the blood into it, right to the surface of the skin. I thought she might tear it out by the roots. Her tongue slithered over my balls, into my peehole. There came a sharp stinging at the base of my dick, unlike anything I'd felt when other boys sucked it. Then I was shooting my jizz into her mouth, much as I didn't want to, and she was swallowing it like she'd been starved.

Verna wiped her mouth and laughed. Then she stood, turned, and walked back to the bar like I wasn't even there. The door closed behind her, and I fell to my knees and puked until my throat was raw. But even as the rancid taste of half-digested food filled my mouth and nose, I could feel my dick getting hard again.

I had to whack off before I could get on my bike. As I came on the sidewalk, I imagined those fat shiny lips closing around me again, and I started to cry. I couldn't get the nasty thoughts out of my head, things I'd never thought about before: the smell of dank sea coves and fish markets, the soft squish of a body encased in a layer of fat, with big floppy globes of it stuck on the chest and rear like cancers. And the thoughts were like a cancer in me.

As fast as my feet could pedal, I rode home to Uncle Edna. But I had a feeling I could never really go home again.

When Gretchen Was Human

Mary A. Turzillo

Mary A. Turzillo won the 1999 Nebula Award for Best Science Fiction Novelette for her story "Mars is No Place for Children". She was placed second in the 1997 Rhysling Awards for Speculative Poetry and was a finalist for the British Science Fiction Association Award.

She has published stories in Asimov's, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, Science Fiction Age, Weird Tales, and anthologies in the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy and Japan, as well as two volumes of criticism and two chapbooks of poetry .

When not fending off the affectionate attentions of her cats, she is working on a novel about the future adventures of Kapera Smythe, a Martian girl who has a blood disease. She has a son, Jack Brizzi, Jr, and lives in Berea with her husband, writer Geoffrey A. Landis.

"Not everyone has a victim or a vampire inside them," explains the author, "but even those whose vampire-self is weak understand that the inner monster is lonely and craves love, while also fearing it. The passion that the vampire seeks and that the victim wants to give is an appalling and consecrated gift. Is it a metaphor for the love between the tyrant and willingly oppressed, or between the child and the parent who bleeds for the child's anguish?

"It is more. It is the deep core of ardour. We are afraid, and we desire."

You're only human," said Nick Scuroforno, fanning the pages of a tattered first edition of Image of the Beast . The conversation had degenerated from half-hearted sales pitch, Gretchen trying to sell Nick Scuroforno an early Pang-born imprint. Now they sat cross-legged on the scarred wooden floor of Miss Trilby's Tomes, watching dust motes dance in August four o'clock sun. Gretchen was wallowing in self-disclosure and voluptuous self-pity.

"Sometimes I don't even feel human." Gretchen settled her back against the soft, dusty-smelling spines of a leather-bound 1910 imprint Book of Knowledge .

"I can identify."

"And given the choice, who'd really want to be?" asked Gretchen, tracing the grain of the wooden floor with chapped fingers.

"You have a choice?" asked Scuroforno.

"See, after Ashley was diagnosed, my ex got custody of her. Just as well." She rummaged her smock for a tissue. "I didn't have hospitalization after we split. And his would cover her, but only if she goes to a hospital way off in Seattle." Unbidden, a memory rose: Ashley's warm little body, wriggly as a puppy's, settling in her lap, opening Where the Wild Things Are , striking the page with her tiny pink index finger. Mommy, read !

Scuroforno nodded. "But can't they cure leukaemia now?"

"Sometimes. She's in remission at the moment. But how long will that last?" Gretchen kept sneaking looks at Scuroforno. Amazingly, she found him attractive. She thought depression had killed the sexual impulse in her. He was a big man, chunky but not actually fat, with evasive amber eyes and shaggy hair. Not bad looking, but not handsome either, in grey sweat pants, a brown T-shirt and beach sandals. He had a habit of twisting the band of his watch, revealing a strip of pale skin from which the fine hairs of his wrist had been worn.

"And yet cancer itself is immortal," he mused. "Why can't it make its host immortal too?"

"Cancer is immortal?" But of course cancer would be immortal. It was the ultimate predator. Why shouldn't it hold all the high cards?

"The cells are. There's some pancreatic cancer cells that have been growing in a lab fifty years since the man with the cancer died. And yet, cancer cells are not even as intelligent as a virus. A virus knows not to kill its host."

"But viruses do kill!"

He smiled. "That's true, lots do kill. Bacteria, too. But there are bacteria that millennia ago decided to infect every cell in our bodies. Turned into let me think of the word. Organelles? Like the mitochondrion."

"What's a mitochondrion?"

He shrugged, slyly basking in his superior knowledge. "It's an energy-converting organ in animal cells. Different DNA from the host. You'd think you could design a mitochondrion that would make the host live for ever."

She stared at him. "No. I certainly wouldn't think that."

"Why not?"

"It would be horrible. A zombie. A vampire."

He was silent, a smile playing around his eyes.

She shuddered. "You get these ideas from Miss Trilby's Tomes?"

"The wisdom of the ages." He gestured at the high shelves, then stood. "And of course the world wide web. Here comes Madame Trilby herself. Does she like you lounging on the floor with customers?"

Gretchen flushed. "Oh, she never minds anything. My grandpa was friends with her father, and I've worked here off and on since I was little." She took Scuroforno's proffered hand and pulled herself to her feet.

Miss Trilby, frail and spry, wafting a fragrance of face powder and mouldy paper, lugged in a milk crate of pamphlets. She frowned at Gretchen. Strange, thought Gretchen. Yesterday she said I should find a new man, but now she's glaring at me. For sitting on the floor? I sit on the floor to do paperwork all the time. There's no room for chairs. It has to be for schmoozing with a male customer.

Miss Trilby dumped the mail on the counter and swept into the back room.

"Cheerful today, hmm?" said Scuroforno.

"Really, she's so good to me. She lends me money to go to Seattle and see my daughter. She's just nervous today."

"Ah. By the way, before I leave, do you have a cold, or were you crying?"

Gretchen reddened. "I have a chronic sinus infection." She suddenly saw herself objectively: stringy hair, bad posture, skinny. How could she be flirting with this man?

He touched her wrist. "Take care." And strode through the door into the street.

"Him you don't need," said Miss Trilby, bustling back in and firing up the shop's ancient Kaypro computer.

"Did I say I did?"

"Your face says you think you do. Did he buy anything?"

"I'm sorry. I can never predict what he'll be interested in."

"I'll die in the poorhouse. Sell him antique medical texts. Or detective novels. He stands reading historical novels right off the shelf and laughs. Pretends to be an expert, finds all the mistakes."

"What have you got against him, besides reading and not buying?"

"Oh, he buys. But Gretchen, lambkin, a man like that you don't need. Loner. Crazy."

"But he listens. He's so understanding."

"Like the butcher with the calf. What's this immortal cancer stuff he's feeding you?"

"Nothing. We were talking about Ashley."

"Sorry, lambkin. Life hasn't been kind to you. But be a little wise. This man has delusions he's a vampire."

Gretchen smoothed the dust jacket of Euryanthe and Oberon at Covent Garden . "Maybe he is."

Miss Trilby rounded her lips in mock horror. "Perhaps! Doesn't look much like Frank Langella, though, does he?"

No, he didn't, thought Gretchen, as she sorted orders for reprints of Kadensho's Book of the Flowery Tradition and de Honnecourt's Fervor of Buenos Aires .

But there was something appealing about Nick Scuroforno, something besides his empathy for a homely divorcee with a terminally ill child. His spare, dark humour, maybe that was it. Miss Trilby did not understand everything.

Why not make a play for him?

Even to herself, her efforts seemed pathetic. She got Keesha, the single mother across the hall in her apartment, to help her frost her hair. She bought a cheap cardigan trimmed with angora and dug out an old padded bra.

"Lambkin," said Miss Trilby dryly one afternoon when Gretchen came in dolled up in her desperate finery, "the man is not exactly a fashion plate himself."

But Scuroforno seemed flattered, if not impressed, by Gretchen's efforts, and took her out for coffee, then a late dinner. Mostly, however, he came into the bookstore an hour before closing and let her pretend to sell him some white elephant like the Reverend Wood's Trespassers: How Inhabitants of Earth, Air, and Water Are Enabled to Trespass on Domains Not Their Own . She would fiddle with the silver chain on her neck, and they would slide to the floor where she would pour out her troubles to him. Other customers seldom came in so late.

"You trust him with private details of your life," said Miss Trilby, "but what do you know of his?"

He did talk. He did. Philosophy, history, details of Gretchen's daughter's illness. One day, she asked, "What do you do?"

"I steal souls. Photographer."

Oh.

"Can't make much money on that artsy stuff," Miss Trilby commented when she heard this. "Rumour says he's got a private source of income."

"Illegal, you mean?"

"What a romantic you are, Gretchen. Ask him."

Gambling luck and investments, he told her.

One day, leaving for the shop, Gretchen opened her mail and found a letter — not even a phone call — that Ashley's remission was over. Her little girl was in the hospital again.

The grief was surreal, physical. She was afraid to go back into her apartment. She had bought a copy of Jan Pienkowski's Haunted House , full of diabolically funny pop-ups, for Ashley's birthday. She couldn't bear to look at it now, waiting like a poisoned bait on the counter.

She went straight to the shop, began alphabetizing the new stock. Nothing made sense, she couldn't remember if O came after N. Miss Trilby had to drag her away, make her stop. "What's wrong? Is it Ashley?"

Gretchen handed her the letter.

Miss Trilby read it through her thick lorgnette. Then, "Look at yourself. Your cheeks are flushed. Eyes bright. Disaster becomes you. Or is it the nearness of death bids us breed, like romance in a concentration camp?"

Gretchen shuddered. "Maybe my body is tricking me into reproducing again."

"To replace Ashley. Not funny, lambkin. But possibly true. I ask again, why this man? Doesn't madness frighten you?"

Next day, Gretchen followed him to his car. It seemed natural to get in, uninvited, ride home with him, follow him up two flights of stairs covered with cracked treads.

He let her perch on a stool in his kitchen darkroom while he printed peculiar old architectural photographs. The room smelled of chemicals, vinegary. An old Commodore 64 propped the pantry door open. She had seen a new computer in his living-room, running a screen saver of Giger babies holding grenades, and wraiths dancing an agony dance.

"I never eat here," he said. "As a kitchen, it's useless."

He emptied trays, washed solutions down the drain, rinsed. Her heart beat hard under the sleazy angora. His body, sleek as a lion's, gave off a male scent, faintly predatory.

While his back was turned, she undid her cardigan. The buttons too easily slipped out of the cheap fuzzy fabric, conspiring with lust.

She slipped it off as he turned around. And felt the draught of the cold kitchen and the surprise of his gaze on her inadequate chest.

He turned away, dried his hands on the kitchen towel. "Don't fall in love with me."

"Not at all arrogant, are you?" She wouldn't, wouldn't fall in love. No. That wasn't quite it.

"Not arrogance. A warning. I'm territorial; predators have to be. For a while, yes, I'd keep you around. But sooner or later, you'd interfere with my hunting. I'd kill you or drive you away to prevent myself from killing you."

"I won't fall in love with you." Level. Convincing.

"All right." He threw the towel into the sink, came to her. Covered her mouth with his.

She responded clumsily, overreacting after the long dry spell, clawing his back.

The kiss ended. He stroked her hair. "Don't worry. I won't draw blood. I can control the impulse."

She half pretended to play along with him. Half of her did believe. "It doesn't matter. I want to be like you." A joke?

He sat on the kitchen chair, pulled her to him and put his cheek against her breasts. "It doesn't work that way. You have to have the right genes to be susceptible."

"It really is an infection?" Still half pretending to believe, still almost joking.

"A virus that gives you cancer. All I know is that of all the thousands I've preyed upon, only a few have got the fever and lived to become — like me."

"Vampire?"

"As good a word as any. One who I infected and who lived on was my son. He got the fever and turned. That's why I think it's genetic." He pulled her nearer, as if for warmth.

"What happens if the prey doesn't have the genes?"

"Nothing. Nothing happens. I never take enough to kill. I haven't killed a human in over a hundred years. You're safe."

She slid to her knees, wrapping her arms around his waist. He held her head to him, stroking her bare arms and shoulders. "Silk," he said finally, pulling her up, touching her breast. She had nursed Ashley, but it hadn't stopped her from getting leukaemia. Fire and ice sizzled across her breasts, as if her milk were letting down.

"Are you lonely?"

"God, yes. That's the only reason I was even tempted to let you do this. You know, I have the instincts of a predator, it does that. But I was born human."

"How did you infect your son?"

"Accident. I was infected soon after I was married. Pietra, my wife, is long dead."

"Pietra. Strange name."

"Not so strange in thirteenth-century Florence. I turned shortly after I was married. I was very ill. I knew I needed blood, but no knowledge of why or how to control my thirst. I took blood from a priest who came to give me last rites. My thirst was so voracious, I killed him. Not murder, Gretchen. I was no more guilty than a baby suckling at breast. The first thirst is overpowering. I took too much, and when I saw that he was dead, I put on my clothes and ran away."

"Leaving your wife."

"Never saw her again. But years later I encountered this young man at a gambling table. Pretended to befriend him. Overpowered him in a narrow dark street. Drank to slake my thirst. Later I encountered him, changed. As a rival for the blood of the neighbourhood. I had infected him, he had got the fever, developed into — what I am. Later I put the pieces together; I had left Pietra pregnant, this was our son, you see. He had the right genes. If he hadn't, he would have never even noticed that modest blood loss." His hand stroked her naked shoulder.

"Where is he now?"

"I often wonder. I drove him off soon after he finished the change. Vampires can't stand one another. They interfere with each other's hunting."

"Why have you chosen to tell me this?" She tried to control her voice, but heard it thicken.

"I tell people all the time what I am. Nobody ever believes it." He stood, pulling her to her feet, kissed her again, pressing his hips to her body. She ran her hands over his shoulders and loosened his shirt. "You don't believe me, either."

And then she smiled. "I want to believe you. I told you once, I don't want to be human."

He raised his eyebrows and smiled down at her. "I doubt you have the right genes to be anything else."

His bedroom was neat, sparsely furnished. She recognized books from Miss Trilby's Tomes, Red Dragon, Confessions of an English Opium Eater on a low shelf near the bed. Unexpectedly, he lifted her off her feet and laid her on the quilt. They kissed again, a long, complicated kiss. He took her slowly. He didn't close the door, and from the bed she could see his computer screen in the living-room. The Giger wraiths in his screen saver danced slowly to their passion. And then she closed her eyes, and the wraiths danced behind her lids.

When they were finished, she knew that she had lied; if she did not feel love, then it was something as strong and as dangerous.

She traced a vein on the back of his hand. "You were born in Italy?"

He kissed the hand with which she had been tracing his veins. "Hundreds of years ago, yes. Before my flesh became numb."

"Then why don't you speak with an accent?"

He rolled on to his back, hands behind his head, and grinned. "I've been an American longer than you have. I made it a point to get rid of my accent. Aren't you going to ask me about the sun and garlic and silver bullets?"

"All just superstition?"

"It would seem." He smiled wryly. "But there is the gradual loss of feeling."

"You say you can't love."

He groped in the bedside table for a pen. He drove the tip into his arm. "You see?" Blood welled up slowly.

"Stop! My god, must you hurt yourself?"

"Just demonstrating. The flesh has been consumed by the — by the cancer, if that's what it is. It starts in the coldest parts of the body. No nerves. I don't feel . It has nothing to do with emotion."

"And because you are territorial"

"Yes. But the emotions don't die, exactly. There's this horrible conflict. And physically, the metastasis continues, very slowly. I heard of a very old vampire whose brain had turned. He was worse than a shark, a feeding machine."

She pulled the sheets around her. The room seemed cold now that they were no longer entwined. "You seemed human enough, when you — "

"You didn't feel it when I kissed you?"

"Feel"

He guided her index finger into his mouth, under the tongue. A bony little organ there, tiny spikes, retracted under the root of the tongue.

She jerked her hand away, suddenly afraid. He caught it and kissed it again, almost mockingly.

She shuddered, tenderness confounded with terror, and buried her face in the pillow. But wasn't this what she had secretly imagined, hoped for?

"Next time," she said, turning her face up to him, like a daisy to the sun, "draw blood, do."

The wraiths in his screen saver danced.

The idea of a bus trip to Seattle filled her with dread, and she put it off, as if somehow by staying in Warren she could stop the progress of reality. But a second letter, this from her ex-sister-in-law Miriam, forced her to face facts. The chemotherapy, Miriam wrote, was not working this time. Ashley was "fading".

"Fading"!

The same mail brought a postcard from Scuroforno. Out of town on business, seeing to investments. Be well, human , he wrote.

She told Miss Trilby she needed time off to see Ashley.

"Lambkin, you look awful. Don't go on the bus. I'll lend you money for the plane, and you can pay me back when you marry some rich lawyer."

"No, Miss Trilby. I have a cold, that's all." Her skin itched, her throat and mouth were sore, her head throbbed.

They dusted books that afternoon. When Gretchen came down from the stepladder, she was so exhausted she curled up on the settee in the back room with a copy of As You Desire . The words swam before her eyes, but they might stop her from thinking, thinking about Ashley, about cancer, immortal cells killing their mortal host. Thinking, immortal . It might have worked. A different cancer. And then she stopped thinking.

And awoke in All Soul's Hospital, in pain and confusion.

"Drink. You're dehydrated," the nurse said. The room smelled of bleach, and dead flowers.

Who had brought her in?

"I don't know. Your employer? An elderly woman. Doctor will be in to talk to you. Try to drink at least a glass every hour."

In lucid moments, Gretchen rejoiced. It was the change, surely it was the change. If she lived, she would be released from all the degrading baggage that being human hung upon her.

The tests showed nothing. Of course, the virus would not culture in agar, Gretchen thought. If it was a virus.

She awoke nights thinking of human blood. She whimpered when they took away her room-mate, an anorexic widow, nearly dry, but an alluring source of a few delicious drops, if only she could get to her while the nurses were away.

Miss Trilby visited, and only by iron will did Gretchen avoid leaping upon her. Gretchen screamed, "Get away from me! I'll kill you!" The doctors, unable to identify her illness, must have worried about her outburst; she didn't get another room-mate. And they didn't release her, though she had no insurance.

Miss Trilby did not come back.

They never thought of cancer. Cancer does not bring a fever and thirst, and bright, bright eyes, and a numbness in the fingers.

Finally, she realized she had waited too long. The few moments of each day that delirium left her, she was too weak to overpower anybody.

Scuroforno came in when she was almost gone. She was awake, floating, relishing death's sweet breath, the smell of disinfectants.

"I'm under quarantine," she whispered. This was not true, but nobody had come to see her since she had turned on Miss Trilby.

He waved that aside and unwrapped a large syringe. "What you need is blood. They wouldn't think of that, though."

"Where did you get that?" Blood was so beautiful. She wanted to press Scuroforno's wrists against the delicate itching structure under her tongue, to faint in the heat from his veins.

"You're too weak to drink. Ideally, you should have several quarts of human blood. But mine will do."

She watched, sick with hunger, as he tourniqueted his arm, slipped the needle into the vein inside his elbow and drew blood.

She reached for the syringe. He held it away from her. She lunged with death-strength. He put the syringe on the table behind him, caught her wrists, held them together.

"You're stronger than I expected." He squeezed until the distant pain quelled her. She pretended to relax, still fixated on the sip of blood, so near. She darted at his throat, but he held her easily.

"Stop it! There isn't enough blood in the syringe to help you if you drink it! If I inject it, you'll get some relief. But my blood is forbidden."

Yes, she would have killed him, anybody, for blood. She sank back, shaking with desire. The needle entered her vein and she never felt the prick. She shuddered with pleasure as the blood trickled in. She could taste it. Old blood, sour with a hunger of its own, but the echo of satiety radiated from her arm.

"Here are some clothes. You should be just strong enough to walk to the car. I'll carry you from there."

She fumbled for his wrists. "No. Any more vampire blood would kill you. Or" he laughed grimly "you might be strong enough to kill me. On your feet." He lifted her like a child.

In his apartment, he carried her to the bedroom and laid her on the bed. She smelled blood. Next to her was an unconscious girl, perhaps twenty, very blonde, dressed in white suede jeans, boots, a black lace bra.

Ineptly, she went for the girl's jugular. The girl was wearing strong jasmine perfume, a cheap knock-off scent insistent and sexy.

"Wait. Don't slash her and waste it all. Be neat." He leaned over, pressed his mouth to the girl's neck.

Gretchen lunged.

She thrilled to sink her new blood-sucking organ into the girl's neck, but discovered it was at the wrong place. Hissing with anger, she broke away and tried a third time. Salty, thick comfort seeped into her body like hot whisky.

In an instant, Gretchen felt Scuroforno slip his finger into her mouth, breaking the suction. She came away giddy with frustration. Scuroforno held her arms, hurting her. The pain was in another universe. She tried to twist away.

"You're going to kill her," he warned.

"Who is she?" She shook herself into self-control, gazed longingly at the girl, who seemed comatose.

"Nobody. A girl. I take her out now and then. I never take enough blood to harm her. I don't actually enjoy hurting people."

"She's drugged?"

"No, no. I — we have immunity to bacteria and so on, but drugs are bad. I hypnotized her."

"You hypnotized — she sleeps through all this?"

"She thinks she's dead drunk. Here, help me get her sweater back on."

"She thinks you made love to her?"

Scuroforno smiled.

"You did make love to her?"

He busied himself with adjusting the girl's clothes.

Gretchen lay back against the headboard. "I need more, God, I need more."

"I know. But you'll have to find your own from now on."

"How do I get them to submit?"

Scuroforno yawned. "That's your problem. Rescuing you was hard work. Now you'll have to find your own way. You're cleverer and stronger than humans now. Did you notice your sinus infection is gone?"

"Nick, help."

He did not look at her. "It would be better if you left town now."

"But you saved me."

"You're my competitor now. Leave before the rage for blood takes you, before we go after the same prey."

She held the hunger down inside her, remembering human emotions. "It makes no difference that I love you?" And suddenly, she did love him.

"Tomorrow you'll know what hate is, too."

On the way out, she noticed he had a new screen saver: red blood cells floating on black, swelling, bursting apart.

On the bus to Seattle, she wept. Yes, she had loved him, and she had learned what hate was, too. She played with a sewing needle, stabbed her fingers. Numb. But her feelings were not numb, not yet. Would that happen? Was Nick emotionally dead?

Would the physical numbness spread? If her body was immortal, why would she need nerves, pain, to warn of danger?

Maybe she would regret the bargain she had made.

The numbness did spread. Her fingers and hands were immune to pain. But she still felt thirst. The cancer metastasized into her tongue and nerves, wanted to be fed.

Her seat-mate was a Mormon missionary, separated from his partner because the bus was crowded. In Chicago, he asked her to change seats, so he could sit with his partner. But she refused. It didn't fit her plan.

She stroked his cheek, held the back of his neck in a vice grip, all the while smiling, cat-like. Scarcely feeling her own skin, but vividly feeling the nourishment under his. He tried to repel her, laughing uneasily, taking it for an erotic game. A forward, sluttish gentile woman. Then he was fighting, uselessly. He twisted her thumb back, childish self-defence. She felt no pain. Then he was weeping, softening, falling into a trance. She kissed his throat with her open mouth. Drank from him. Drank again and again. Had he fought, she could have broken his neck. She was completely changed.

In Seattle, the floor nurse in Paediatrics challenged her. Sniffing phenol and the sweet, sick urine that could never quite be cleaned up, Gretchen glanced at her reflection in a dead computer screen behind the nurse. She did look predatory now. Like a wax manikin, but also like a cougar. Powerful. Not like anybody's mother. Two other nurses drifted up, as if sensing trouble.

She showed the nurse her driver's licence. They almost believed her, then. Let her go down the hall, to room 409. But still the nurses' eyes followed her. She had changed.

She opened the door. The floor nurse drifted in behind her.

This balding, emaciated tyke, tangled in tubing, could not be her Ashley.

Ashley had changed, too. From a less benign cancer.

The nurse sniffed. "I'm sorry. She's gone downhill a lot in the last few weeks." The nurse clearly did not approve of noncustodial mothers. Maybe still did not believe this quiet, strong woman was the mother.

When Gretchen had been human, she would have been humiliated, would have tried to explain that Ashley had been taken from her by legal tricks. Now, she considered the nurse simply as a convenient beverage container from which, under suitable conditions, she might sip. She smiled, a cat smile, and the nurse could not hold her gaze.

"Ashley," said Gretchen, when they were alone. She had brought the Jan Pienkowski book, wrapped in red velvet paper with black cats on it. Ashley liked cats. She would love the scary haunted house pop-ups. They would read them together. Gretchen put the gift on the chair, because first she must tend to more important things. "Ashley, it's Mommy. Wake up, darling."

But the little girl only opened her eyes, huge and bruised in the pinched face, and sobbed feebly.

Gretchen lowered the rail on the bed and slid her arm under Ashley. The child was frighteningly light.

Gretchen felt the warmth of her feverish child, smelled the antiseptic of the room, the sweet girl-smell of her daughter's skin. But those were all at a distance. Gretchen was being subsumed by something immortal.

We are very territorial . Isn't that what Nick had said? It's not an emotional numbness; it's physical . And the memory of him jabbing the pen into his arm, the needle into his vein, her own numb fingers, how everything, even her daughter's warmth and the smell of the child and the room were all receding, distant. Immortal. Numb. Strong beyond human strength. Alone.

She touched her new, predatory mouth to her child's throat. Would Ashley thank her for this?

Now she must decide.

The Vengeful Spirit of Lake Nepeakea

Tanya Huff

The author of more than sixteen novels, Canada's Tanya Huff has written five books featuring vampiric ex-police detective Victory ("Vicki") Nelson : Blood Price, Blood Trail, Blood Lines, Blood Pact and Blood Debt. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies such as Northern Frights, Vampire Detectives and Time of the Vampire, and have been collected in Stealing Magic and What Ho, Magic!. Her recent fantasy novel The Second Summoning is a direct sequel to her 1998 volume Summon the Keeper, and she is currently working on a new Torin Kerr space opera .

" I have no idea why vampires have been so incredibly popular for the last decade," says the author. "Perhaps it's our fascination with perpetual adolescence. As the poster line for the 1987 Warner Bros, movie The Lost Boys says, 'Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire .'

"Perhaps in those cultures that have removed themselves from any connection with a natural cycle of life it's another way to deny the inevitable. An easy immortality as it were. Perhaps it's because there's something innately tragic about a vampire, hero or villain the fragility underlying the strength. Or perhaps there's just a lot of good people writing vampire fiction these days and readers are going where the quality is."

Huff reveals that she got the idea for "The Vengeful Spirit of Lake Nepeakea" while visiting a time-share resort down in Florida: "In this time of political correctness, it gets harder and harder to find a satisfactory villain, but after spending two hours with a high-pressure, smarmy time-share salesman, I realized I'd found a villain that pretty much everyone would be quite happy to see get what was coming to them.

" The tale grew in telling as I began to research the weird and wonderful possibilities in deep-water lakes. If any of you want to know what's really going on here, pick up a copy of Michael Bradley's fascinating book , More than a Myth: The Search for the Monster of Muskrat Lake. It's certainly changed my mind about swimming after dark "

"Camping?"

"Why sound so amazed?" Dragging the old turquoise cooler behind her, Vicki Nelson, once one of Toronto's finest and currently the city's most successful paranormal investigator, backed out of Mike Celluci's crawl space.

"Why? Maybe because you've never been camping in your life. Maybe because your idea of roughing it is a hotel without room service. Maybe" — he moved just far enough for Vicki to get by then followed her out into the rec room — "because you're a"

"A?" Setting the cooler down beside two sleeping bags and a pair of ancient swim fins, she turned to face him. "A what , Mike?" Grey eyes silvered.

"Stop it."

Grinning, she turned her attention back to the cooler. "Besides, I won't be on vacation, I'll be working. You'll be the one enjoying the great outdoors."

"Vicki, my idea of the great outdoors is going to the Sky dome for a Jay's game."

"No one's forcing you to come." Setting the lid to one side, she curled her nose at the smell coming out of the cooler's depths. "When was the last time you used this thing?"

"Police picnic, 1992. Why?"

She turned it up on its end. The desiccated body of a mouse rolled out, bounced twice and came to rest with its sightless little eyes staring up at Celluci. "I think you need to buy a new cooler."

"I think I need a better explanation than ' I've got a great way for you to use up your long weekend ,'" he sighed, kicking the tiny corpse under the rec room couch.

"So this developer from Toronto, Stuart Gordon, bought an old lodge on the shores of Lake Nepeakea and he wants to build a rustic, time-share resort so junior executives can relax in the woods. Unfortunately, one of the surveyors disappeared and local opinion seems to be that he's pissed off the lake's protective spirit"

"The what?"

Vicki pulled out to pass a transport and deftly reinserted the van back into her own lane before replying. "The protective spirit. You know, the sort of thing that rises out of the lake to vanquish evil." A quick glance towards the passenger seat brought her brows in. "Mike, are you all right? You're going to leave permanent finger marks in the dashboard."

He shook his head. The truck-load of logs coming down from Northern Ontario had missed them by inches. Feet at the very most. All right, maybe yards but not very many of them . When they'd left the city, just after sunset, it had seemed logical that Vicki, with her better night sight, should drive. He was regretting that logic now but, realizing he didn't have a hope in hell of gaining control of the vehicle, he tried to force himself to relax. "The speed limit isn't just a good idea," he growled through clenched teeth, "it's the law."

She grinned, her teeth very white in the darkness. "You didn't used to be this nervous."

"I didn't used to have cause." His fingers wouldn't release their grip so he left them where they were. "So this missing surveyor, what did he"

"She."

"She do to piss off the protective spirit?"

"Nothing much. She was just working for Stuart Gordon."

"The same Stuart Gordon you're working for."

"The very one."

Right . Celluci stared out at the trees and tried not to think about how fast they were passing. Vicki Nelson against the protective spirit of Lake Nepeakea. That's one for pay for view

"This is the place."

"No. In order for this to be 'the place' there'd have to be something here. It has to be ' a place' before it can be ' the place' ."

"I hate to admit it," Vicki muttered, leaning forward and peering over the arc of the steering wheel, "but you've got a point." They'd gone through the village of Dulvie, turned right at the ruined barn and followed the faded signs to the Lodge. The road, if the rutted lanes of the last few miles could be called a road, had ended, as per the directions she'd received, in a small gravel parking lot — or more specifically in a hard-packed rectangular area that could now be called a parking lot because she'd stopped her van on it. "He said you could see the lodge from here."

Celluci snorted. "Maybe you can."

"No. I can't. All I can see are trees." At least she assumed they were trees; the high contrast between the area her headlights covered and the total darkness beyond made it difficult to tell for sure. Silently calling herself several kinds of fool, she switched off the lights. The shadows separated into half a dozen large evergreens and the silhouette of a roof steeply angled to shed snow.

Since it seemed they'd arrived, Vicki shut off the engine. After a heartbeat's silence, the night exploded into a cacophony of discordant noise. Hands over sensitive ears, she sank back into the seat. "What the hell is that?"

"Horny frogs."

"How do you know?" she demanded.

He gave her a superior smile. "PBS."

"Oh." They sat there for a moment, listening to the frogs. "The creatures of the night," Vicki sighed, "what music they make." Snorting derisively, she got out of the van. "Somehow, I expected the middle of nowhere to be a lot quieter."

Stuart Gordon had sent Vicki the key to the lodge's back door and once she switched on the main breaker, they found themselves in a modern, stainless-steel kitchen that wouldn't have looked out of place in any small, trendy restaurant back in Toronto. The sudden hum of the refrigerator turning on momentarily drowned out the frogs and both Vicki and Celluci relaxed.

"So now what?" he asked.

"Now we unpack your food from the cooler, we find you a room, and we make the most of the short time we have until dawn."

"And when does Mr Gordon arrive?"

"Tomorrow evening. Don't worry, I'll be up."

"And I'm supposed to do what, tomorrow in the daytime?"

"I'll leave my notes out. I'm sure something'll occur to you."

"I thought I was on vacation?"

"Then do what you usually do on vacation."

"Your footwork." He folded his arms. "And on my last vacation — which was also your idea — I almost lost a kidney." Closing the refrigerator door, Vicki crossed the room between one heartbeat and the next. Leaning into him, their bodies touching between ankle and chest, she smiled into his eyes and pushed the long curl of hair back off his forehead. "Don't worry, I'll protect you from the spirit of the lake. I have no intention of sharing you with another legendary being."

"Legendary?" He couldn't stop a smile. "Think highly of yourself, don't you?"

"Are you sure you'll be safe in the van?"

"Stop fussing. You know I'll be fine." Pulling her jeans up over her hips, she stared out of the window and shook her head. "There's a whole lot of nothing out there."

From the bed, Celluci could see a patch of stars and the top of one of the evergreens. "True enough."

"And I really don't like it."

"Then why are we here?"

"Stuart Gordon just kept talking. I don't even remember saying yes but the next thing I knew, I'd agreed to do the job."

"He pressured you?" Celiuci's emphasis on the final pronoun made it quite clear that he hadn't believed such a thing was possible.

"Not pressured, no. Convinced with extreme prejudice."

"He sounds like a prince."

"Yeah? Well, so was Machiavelli." Dressed, she leaned over the bed and kissed him lightly. "Want to hear something romantic? When the day claims me, yours will be the only life I'll be able to feel."

"Romantic?" His breathing quickened as she licked at the tiny puncture wounds on his wrist. "I feel like a box luuu ouch! All right. It's romantic."

Although she'd tried to keep her voice light when she'd mentioned it to Celluci, Vicki really didn't like the great outdoors. Maybe it was because she understood the wilderness of glass and concrete and needed the anonymity of three million lives packed tightly around hers. Standing by the van, she swept her gaze from the first hints of dawn to the last lingering shadows of night and couldn't help feeling excluded, that there was something beyond what she could see that she wasn't a part of. She doubted Stuart Gordon's junior executives would feel a part of it either and wondered why anyone would want to build a resort in the midst of such otherness.

The frogs had stopped trying to get laid and the silence seemed to be waiting for something.

Waiting

Vicki glanced towards Lake Nepeakea. It lay like a silver mirror down at the bottom of a rocky slope. Not a ripple broke the surface. Barely a mile away, a perfect reflection brought the opposite shore closer still.

Waiting

Whipper-will!

Vicki winced at the sudden, piercing sound and got into the van. After locking both outer and inner doors, she stripped quickly — if she were found during the day, naked would be the least of her problems — laid down between the high, padded sides of the narrow bed and waited for the dawn. The bird call, repeated with Chinese water torture frequency, cut its way through special seals and interior walls.

"Man, that's annoying," she muttered, linking her fingers over her stomach. "I wonder if Celluci can sleep through"

As soon as he heard the van door close, Celluci fell into a dreamless sleep that lasted until just past noon. When he woke, he stared up at the inside of the roof and wondered where he was. The rough lumber looked like it'd been coated in creosote in the far distant past.

"No insulation, hate to be here in the winter"

Then he remembered where here was and came fully awake.

Vicki had dragged him out to a wilderness lodge, north of Georgian Bay, to hunt for the local and apparently homicidal protective lake spirit.

A few moments later, his sleeping bag neatly rolled on the end of the old iron bed, he was in the kitchen making a pot of coffee. That kind of a realization upon waking needed caffeine.

On the counter next to the coffee-maker, right where he'd be certain to find it first thing, he found a file labelled "Lake Nepeakea" in Vicki's unmistakable handwriting. The first few pages of glossy card stock had been clearly sent by Stuart Gordon along with the key. An artist's conception of the time-share resort, they showed a large L-shaped building where the lodge now stood and three dozen "cottages" scattered through the woods, front doors linked by broad gravel paths. Apparently, the guests would commute out to their personal chalets by golf cart.

"Which they can also use on" — Celluci turned the page and shook his head in disbelief — "the nine-hole golf course." Clearly, a large part of Mr Gordon's building plan involved bulldozers. And right after the bulldozers would come the cappuccino. He shuddered.

The next few pages were clipped together and turned out to be photocopies of newspaper articles covering the disappearance of the surveyor. She'd been working with her partner in the late evening, trying to finish up a particularly marshy bit of shore destined to be filled in and paved over for tennis courts, when, according to her partner, she'd stepped back into the mud, announced something had moved under her foot, lost her balance, fell, screamed and disappeared. The OPP, aided by local volunteers, had set up an extensive search but she hadn't been found. Since the area was usually avoided because of the sink holes, sink holes a distraught Stuart Gordon swore he knew nothing about — "Probably distraught about having to move his tennis courts," Celluci muttered — the official verdict allowed that she'd probably stepped in one and been sucked under the mud.

The headline on the next page declared developer angers spirit, and in slightly smaller type, Surveyor Pays the Price. The picture showed an elderly woman with long grey braids and a hawk-like profile staring enigmatically out over the water. First impressions suggested a First Nations elder. In actually reading the text, however, Celluci discovered that Mary Joseph had moved out to Dulvie from Toronto in 1995 and had become, in the years since, the self-proclaimed keeper of local myth. According to Ms Joseph, although there had been many sightings over the years, there had been only two other occasions when the spirit of the lake had felt threatened enough to kill. " It protects the lake" she was quoted as saying, " from those who would disturb its peace ."

"Two weeks ago," Celluci noted, checking the date. "Tragic but hardly a reason for Stuart Gordon to go to the effort of convincing Vicki to leave the city."

The final photocopy included a close-up of a car door that looked like it had been splashed with acid, spirit attacks developer's vehicle. During the night of 13 May the protector of Lake Nepeakea had crawled up into the parking lot of the lodge and secreted something corrosive and distinctly fishy against Stuart Gordon's brand-new Isuzu trooper. A trail of dead bracken, a little over a foot wide and smelling strongly of rotting fish, led back to the lake . Mary Joseph seemed convinced it was a manifestation of the spirit, the local police were looking for anyone who might have information about the vandalism, and Stuart Gordon announced he was bringing in a special investigator from Toronto to settle it once and for all.

It was entirely probable that the surveyor had stepped into a mud hole and that local vandals were using the legends of the spirit against an unpopular developer. Entirely probable. But living with Vicki had forced Mike Celluci to deal with half a dozen improbable things every morning before breakfast so, mug in hand, he headed outside to investigate the crime scene.

Because of the screen of evergreens although, given their size, barricade was probably the more descriptive word — the parking lot couldn't be seen from the lodge. Considering the impenetrable appearance of the overlapping branches, Celluci was willing to bet that not even light would get through. The spirit could have done anything it wanted to, up to and including changing the oil, in perfect secrecy.

Brushing one or two small insects away from his face, Celluci found the path they'd used the night before and followed it. By the time he reached the van, the one or two insects had become twenty-nine or thirty and he felt the first bite on the back of his neck. When he slapped the spot, his fingers came away dotted with blood.

"Vicki's not going to be happy about that," he grinned, wiping it off on his jeans. By the second and third bites, he'd stopped grinning. By the fourth and fifth, he really didn't give a damn what Vicki thought. By the time he'd stopped counting, he was running for the lake, hoping that the breeze he could see stirring its surface would be enough to blow the little bastards away.

The faint but unmistakable scent of rotting fish rose from the dead bracken crushed under his pounding feet and he realized that he was using the path made by the manifestation. It was about two feet wide and led down an uncomfortably steep slope from the parking lot to the lake. But not exactly all the way to the lake. The path ended about three feet above the water on a granite ledge.

Swearing, mostly at Vicki, Celluci threw himself backwards, somehow managing to save both his coffee and himself from taking an unexpected swim. The following cloud of insects effortlessly matched the move. A quick glance through the bugs showed the ledge tapering off to the right. He bounded down it to the water's edge and found himself standing on a small, man-made beach staring at a floating dock that stretched out maybe fifteen feet into the lake. Proximity to the water had seemed to discourage the swarm, so he headed for the dock hoping that the breeze would be stronger fifteen feet out.

It was. Flicking a few bodies out of his coffee, Celluci took a long grateful drink and turned to look back up at the lodge. Studying the path he'd taken, he was amazed he hadn't broken an ankle and had to admit a certain appreciation for who or what had created it. A greying staircase made of split logs offered a more conventional way to the water and the tiny patch of gritty sand, held in place by a stone wall. Stuart Gordon's plans had included a much larger beach and had replaced the old wooden dock with three concrete piers.

"One for papa bear, one for mama bear, and one for baby bear," Celluci mused, shuffling around on the gently rocking platform until he faced the water. Not so far away, the opposite shore was an unbroken wall of trees. He didn't know if there were bears in this part of the province but there were certainly bathroom facilities for any number of them. Letting the breeze push his hair back off his face, he took another swallow of rapidly cooling coffee and listened to the silence. It was unnerving.

The sudden roar of a motor boat came as a welcome relief. Watching it bounce its way up the lake, he considered how far the sound carried and made a mental note to close the window should Vicki spend any significant portion of the night with him.

The moment distance allowed, the boat's driver waved over the edge of the cracked windshield and, in a great, banked turn that sprayed a huge fantail of water out behind him, headed towards the exact spot where Celluci stood. Celluci's fingers tightened around the handle of the mug but he held his ground. Still turning, the driver cut his engines and drifted the last few feet to the dock. As empty bleach bottles slowly crumpled under the gentle impact, he jumped out and tied off his bow line.

"Frank Patton," he said, straightening from the cleat and holding out a callused hand. "You must be the guy that developer's brought in from the city to capture the spirit of the lake."

"Detective Sergeant Mike Celluci." His own age or a little younger, Frank Patton had a working man's grip that was just a little too forceful. Celluci returned pressure for pressure. "And I'm just spending a long weekend in the woods."

Patton's dark brows drew down. "But I thought"

"You thought I was some weirdo psychic you could impress by crushing his fingers." The other man looked down at their joined hands and had the grace to flush. As he released his hold, so did Celluci. He'd played this game too often to lose at it. "I suggest, if you get the chance to meet the actual investigator, you don't come on quite so strong. She's liable to feed you your preconceptions.''

"She's"

"Asleep right now. We got in late and she's likely to be up investigating tonight."

"Yeah. Right." Flexing his fingers, Patton stared down at the toes of his workboots. "It's just, you know, we heard that, well" Sucking in a deep breath, he looked up and grinned. "Oh, hell, talk about getting off on the wrong foot. Can I get you a beer, Detective?"

Celluci glanced over at the Styrofoam cooler in the back of the boat and was tempted for a moment. As sweat rolled painfully into the bug bites on the back of his neck, he remembered just how good a cold beer could taste. "No, thanks," he sighed with a disgusted glare into his mug. "I've, uh, still got coffee."

To his surprise, Patton nodded and asked, "How long've you been dry? My brother-in-law gets that exact same look when some damn fool offers him a drink on a hot almost summer afternoon," he explained as Celluci stared at him in astonishment. "Goes to AA meetings in Bigwood twice a week."

Remembering all the bottles he'd climbed into during those long months Vicki had been gone, Celluci shrugged. "About two years now — give or take."

"I got generic cola"

He dumped the dregs of cold bug-infested coffee into the lake. The Ministry of Natural Resources could kiss his ass. "Love one," he said.

"So essentially everyone in town and everyone who owns property around the lake and everyone in a 100-mile radius has reason to want Stuart Gordon gone."

"Essentially," Celluci agreed, tossing a gnawed chicken bone aside and pulling another piece out of the bucket. He'd waited to eat until Vicki got up, maintaining the illusion that it was a ritual they continued to share. "According to Frank Patton, he hasn't endeared himself to his new neighbours. This place used to belong to an Anne Kellough who What?"

Vicki frowned and leaned towards him. "You're covered in bites."

"Tell me about it." The reminder brought his hand up to scratch at the back of his neck. "You know what Nepeakea means? It's an old Indian word that translates as 'I'm fucking sick of being eaten alive by black flies; let's get the hell out of here'."

"Those old Indians could get a lot of mileage out of a word."

Celluci snorted. "Tell me about it."

"Anne Kellough?"

"What, not even one poor sweet baby?"

Stretching out her leg under the table, she ran her foot up the inseam of his jeans. "Poor sweet baby."

"That'd be a lot more effective if you weren't wearing hiking boots." Her laugh was one of the things that hadn't changed when she had. Her smile was too white and too sharp and it made too many new promises but her laugh remained fully human. He waited until she finished, chewing, swallowing, congratulating himself for evoking it, then said, "Anne Kellough ran this place as sort of a therapy camp. Last summer, after ignoring her for thirteen years, the Ministry of Health people came down on her kitchen. Renovations cost more than she thought, the bank foreclosed, and Stuart Gordon bought it twenty minutes later."

"That explains why she wants him gone; what about everyone else?"

"Lifestyle."

"They think he's gay?"

"Not his, theirs. The people who live out here, down in the village and around the lake — while not adverse to taking the occasional tourist for everything they can get — like the quiet, they like the solitude and, God help them, they even like the woods. The boys who run the hunting and fishing camp at the west end of the lake"

"Boys?"

"I'm quoting here. The boys," he repeated, with emphasis, "say Gordon's development will kill the fish and scare off the game. He nearly got his ass kicked by one of them, Pete Wegler, down at the local gas station and then got tossed out on said ass by the owner when he called the place quaint."

"In the sort of tone that adds, and 'a Starbucks would be a big improvement'?" When Celluci raised a brow, she shrugged. "I've spoken to him, it's not that much of an extrapolation."

"Yeah, exactly that sort of tone. Frank also told me that people with kids are concerned about the increase in traffic right through the centre of the village."

"Afraid they'll start losing children and pets under expensive sport utes?"

"That, and they're worried about an increase in taxes to maintain the road with all the extra traffic." Pushing away from the table, he started closing plastic containers and carrying them to the fridge. "Apparently, Stuart Gordon, ever so diplomatically, told one of the village women that this was no place to raise kids."

"What happened?"

"Frank says they got them apart before it went much beyond name-calling."

Wondering how far "much beyond name-calling" went, Vicki watched Mike clean up the remains of his meal. "Are you sure he's pissed off more than just these few people? Even if this was already a resort and he didn't have to rezone, local council must've agreed to his building permit."

"Yeah, and local opinion would feed local council to the spirit right alongside Mr Gordon. Rumour has it they've been bought off."

Tipping her chair back against the wall, she smiled up at him. "Can I assume from your busy day that you've come down on the mud hole/vandals side of the argument?"

"It does seem the most likely." He turned and scratched at the back of his neck again. When his fingertips came away damp, he heard her quick intake of breath. When he looked up, she was crossing the kitchen. Cool fingers wrapped around the side of his face.

"You didn't shave."

It took him a moment to find his voice. "I'm on vacation."

Her breath lapped against him, then her tongue.

The lines between likely and unlikely blurred.

Then the sound of an approaching engine jerked him out of her embrace.

Vicki licked her lips and sighed. "Six cylinder, sport utility, four-wheel drive, all the extras, black with gold trim."

Celluci tucked his shirt back in. "Stuart Gordon told you what he drives."

"Unless you think I can tell all that from the sound of the engine."

"Not likely."

"A detective sergeant? I'm impressed." Pale hands in the pockets of his tweed blazer, Stuart Gordon leaned conspiratorially in towards Celluci, too many teeth showing in too broad a grin. "I don't suppose you could fix a few parking tickets."

"No."

Thin lips pursed in exaggerated reaction to the blunt monosyllable. "Then what do you do , Detective Sergeant?"

"Violent crimes."

Thinking that sounded a little too much like a suggestion, Vicki intervened. "Detective Celluci has agreed to assist me this weekend. Between us, we'll be able to keep a twenty-four-hour watch."

"Twenty-four hours?" The developer's brows drew in. "I'm not paying more for that."

"I'm not asking you to."

"Good." Stepping up on to the raised hearth as though it were a stage, he smiled with all the sincerity of a television infomercial. "Then I'm glad to have you aboard, Detective. Mike can I call you Mike?" He continued without waiting for an answer. "Call me Stuart. Together we'll make this a safe place for the weary masses able to pay a premium price for a premium week in the woods." A heartbeat later, his smile grew strained. "Don't you two have detecting to do?"

"Call me Stuart?" Shaking his head, Celluci followed Vicki's dark on dark silhouette out to the parking lot. "Why is he here?"

"He's bait."

"Bait? The man's a certified asshole, sure, but we are not using him to attract an angry lake spirit."

She turned and walked backward so she could study his face. Sometimes he forgot how well she could see in the dark and forgot to mask his expressions. "Mike, you don't believe that call-me-Stuart has actually pissed off some kind of vengeful spirit protecting Lake Nepeakea?"

"You're the one who said bait"

"Because we're not going to catch the person, or persons, who threw acid on his car unless we catch them in the act. He understands that."

"Oh. Right."

Feeling the bulk of the van behind her, she stopped. "You didn't answer my question."

He sighed and folded his arms, wishing he could see her as well as she could see him. "Vicki, in the last four years I have been attacked by demons, mummies, zombies, werewolves"

"That wasn't an attack, that was a misunderstanding."

"He went for my throat, I count it as an attack. I've offered my blood to the bastard son of Henry VIII and I've spent two years watching you hide from the day. There isn't anything much I don't believe in any more."

"But"

"I believe in you," he interrupted, "and from there, it's not that big a step to just about anywhere. Are you going to speak with Mary Joseph tonight?"

His tone suggested the discussion was over. "No, I was going to check means and opportunity on that list of names you gave me." She glanced down towards the lake then up at him, not entirely certain what she was looking for in either instance. "Are you going to be all right out here on your own?"

"Why the hell wouldn't I be?"

"No reason." She kissed him, got into the van, and leaned out the open window to add, "Try and remember, Sigmund, that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

Celluci watched Vicki drive away and then turned on his flashlight and played the beam over the side of Stuart's car. Although it would have been more helpful to have seen the damage, he had to admit that the body shop had done a good job. And to give the man credit, however reluctantly, developing a wilderness property did provide more of an excuse than most of his kind had for the four-wheel drive.

Making his way over to an outcropping of rock where he could see both the parking lot and the lake but not be seen, Celluci sat down and turned off his light. According to Frank Patton, the black flies only fed during the day and the water was still too cold for mosquitoes. He wasn't entirely convinced but since nothing had bitten him so far the information seemed accurate. "I wonder if Stuart knows his little paradise is crawling with bloodsuckers." Right thumb stroking the puncture wound on his left wrist, he turned towards the lodge.

His eyes widened.

Behind the evergreens, the lodge blazed with light. Inside lights. Outside lights. Every light in the place. The harsh yellow-white illumination washed out the stars up above and threw everything below into such sharp relief that even the lush, spring growth seemed manufactured. The shadows under the distant trees were now solid, impenetrable sheets of darkness.

"Well at least Ontario Hydro's glad he's here." Shaking his head in disbelief, Celluci returned to his surveillance.

Too far away for the light to reach it, the lake threw up shimmering reflections of the stars and lapped gently against the shore.

Finally back on the paved road, Vicki unclenched her teeth and followed the southern edge of the lake towards the village. With nothing between the passenger side of the van and the water but a whitewashed guard rail and a few tumbled rocks, it was easy enough to look out the window and pretend she was driving on the lake itself. When the shoulder widened into a small parking area and a boat ramp, she pulled over and shut off the van.

The water moved inside its narrow channel like liquid darkness, opaque and mysterious. The part of the night that belonged to her ended at the water's edge.

"Not the way it's supposed to work," she muttered, getting out of the van and walking down the boat ramp. Up close, she could see through four or five inches of liquid to a stony bottom and the broken shells of freshwater clams, but beyond that it was hard not to believe she couldn't just walk across to the other side.

The ubiquitous spring chorus of frogs suddenly fell silent, drawing Vicki's attention around to a marshy cove off to her right. The silence was so complete she thought she could hear a half a hundred tiny amphibian hearts beating. One. Two

"Hey, there."

She'd spun around and taken a step out into the lake before her brain caught up with her reaction. The feel of cold water filling her hiking boots brought her back to herself and she damped the hunter in her eyes before the man in the canoe had time to realize his danger.

Paddle in the water, holding the canoe in place, he nodded down at Vicki's feet. "You don't want to be doing that."

"Doing what?"

"Wading at night. You're going to want to see where you're going, old Nepeakea drops off fast." He jerked his head back towards the silvered darkness. "Even the ministry boys couldn't tell you how deep she is in the middle. She's got so much loose mud on the bottom it kept throwing back their sonar readings."

"Then what are you doing here?"

"Well, I'm not wading, that's for sure."

"Or answering my question," Vicki muttered, stepping back out on the shore. Wet feet making her less than happy, she half hoped for another smartass comment.

"I often canoe at night. I like the quiet." He grinned in at her, clearly believing he was too far away and there was too little light for her to see the appraisal that went with it. "You must be that investigator from Toronto. I saw your van when I was up at the lodge today."

"You must be Frank Patton. You've changed your boat."

"Can't be quiet in a fifty-horsepower Evinrude, can I? You going in to see Mary Joseph?"

"No. I was going in to see Anne Kellough."

"Second house past the stop sign on the right. Little yellow bungalow with a carport." He slid backward so quietly even Vicki wouldn't have known he was moving had she not been watching him. He handled the big aluminium canoe with practised ease. "I'd offer you a lift but I'm sure you're in a hurry."

Vicki smiled. "Thanks anyway." Her eyes silvered. "Maybe another time."

She was still smiling as she got into the van. Out on the lake, Frank Patton splashed about trying to retrieve the canoe paddle that had dropped from nerveless fingers.

"Frankly, I hate the little bastard, but there's no law against that." Anne Kellough pulled her sweater tighter and leaned back against the porch railing. "He's the one who set the health department on me you know."

"I didn't."

"Oh, yeah. He came up here about three months before it happened looking for land and he wanted mine. I wouldn't sell it to him so he figured out a way to take it." Anger quickened her breathing and flared her nostrils. "He as much as told me, after it was all over, with that big shit-eating grin and his, 'Rough, luck, Ms Kellough, too bad the banks can't be more forgiving.' The patronizing asshole." Eyes narrowed, she glared at Vicki. "And you know what really pisses me off? I used to rent the lodge out to people who needed a little silence in their lives; you know, so they could maybe hear what was going on inside their heads. If Stuart Gordon has his way, there won't be any silence and the place'll be awash in brand names and expensive dental work."

"If Stuart Gordon has his way?" Vicki repeated, brows rising.

"Well, it's not built yet, is it?"

"He has all the paperwork filed; what's going to stop him?"

The other woman picked at a flake of paint, her whole attention focused on lifting it from the railing. Just when Vicki felt she'd have to ask again, Anne looked up and out towards the dark waters of the lake. "That's the question, isn't it," she said softly, brushing her hair back off her face.

The lake seemed no different to Vicki than it ever had. About to suggest that the question acquire an answer, she suddenly frowned. "What happened to your hand? That looks like an acid burn."

"It is." Anne turned her arm so that the burn was more clearly visible to them both. "Thanks to Stuart fucking Gordon, I couldn't afford to take my car in to the garage and I had to change the battery myself. I thought I was being careful" She shrugged.

"A new battery, eh? Afraid I can't help you, miss." Ken, owner of Ken's Garage and Auto Body, pressed one knee against the side of the van and leaned, letting it take his weight as he filled the tank. "But if you're not in a hurry I can go into Bigwood tomorrow and get you one." Before Vicki could speak, he went on. "No, wait, tomorrow's Sunday, place'll be closed. Closed Monday too seeing as how it's Victoria Day." He shrugged and smiled. "I'll be open but that won't get you a battery."

"It doesn't have to be a new one. I just want to make sure that when I turn her off on the way home I can get her started again." Leaning back against the closed driver's side door, she gestured into the work bay where a small pile of old batteries had been more or less stacked against the back wall. "What about one of them?"

Ken turned, peered, and shook his head. "Damn but you've got good eyes, miss. It's dark as bloody pitch in there."

"Thank you."

"None of them batteries will do you any good though, cause I drained them all a couple of days ago. They're just too dangerous, eh? You know, if kids get poking around?" He glanced over at the gas pump and carefully squirted the total up to an even thirty-two dollars. "You're that investigator working up at the lodge, aren't you?" he asked as he pushed the bills she handed him into a greasy pocket and counted out three loonies in change. "Trying to lay the spirit?"

"Trying to catch whoever vandalized Stuart Gordon's car."

"He, uh, get that fixed then?"

"Good as new." Vicki opened the van door and paused, one foot up on the running board. "I take it he didn't get it fixed here?"

"Here?" The slightly worried expression on Ken's broad face vanished to be replaced by a curled lip and narrowed eyes. "My gas isn't good enough for that pissant. He's planning to put his own tanks in if he gets that goddamned yuppie resort built."

"If?"

Much as Anne Kellough had, he glanced towards the lake. "If."

About to swing up into the van, two five-gallon glass jars sitting outside the office caught her eye. The lids were off and it looked very much as though they were airing out. "I haven't seen jars like that in years," she said, pointing. "I don't suppose you want to sell them?"

Ken turned to follow her finger. "Can't. They belong to my cousin. I just borrowed them, eh? Her kids were supposed to come and get them but, hey, you know kids."

According to call-me-Stuart, the village was no place to raise kids.

Glass jars would be handy for transporting acid mixed with fish bits.

And where would they have got the fish ? she wondered, pulling carefully out of the gas station. Maybe from one of the boys who runs the hunting and fishing camp .

Pete Wegler stood in the door of his trailer, a slightly confused look on his face. "Do I know you?"

Vicki smiled. "Not yet. Aren't you going to invite me in?"

Ten to twelve. The lights were still on at the lodge. Celluci stood, stretched, and wondered how much longer Vicki was going to be. Surely everyone in Dulvie's asleep by now .

Maybe she stopped for a bite to eat.

The second thought followed the first too quickly for him to prevent it so he ignored it instead. Turning his back on the lodge, he sat down and stared out at the lake. Water looked almost secretive at night, he decided as his eyes readjusted to the darkness.

In his business, secretive meant guilty.

"And if Stuart Gordon has got a protective spirit pissed off enough to kill, what then?" he wondered aloud, glancing down at his watch.

Midnight.

Which meant absolutely nothing to that ever-expanding catalogue of things that went bump in the night. Experience had taught him that the so-called supernatural was just about as likely to attack at two in the afternoon as at midnight but he couldn't not react to the knowledge that he was as far from the dubious safety of daylight as he was able to get.

Even the night seemed affected.

Waiting

A breeze blew in off the lake and the hair lifted on both his arms.

Waiting for something to happen.

About fifteen feet from shore, a fish broke through the surface of the water like Alice going the wrong way through the Looking Glass. It leaped up, up, and was suddenly grabbed by the end of a glistening, grey tube as big around as his biceps. Teeth, or claws or something back inside the tube's opening sank into the fish and together they finished the arch of the leap. A hump, the same glistening grey, slid up and back into the water, followed by what could only have been the propelling beat of a flat tail. From teeth to tail the whole thing had to be at least nine feet long.

"Jesus H. Christ." He took a deep breath and added, "On crutches."

"I'm telling you, Vicki, I saw the spirit of the lake manifest."

"You saw something eat a fish." Vicki stared out at the water but saw only the reflection of a thousand stars. "You probably saw a bigger fish eat a fish. A long, narrow pike leaping up after a nice fat bass."

About to deny he'd seen any such thing, Celluci suddenly frowned. "How do you know so much about fish?"

"I had a little talk with Pete Wegler tonight. He provided the fish for the acid bath, provided by Ken the garageman, in glass jars provided by Ken's cousin, Kathy Boomhower — the mother who went much beyond name calling with our boy Stuart. Anne Kellough did the deed — she's convinced Gordon called in the Health Department to get his hands on the property — having been transported quietly to the site in Frank Patton's canoe." She grinned. "I feel like Hercule Poirot on the Orient Express."

"Yeah? Well, I'm feeling a lot more Stephen King than Agatha Christie."

Sobering, Vicki laid her hand on the barricade of his crossed arms and studied his face. "You're really freaked by this, aren't you?"

"I don't know exactly what I saw, but I didn't see a fish get eaten by another fish."

The muscles under her hand were rigid and he was staring past her, out at the lake. "Mike, what is it?"

"I told you, Vicki. I don't know exactly what I saw." In spite of everything, he still liked his world defined. Reluctantly transferring his gaze to the pale oval of her upturned face, he sighed. "How much, if any, of this do you want me to tell Mr Gordon tomorrow?"

"How about none? I'll tell him myself after sunset."

"Fine. It's late, I'm turning in. I assume you'll be staking out the parking lot for the rest of the night."

"What for? I guarantee the vengeful spirits won't be back." Her voice suggested that in a direct, one-on-one confrontation a vengeful spirit wouldn't stand a chance. Celluci remembered the thing that rose up out of the lake and wasn't so sure.

"That doesn't matter, you promised twenty-four-hour protection."

"Yeah, but" His expression told her that if she wasn't going to stay, he would. "Fine, I'll watch the car. Happy?"

"That you're doing what you said you were going to do? Ecstatic." Celluci unfolded his arms, pulled her close enough to kiss the frown lines between her brows, and headed for the lodge. She had a little talk with Pete Wegler, my ass . He knew Vicki had to feed off others, but he didn't have to like it.

Should never have mentioned Pete Wegler . She settled down on the rock still warm from Celluci's body heat and tried unsuccessfully to penetrate the darkness of the lake. When something rustled in the underbrush bordering the parking lot, she hissed without turning her head. The rustling moved away with considerably more speed than it had used to arrive. The secrets of the lake continued to elude her.

"This isn't mysterious, it's irritating."

As Celluci wandered around the lodge, turning off lights, he could hear Stuart snoring through the door of one of the two main-floor bedrooms. In the few hours he'd been outside, the other man had managed to leave a trail of debris from one end of the place to the other. On top of that, he'd used up the last of the toilet paper on the roll and hadn't replaced it, he'd put the almost empty coffee pot back on the coffee-maker with the machine still on so that the dregs had baked on to the glass, and he'd eaten a piece of Celluci's chicken, tossing the gnawed bone back into the bucket. Celluci didn't mind him eating the piece of chicken but the last thing he wanted was Stuart Gordon's spit over the rest of the bird.

Dropping the bone into the garbage, he noticed a crumpled piece of paper and fished it out. Apparently the resort was destined to grow beyond its current boundaries. Destined to grow all the way around the lake, devouring Dulvie as it went.

"Which would put Stuart Gordon's spit all over the rest of the area."

Bored with watching the lake and frightening off the local wildlife, Vicki pressed her nose against the window of the sports ute and clicked her tongue at the dashboard full of electronic displays, willing to bet that call-me-Stuart didn't have the slightest idea of what most of them meant.

"Probably has a trouble light if his air freshener needs hello."

Tucked under the passenger seat was the unmistakable edge of a laptop.

"And how much do you want to bet this thing'll scream bloody blue murder if I try and jimmy the door" Turning towards the now dark lodge, she listened to the sound of two heartbeats. To the slow, regular sound that told her both men were deeply asleep.

Stuart slept on his back with one hand flung over his head and a slight smile on his thin face. Vicki watched the pulse beat in his throat for a moment. She'd been assured that, if necessary, she could feed off lower life-forms — pigeons, rats, developers — but she was just as glad she'd taken the edge off the hunger down in the village. Scooping up his car keys, she went out of the room as silently as she'd come in.

Celluci woke to a decent voice belting out a Beatles tune and came downstairs just as Stuart came out of the bathroom finger-combing damp hair.

"Good morning, Mike. Can I assume no vengeful spirits of Lake Nepeakea trashed my car in the night?"

"You can."

"Good. Good. Oh, by the way," — his smile could have sold attitude to Americans — "I've used all the hot water."

"I guess it's true what they say about so many of our boys in blue."

"And what's that?" Celluci growled, fortified by two cups of coffee made only slightly bitter by the burned carafe.

"Well, you know, Mike." Grinning broadly, the developer mimed tipping a bottle to his lips. "I mean, if you can drink that vile brew, you've certainly got a drinking problem." Laughing at his own joke, he headed for the door.

To begin with, they're not your boys in blue and then, you can just fucking well drop dead. You try dealing with the world we deal with for a while, asshole, it'll chew you up and spit you out . But although his fist closed around his mug tightly enough for it to creak, all he said was, "Where are you going?"

"Didn't I tell you? I've got to see a lawyer in Bigwood today. Yes, I know what you're going to say, Mike; it's Sunday. But since this is the last time I'll be out here for a few weeks, the local legal beagle can see me when I'm available. Just a few loose ends about that nasty business with the surveyor." He paused, with his hand on the door, voice and manner stripped of all pretensions. "I told them to be sure and finish that part of the shoreline before they quit for the day. I know I'm not, but I feel responsible for that poor woman's death and I only wish there was something I could do to make up for it. You can't make up for someone dying though, can you, Mike?"

Celluci growled something non-committal. Right at the moment, the last thing he wanted was to think of Stuart Gordon as a decent human being.

"I might not be back until after dark but hey, that's when the spirit's likely to appear so you won't need me until then. Right, Mike?" Turning towards the screen where the black flies had settled, waiting for their breakfast to emerge, he shook his head. "The first thing I'm going to do when all this is settled is drain every stream these little bloodsuckers breed in."

The water levels in the swamp had dropped in the two weeks since the death of the surveyor. Drenched in the bug spray he'd found under the sink, Celluci followed the path made by the searchers, treading carefully on the higher hummocks no matter how solid the ground looked. When he reached the remains of the police tape, he squatted and peered down into the water. He didn't expect to find anything, but after Stuart's confession he felt he had to come.

About two inches deep, it was surprisingly clear.

"No reason for it to be muddy now, there's nothing stirring it"

Something metallic glinted in the mud.

Gripping the marsh grass on his hummock with one hand, he reached out with the other and managed to get thumb and forefinger around the protruding piece of

"Stainless-steel measuring tape?"

It was probably a remnant of the dead surveyor's equipment. One end of the six-inch piece had been cleanly broken but the other end, the end that had been down in the mud, looked as though it had been dissolved.

When Anne Kellough had thrown the acid on Stuart's car, they'd been imitating the spirit of Lake Nepeakea.

Celluci inhaled deeply and spat a mouthful of suicidal black flies out into the swamp. "I think it's time to talk to Mary Joseph."

"Can't you feel it?"

Enjoying the first decent cup of coffee he'd had in days, Celluci walked to the edge of the porch and stared out at the lake. Unlike most of Dulvie, separated from the water by the road, Mary Joseph's house was right on the shore. "I can feel something," he admitted.

"You can feel the spirit of the lake, angered by this man from the city. Another cookie?"

"No, thank you." He'd had one and it was without question the worst cookie he'd ever eaten. "Tell me about the spirit of the lake, Ms Joseph. Have you seen it?"

"Oh, yes. Well, not exactly it, but I've seen the wake of its passing." She gestured out towards the water but, at the moment, the lake was perfectly calm. "Most water has a protective spirit, you know. Wells and springs, lakes and rivers, it's why we throw coins into fountains, so that the spirits will exchange them for luck. Kelpies, selkies, mermaids, Jenny Greenteeth, Peg Powler, the Fideal all water spirits."

"And one of them, is that what's out there?" Somehow he couldn't reconcile mermaids to that toothed trunk snaking out of the water.

"Oh, no, our water spirit is a new world water spirit. The Cree called it a mantouche surely you recognize the similarity to the word Manitou or Great Spirit? Only the deepest lakes with the best fishing had them. They protected the lakes and the area around the lakes and, in return"

"Were revered?"

"Well, no actually. They were left strictly alone."

"You told the paper that the spirit had manifested twice before?"

"Twice that we know of," she corrected. "The first recorded manifestation occurred in 1762 and was included in the notes on native spirituality that one of the exploring Jesuits sent back to France."

Product of a Catholic school education, Celluci wasn't entirely certain the involvement of the Jesuits added credibility. "What happened?"

"It was spring. A pair of white trappers had been at the lake all winter, slaughtering the animals around it. Animals under the lake's protection. According to the surviving trapper, his partner was coming out of high-water marshes, just after sunset, when his canoe suddenly upended and he disappeared. When the remaining man retrieved the canoe he found that bits had been burned away without flame and it carried the mark of all the dead they'd stolen from the lake."

"The mark of the dead?"

"The record says it stank, Detective. Like offal." About to eat another cookie, she paused. "You do know what offal is?"

"Yes, ma'am. Did the survivor see anything?"

"Well, he said he saw what he thought was a giant snake except that it had two stubby wings at the upper end. And you know what that is."

a glistening, grey tube as big around as his biceps . "No."

"A wyvern. One of the ancient dragons."

"There's a dragon in the lake."

"No, of course not. The spirit of the lake can take many forms. When it's angry, those who face its anger see a great and terrifying beast. To the trapper, who no doubt had northern European roots, it appeared as a wyvern. The natives would have probably seen a giant serpent. There are many so-called serpent mounds around deep lakes."

"But it couldn't just be a giant serpent?"

"Detective Celluci, don't you think that if there was a giant serpent living in this lake that someone would have got a good look at it by now? Besides, after the second death the lake was searched extensively with modern equipment and once or twice since then as well — and nothing has ever been found. That trapper was killed by the spirit of the lake and so was Thomas Stebbing."

"Thomas Stebbing?"

"The recorded death in 1937. I have newspaper clippings"

In the spring of 1937, four young men from the University of Toronto came to Lake Nepeakea on a wilderness vacation. Out canoeing with a friend at dusk, Thomas Stebbing saw what he thought was a burned log on the shore and they paddled in to investigate. As his friend watched in horror, the log "attacked" Stebbing, left him burned and dead and "undulated into the lake" on a trail of dead vegetation.

The investigation turned up nothing at all and the eyewitness account of a "kind of big worm thing" was summarily dismissed. The final, official verdict was that the victim had indeed disturbed a partially burned log and, as it rolled over him was burned by the embers and died. The log then rolled into the lake, burning a path as it rolled, and sank. The stench was dismissed as the smell of roasting flesh and the insistence by the friend that the burns were acid burns was completely ignored — in spite of the fact he was a chemistry student and should therefore know what he was talking about.

"The spirit of the lake came up on land , Ms Joseph?"

She nodded, apparently unconcerned with the contradiction. "There were a lot of fires being lit around the lake that year. Between the wars this area got popular for a while and fires were the easiest way to clear land for summer homes. The spirit of the lake couldn't allow that, hence its appearance as a burned log."

"And Thomas Stebbing had done what to disturb its peace?"

"Nothing specifically. I think the poor boy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is a vengeful spirit, you understand."

Only a few short years earlier, he'd have understood that Mary Joseph was a total nutcase. But that was before he'd willingly thrown himself into the darkness that lurked behind a pair of silvered eyes. He sighed and stood; the afternoon had nearly ended. It wouldn't be long now until sunset.

"Thank you for your help, Ms Joseph. I — what?"

She was staring at him, nodding. "You've seen it, haven't you? You have that look."

"I've seen something," he admitted reluctantly and turned towards the water. "I've seen a lot of thi"

A pair of jet skiers roared around the point and drowned him out. As they passed the house, blanketing it in noise, one of the adolescent operators waved a cheery hello.

Never a vengeful lake spirit around when you really need one, he thought.

"He knew about the sinkholes in the marsh and he sent those surveyors out anyway." Vicki tossed a pebble off the end of the dock and watched it disappear into the liquid darkness.

"You're sure?"

"The information was all there on his laptop and the file was dated back in March. Now, although evidence that I just happened to have found in his computer will be inadmissible in court I can go to the Department of Lands and Forests and get the dates he requested the geological surveys."

Celluci shook his head. "You're not going to be able to get him charged with anything. Sure, he should've told them but they were both professionals; they should've been more careful." He thought of the crocodile tears Stuart had cried that morning over the death and his hands formed fists by his side. Being an irresponsible asshole was one thing; being a manipulative, irresponsible asshole was on another level entirely. "It's an ethical failure," he growled, "not a legal one."

"Maybe I should take care of him myself then." The second pebble hit the water with considerably more force.

"He's your client, Vicki. You're supposed to be working for him, not against him."

She snorted. "So I'll wait until his cheque clears."

"He's planning on acquiring the rest of the land around the lake." Pulling the paper he'd retrieved from the garbage out of his pocket, Celluci handed it over.

"The rest of the land around the lake isn't for sale."

"Neither was this lodge until he decided he wanted it."

Crushing the paper in one hand, Vicki's eyes silvered. "There's got to be something we can Shit!" Tossing the paper aside, she grabbed Celluci's arm as the end of the dock bucked up into the air and leaped back one section, dragging him with her. "What the fuck was that?" she demanded as they turned to watch the place they'd just been standing rock violently back and forth. The paper she'd dropped into the water was nowhere to be seen.

"Wave from a passing boat?"

"There hasn't been a boat past here in hours."

"Sometimes these long narrow lakes build up a standing wave. It's called a seiche."

"A seiche?" When he nodded, she rolled her eyes. "I've got to start watching more PBS. In the meantime"

The sound of an approaching car drew their attention up to the lodge in time to see Stuart slowly and carefully pull into the parking lot, barely disturbing the gravel.

"Are you going to tell him who vandalized his car?" Celluci asked as they started up the hill.

"Who? Probably not. I can't prove it after all, but I will tell him it wasn't some vengeful spirit and it definitely won't happen again." At least not if Pete Wegler had anything to say about it. The spirit of the lake might be hypothetical but she wasn't.

"A group of villagers, Vicki? You're sure?"

"Positive."

"They actually thought I'd believe it was an angry spirit manifesting all over the side of my vehicle?"

"Apparently." Actually, they hadn't cared if he believed it or not. They were all just so angry they needed to do something and since the spirit was handy She offered none of that to call-me-Stuart.

"I want their names, Vicki." His tone made it an ultimatum.

Vicki had never responded well to ultimatums. Celluci watched her masks begin to fall and wondered just how far his dislike of the developer would let her go. He could stop her with a word, he just wondered if he'd say it. Or when.

To his surprise, she regained control. "Check the census lists then. You haven't exactly endeared yourself to your neighbours."

For a moment, it seemed that Stuart realized how close he'd just come to seeing the definition of his own mortality but then he smiled and said, "You're right, Vicki, I haven't endeared myself to my neighbours. And do you know what: I'm going to do something about that. Tomorrow's Victoria Day. I'll invite them all to a big picnic supper with great food and fireworks out over the lake. We'll kiss and make up."

"It's Sunday evening and tomorrow's a holiday. Where are you going to find food and fireworks?"

"Not a problem, Mike. I'll e-mail my caterers in Toronto. I'm sure they can be here by tomorrow afternoon. I'll pay through the nose but, hey, developing a good relationship with the locals is worth it. You two will stay, of course."

Vicki's lips drew back off her teeth but Celluci answered for them both. "Of course."

"He's up to something," he explained later, "and I want to know what that is."

"He's going to confront the villagers with what he knows, see who reacts and make their lives a living hell. He'll find a way to make them the first part of his expansion."

"You're probably right."

"I'm always right." Head pillowed on his shoulder, she stirred his chest hair with one finger. "He's an unethical, immoral, unscrupulous little asshole."

"You missed annoying, irritating, and just generally unlikable."

"I could convince him he was a combination of Mother Theresa and Lady Di. I could rip his mind out, use it for unnatural purposes, and stuff it back into his skull in any shape I damn well chose but I can't."

Once you start down the dark side, for ever will it dominate your destiny ? But he didn't say it aloud because he didn't want to know how far down the dark side she'd been. He was grateful that she'd drawn any personal boundaries at all, that she'd chosen to remain someone who couldn't use terror for the sake of terror. "So what are we going to do about him?"

"I can't think of a damned thing. You?"

Suddenly he smiled. "Could you convince him that you were the spirit of the lake and that he'd better haul his ass back to Toronto unless he wants it dissolved off?"

She was off the bed in one fluid movement. "I knew there was a reason I dragged you out here this weekend." She turned on one bare heel then turned again and was suddenly back in the bed. "But I think I'll wait until tomorrow night. He hasn't paid me yet."

"Morning, Mike. Where's Vicki?"

"Sleeping."

"Well, since you're up, why don't you help out by carrying the barbecue down to the beach. I may be willing to make amends but I'm not sure they are and since they've already damaged my car, I'd just as soon keep them away from anything valuable. Particularly when in combination with propane and open flames."

"Isn't Vicki joining us for lunch, Mike?"

"She says she isn't hungry. She went for a walk in the woods."

"Must be how she keeps her girlish figure. I've got to hand it to you, Mike, there aren't many men your age who could hold on to such a woman. I mean, she's really got that independent thing going, doesn't she?" He accepted a tuna sandwich with effusive thanks, took a bite and winced. "Not light mayo?"

"No."

"Never mind, Mike. I'm sure you meant well. Now, then, as it's just the two of us, have you ever considered investing in a time-share"

Mike Celluci had never been so glad to see anyone as he was to see a van full of bleary-eyed and stiff caterers arrive at four that afternoon. As Vicki had discovered during that initial phone call, Stuart Gordon was not a man who took no for an answer. He might have accepted "Fuck off and die!" followed by a fast exit but since Vicki expected to wake up on the shores of Lake Nepeakea, Celluci held his tongue. Besides, it would be a little difficult for her to chase the developer away if they were halfway back to Toronto.

Sunset.

Vicki could feel maybe two dozen lives around her when she woke and she lay there for a moment revelling in them. The last two evenings she'd had to fight the urge to climb into the driver's seat and speed towards civilization.

"Fast food."

She snickered, dressed, and stepped out into the parking lot.

Celluci was down on the beach talking to Frank Patton. She made her way over to them, the crowd opening to let her pass without really being aware she was there at all. Both men nodded as she approached and Patton gestured towards the barbecue.

"Burger?"

"No thanks, I'm not hungry." She glanced around. "No one seems to have brought their kids."

"No one wants to expose their kids to Stuart Gordon."

"Afraid they'll catch something," Celluci added.

"Mike here says you've solved your case and you're just waiting for Mr Congeniality over there to pay you."

Wondering what Mike had been up to, Vicki nodded.

"He also says you didn't mention any names. Thank you." He sighed. "We didn't really expect the spirit of the lake thing to work but"

Vicki raised both hands. "Hey, you never know. He could be suppressing."

"Yeah, right. The only thing that clown suppresses is everyone around him. If you'll excuse me, I'd better go rescue Anne before she rips out his tongue and strangles him with it."

"I'm surprised she came," Vicki admitted.

"She thinks he's up to something and she wants to know what it is."

"Don't we all," Celluci murmured as he walked away.

The combined smell of cooked meat and fresh blood making her a little light-headed, Vicki started Mike moving towards the floating dock. "Have I missed anything?"

"No, I think you're just in time."

As Frank Patton approached, Stuart broke off the conversation he'd been having with Anne Kellough — or more precisely, Vicki amended, at Anne Kellough — and walked out to the end of the dock where a number of large rockets had been set up.

"He's got a permit for the damned things," Celluci muttered. "The son of a bitch knows how to cover his ass."

"But not his id." Vicki's fingers curved cool around Mike's forearm. "He'll get his, don't worry."

The first rocket went up, exploding red over the lake, the colours muted against the evening grey of sky and water. The developer turned towards the shore and raised both hands above his head. "Now that I've got your attention, there's a few things I'd like to share with you all before the festivities continue. First of all, I've decided not to press charges concerning the damage to my vehicle although I'm aware that"

The dock began to rock. Behind him, one of the rockets fell into the water.

"Mr Gordon." The voice was Mary Joseph's. "Get to shore, now."

Pointing a finger towards her, he shook his head. "Oh, no, old woman, I'm Stuart Gordon"

No call-me-Stuart , tonight, Celluci noted.

" and you don't tell me what to do, I tell"

Arms windmilling, he stepped back, once, twice, and hit the water. Arms and legs stretched out, he looked as though he was sitting on something just below the surface. "I have had enough of this," he began and disappeared.

Vicki reached the end of the dock in time to see the pale oval of his face engulfed by dark water. To her astonishment, he seemed to have got his cell phone out of his pocket and all she could think of was that old movie cut line, Who you gonna call ?

One heartbeat, two. She thought about going in after him. The fingertips on her reaching hand were actually damp when Celluci grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back. She wouldn't have done it, but it was nice that he thought she would.

Back on the shore, two dozen identical wide-eyed stares were locked on the flat, black surface of the lake, too astounded by what had happened to their mutual enemy, Vicki realized, to notice how fast she'd made it to the end of the dock.

Mary Joseph broke the silence first. "Thus acts the vengeful spirit of Lake Nepeakea," she declared. Then as heads began to nod, she added dryly, "Can't say I didn't warn him."

Mike looked over at Vicki, who shrugged.

"Works for me," she said.

La Diente

Nancy Kilpatrick

Bram Stoker Award finalist and winner of the Arthur Ellis Award, Nancy Kilpatrick has been called "Canada's Queen of the Undead". She has published more than fourteen novels, over 150 short stories, five collections, and has edited seven anthologies. At least half her work involves the vampire. Her book titles include Sex and the Single Vampire, Endorphins, Dracula — An Eternal Love Story (based on the stage musical) , Love Bites, and The Vampire Stories of Nancy Kilpatrick. Under her pseudonym "Amarantha Knight" she wrote the erotic novels Dracula and Carmilla in The Darker Passions series, and she recently completed another novel in her "Power of the Blood" series, which already includes Child of the Night, Near Death and Reborn.

Kilpatrick also teaches creative writing on the Internet and does private courses, including "Writing Vampire Fiction".

" I met a man from Ecuador who showed me four of his baby teeth," recalls the author, "which his mother had made into jewellery a custom in his homeland. The vampire is very popular with Spanish-speaking people, and they have their own variation , el Chupa-cabra. Combining these images inspired 'La Diente' ."

Suddenly, the vampire appeared in the doorway! Tall, cadaverous, eyes glowing with the fires of hell. His fingers curled around the door frame, spider-like.

Remedios trembled. Her heart beat wildly, as if it wanted to explode inside her chest.

He inched forward, movements rat-like. He focused on his victim, his prey.

She clutched the wooden arm of the chair and squeezed her body into a tighter ball. " Diosito! Mio Diosito ! Protect me, Santa Marianita de Jesus!" she cried, but he kept coming.

"Submit to me!" he insisted, his voice low and seductive, the tone not one that could be argued with. "I am stronger. I will have what I want!"

"No!" She shook her head. Her sweaty hand slipped off the chair arm where she had gripped it so tightly.

His face came close, ungodly close, and then his blood-red lips turned upward into a sinister smile. A smile that split apart to reveal two long sharp teeth. Teeth that glistened with saliva. Teeth that wanted her neck. Demanded the vein, plumped with her life's blood, pulsing in terror. Teeth that would bite and rend and take what they needed in order to survive.

A loud, harsh buzzer caused Remedios to jolt.

She leaped from the chair and hurried into the kitchen to turn off the oven timer. Quickly she opened the door and lifted the lid of the clay pot; the meat looked and smelled delicious, just the way the Richviews liked it — rare. It had taken her almost three months to be able to prepare it the way her employers preferred. She wanted to please them, but something about that red colour when she cut into it, all the blood, made her feel nauseous, and she found herself frequently overcooking. Remedios had never eaten rare meat. At home in Ecuador, everyone overcooked meat, to be safe. She preferred it well done, so that it did not resemble any more the poor helpless animal that it had been.

With a deft hand she switched the oven knob to "warm", and turned on the element under the pot on the stove-top that would steam the summer squash. The salad and dessert had been prepared in advance, the table set, all was well. She headed back to the living-room for the end of the movie, only to find a commercial on the TV for feminine hygiene products, as they liked to call them in North America. It had taken her most of the six months she had been in San Diego to make sense of this new language, but finally she was beginning to feel as if she had mastered at least the basics. Now she could shop and take the bus without incident, mostly, and the Richviews seemed more comfortable around her. At least as comfortable as they could be.

Just as the commercial finished and the movie resumed, she heard a car pull into the driveway. Well, that was that. She switched off the television and returned to the kitchen. She would never know how the movie ended, but of course the vampire would be staked. He always was, or at least most of the time. She preferred movies where the vampire was destroyed. The ones where he escaped caused her nightmares.

It was a peculiar thing, that she watched these movies so fervently. Even back in San Francisco de Quito where she was born vampire movies were her favourite films, even though they terrified her. She hated the vampire, always taking advantage of those weaker than himself for his own advantage, yet she could not stop watching. Her mother — may the saints intercede with the Holy Father on behalf of her eternal soul! — preferred the soaps, and in Ecuador there were many. "Why do you want to watch those awful movies? Why frighten yourself? Turn them off!" her mother had said so often when she was alive. "My soap operas are much better, like real life."

"Yes," Remedios answered, "always the same. A family as poor as us, with as many problems as we have, worrying. About money, about health, the arguments because one does not get along with the other It is like every day! And they always come to the same conclusion: you must accept your lot in life."

"This is not a bad way to be," her mother said. "Life is full of trouble. When you have family, you are better off than those who do not. And when you accept what God decrees as your life, you are better off. Remedios, you were always the strange one. I knew this from the moment you were born, at midnight. That is why I named you God's remedy."

And now Remedios thought that yes, her mother had been wise. Life is much simpler when one accepts what is one's role. And her own destiny had not been such a bad one. Coming from the poverty of de Quito to the opulence of California to work as a domestic — not many were able to do that. The Richviews were decent people, they gave her four days off each month, did not make exceptional demands most of the time, and she had been able to send money home to support her sisters and brothers. She knew she had no right to complain. Many of the domestics mostly girls from Mexico she had met at the shops — told of terrible conditions, where they were forced to work long hours at low wages, and sometimes they could not get paid. It was difficult to do anything about the conditions because they were all in the United States on a working visa, and the minute they ceased to be employed they were deported.

Remedios told herself often that she was lucky. Her conditions were good, and far better than in her homeland. There, everyone lived in poverty except government officials and landowners. From the President down to the policia municipal , extortion was the rule. Even out of the money she sent home, almost half went to the corrupt local government, and another quarter went to her Uncle Antonio, her mother's brother-in-law, who had arranged with the Richviews for Remedios to work for them. Mr Richview told her if she saved the money in an American bank account where it would gather compound interest, rather than send it home and have most of it eaten away before it even reached her family, she could be almost a millionaire in twenty years. But she could not do that: her sisters and brothers had to eat, and she was now the head of the family.

The front door opened and Mrs Richview rushed in. Remedios heard the children, Jessica and Robert; Mrs Richview drove them to and from school. Jess ran into the kitchen, all flying yellow hair and sky-blue eyes. Immediately she hugged Remedios. "Guess what we did at school today? We made buttermilk! The teacher put milk into a churn and we all took turns pushing this big thing down into the milk and then we had buttermilk and we all drank some!"

Remedios laughed and smoothed back Jessica's hair. So large for a six-year-old — just a year younger than her youngest sister Dolores. Dolores was not in school, since the family could not afford to send her. Remedios had not seen Dolores in half a year and missed the baby of the family. She missed all of her family. Juan, and the twins Jose-Luis and Maria, and even her sister Esperanza, who she did not get along well with. And her grandmother, of course, who took care of all of them.

"Wash up," Mrs Richview was telling Robert, "and I don't want to keep saying that. Your father will be home any minute, and you know he likes to eat right away on Wednesdays so he can get to the homeowners meeting."

"I'm not hungry," the boy complained, as he did most nights.

"Well, then don't eat very much. You can have a snack later."

"But I want to go to the CD store with Brad."

"On a school night? I don't think so."

"But, Mom, his brother is driving us and you said last week"

"Oh, there's your father's car. Hurry up so we can eat."

"But I want to go with Brad. You said"

"God, Robert, stop reminding me of things I've said! Look, eat something, so we can have our weekly family dinner, then you can go"

And so it went with the Richviews, always busy, always going somewhere, living their lives so quickly, and so separately. So different than in Ecuador. Her family had spent most of their time together. And no one went out after dark the streets were just not safe. They said on the news that it was not safe in California. Remedios had only been to Los Angeles when the Richviews flew her here. She had never been to East Los Angeles, or to the Barrio. Still, she could not believe there were gangs like in de Quito: young boys, some no older than five years, roaming the streets and alleyways all night, carrying knives, ready to cut the throat of anyone they encountered to obtain food, or money to buy food No, California was nothing like home.

Remedios placed the bread and butter on the table as Mr Richview came through the door. Jess ran to him, and he lifted her high in his arms. Remedios looked on, wondering what that would feel like. Her own father had died when she was young, just after the birth of Dolores; perhaps he had lifted her that way, but she could not remember him being healthy and strong. Her grandmother said her father's death had caused her mother's death, because it was not long after when her mother became very very ill. Remedios could still remember the blood flowing from her, and how pale she became at the end, because of the pain. They had no money for a doctor. There was nothing to do but to watch her mother die slowly over the next two years. She was weak; it was God's will, her grandmother said.

Mr Richview headed for his small office at the back of the house, beside the garden. Remedios knew it was not a good time, but she had been trying to find him alone for a week, and there never did seem to be the right moment.

She stood in the doorway, watching him taking papers from his briefcase. "Mr Richview. May I speak with you a moment?"

He did not look up, and she wondered if her voice had been too low for him to hear her. But after another few heartbeats, he seemed to notice her standing there. "Yes? What is it?" He spoke with his "office" voice, the one she heard him speak with on the telephone when he was discussing the stock market.

"Mr Richview, I I would like to have a raise. Ten dollars a month."

He stared at her for a moment blankly, then went back to sorting through his papers, saying, "You've only been with us six months. We'll discuss it in another six months."

There was nothing to do but return to the kitchen and bring in the platter of meat.

The Richviews sat around the table, all talking at once. "This is very good, Remy," Mrs Richview said about the meat, and Remedios blushed. It was Mrs Richview who had taken to calling her Remy because the children could not easily pronounce her name. Now they all called her that. Remedios did not mind. She was just grateful to be working for such a good family.

Robert pecked at his food like a bird. Then, when the horn blared outside and Mr Richview snapped, "Tell him not to use the horn, it disturbs the neighbours," and Mrs Richview said, "When did people stop coming to the door?" Robert jumped up, grabbed his jacket from the coat tree by the door and left.

Mr Richview was the next to leave. He ate quickly, then went upstairs to change his clothes for the meeting with the other homeowers who lived in this area. Mrs Richview took Jess upstairs as well, to help her with her homework, and to " have a sauna. I've got my cell with me. Please tell any callers on the house phone I'll get back to them," she told Remedios. Mr Richview hurried out the door. And Remedios was left alone to clear away the partially eaten plates of food.

As always, she felt guilty as she scraped the remains into the garbage disposal. With just what was left on these plates, she could feed her entire family for one day. Early on she had eaten the leftover food from their plates, but Mrs Richview caught her and insisted it was not "sanitary" and that Remedios must throw it away.

Remedios carved off a piece of meat from the outside of the roast, avoiding as much of the red part as possible, and made her own plate, with a small piece of squash, and a little bowl of salad. All her life she had eaten the largest meal in the middle of the day, and something light before bed; she could not get used to having so much food in her stomach at night. Before she sat down to eat, she wrapped the rest of the meat in clear plastic, stored the salad and squash in airtight containers and placed everything in the refrigerator already bulging with food. The children had eaten their desserts. Mr Richview ate some. Mrs Richview's pudding went untouched, as always she never ate dessert. Remedios placed the pudding next to her plate. Finally she sat down to eat.

She missed the food she had been raised on. Rice, and rich red and black beans, heavily spiced, sometimes with a little meat, if the family could afford a cui . And the flat bread! There was nothing like it here. She had made a traditional Ecuadorean meal when she first arrived. Mr and Mrs Richview ate a little, but the children would not even try. Mrs Richview said that it might be best if she told Remedios exactly what foods to cook every week, and how to cook them.

Just as she was about to take a bite of the meat, Mrs Richview said from the hallway, "Remy," and she jumped to her feet.

"Yes, Mrs Richview?"

"I forgot. This package came for you, to the postal box."

Remedios met Mrs Richview at the doorway and took from her a small brown parcel. Even before she saw the address, she knew it was from home. The oily dark paper, and the hemp cord holding it together. The parcel had gone through two postal systems, and was damaged.

"Thank you," she said, and waited until Mrs Richview was halfway up the stairs before returning to the kitchen table.

She opened the package. First she found a piece of newspaper, el Comercio , with an article about the les Chupa-cabras . Now there were sightings in Ecuador! She read the article about the vampire-like creature, the "sheep sucker" that attacked not only sheep, but horses, cows, even dogs and cats, biting into them, draining their blood. The article said eye-witnesses had seen el Chupa-cabra , and described it as four or five feet tall, having the body of a bat, with large wings, and scales along the back of the neck, a cat's face, and the teeth! Remedios shivered just reading about it.

Next, she found a note, from her grandmother. Or, from Uncle Antonio, the only one in the family besides herself who could write in Spanish. Her grandmother had told him what to say, of course.

"Remedios, my dearest one. You are blessed by the Holy Virginsita, and God has seen to it that you were born strong, and must help your family. You are the one we rely on."

The letter went on with news of the family. Grandmother suffered pains in her arms and legs, and felt very tired. The twins had both been sick, coughing a lot, but were now well again. Dolores, who had been born with a club foot, was having difficulty walking. The neighbour examined the foot and said it was turning more inward; was it possible there could be money for a doctor? Esperanza was pregnant. This did not surprise Remedios — her sister had always been pretty, and always liked to flirt with the boys. But it meant one more mouth to feed! News of Juan was the most troubling. He had begun to go out at nights, and Grandmother suspected he was using cocaine and travelling with the packs of boys that murdered.

Remedios lowered the piece of paper, shaken. Tears sprang from her eyes. What could she do? She was not there. If she went home to try to make Juan behave, they would have no food. And he was now thirteen. Even before she had left home, he had been nearly impossible to control. Esperanza had never listened to her, and that would not change. Could she find money for a doctor? Already she sent everything home but for ten dollars a month, and that was only for little things she might need for herself; the Richviews gave her food, clothing, bus fare she did not need much. Perhaps she could send half of that home every month and then in three or four months there would be enough for a doctor, and Dolores could be taken to one But half of the ten dollars would go to the government, and Uncle Antonio. Home. If she were there, Grandmother would not have to look after everyone. But then who would earn the money? There was no work in de Quito. Or in most of Ecuador. All her thoughts seemed to end in impossibilities, and she could do nothing but cry silent tears.

Eventually, the ringing telephone forced her to pull herself together. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and wrote down the message for Mr Richview, then returned to the kitchen. Her plate of food looked very unappetizing; she scraped the uneaten meal into the garbage disposal.

With all the troublesome news she had forgotten about the parcel itself. Perhaps she should have opened it before reading the letter, before becoming upset.

Inside she found a small cardboard box, and inside that a little black leather pouch, very worn, tied shut with a black leather thong, a pouch she had never seen before. She opened it to find a rosary. There, the gold crucifix at the end. And the Virginsita . And Diosito! Mio Diosito ! What was this? There were no beads that formed this rosary, but los dientes! Small teeth. She picked it up to examine it in the light, and at the same time reached for the letter.

At the bottom, her grandmother had added, "This belonged to my mother. The rosary is made from a baby tooth from each of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, including you. I gave it to your mother, and she wanted you to have it, when it was time. You are to give it to your eldest daughter. Maybe you will now see how special you are, Remedios. Your family needs you."

Remedios looked closely at the rosary. All these baby teeth! It was true, her mother had sisters and brothers, and her grandmother too. So many teeth, all coated to keep them from turning too brown. There were back teeth, and front, from every area of the mouth. Some had come from her sisters and brothers, a tooth from her mother was here, her grandmother, but she did not know which belonged to whom. She looked at the familiar pattern of the rosary: one, three, one from the crucifix to the connector. Then: one, ten, one, ten, one, ten, one, ten, one, ten. Sixty altogether. And all similar. All but one. One she now noticed, and how had she missed it before?

A tooth like no other on this chain. Longer than the rest. One of the two they call the eye teeth. Pointed, sharp, not like a human tooth at all, more like the fang of an animal. Like the tooth of a vampire.

Remedios gasped, and the rosary slipped between her hands and hit the tile floor below.

Stupid girl! she chided herself, bending instantly to retrieve this precious gift from her mother. Thank the saints, may none of the teeth have broken.

She examined them all, one by one. Yes, none had broken or chipped. Oh, how lucky! And then she stared in horror at the long incisor. Gingerly she touched her fingertip to the point. Sharp! Like a knife.

Unnerved by this gift, by the letter, Remedios returned the rosary to the pouch. She stacked the dishwasher quickly, cleaned up the kitchen, then took the parcel to her room. She found the rosary and the letter so upsetting she placed the entire package in the bottom dresser drawer, under her T-shirts. Suddenly, she felt exhausted. Without undressing, just removing her shoes, she lay on the bed and closed her eyes with the lights still on.

Remedios awoke with a start from a deep and disturbing dream she could not remember. Her bedroom at the Richviews' looked strange, unfamiliar, with shadows moving in the corners, concealing what? El Chupa-cabra !

She bolted upright and stared hard at the shadows, examining them from the safety of her bed, listening; the house seemed unnaturally quiet, as if she were the only living, breathing soul under the roof. Outside her partially opened window there were no sounds in the dark night air, not even crickets. As if pulled by an invisible force, her eyes became focused on the dresser, and what she knew lay in the bottom drawer, hidden, but not. The awareness caused her heart to race, and her lungs felt compressed, as if there was no room for air, or not enough air to fill them. Her stomach cramped.

She got up from the bed and wandered into the hallway, listening. No sounds came from the upstairs. She padded barefoot to the kitchen, the familiar place where she spent so much time. She plugged in the electric kettle, and that simple, everyday act calmed her.

The undercurrent of terror she felt began to dissipate and she was left with a gnawing in her stomach she understood to be hunger. She opened the refrigerator, took out the plate with the roast, and reached for a carving knife from the rack. Hardly aware of what she was doing, Remedios cut deep into the flesh, to the bloodiest part, pulling out the reddest bits with her hands and stuffing them into her mouth, licking the blood from her fingers.

She looked at her hands, stained crimson with the meat juice, the blood, and suddenly remembered this: in the days between seasons, when the weather begins to turn even cooler at night, when she had been a child, very young — had Esperanza been born yet? — she had tasted blood!

Her mother, her father — he looked tired always — her grandmother before her hair had turned all white She stood with them, her mother's hands on her shoulders, in the square of the village. The square, with the church at one end, was crowded with friends and neighbours, other relatives. "It is a feast day," her grandmother said that morning, "el Dia de los Muertos, the day when the people pray to all the saints for all the dead." How can you pray to all the saints, Remedios wondered, because there are so many? Her grandmother said the day would be filled with prayers. The mass had been long, with all the names of the dead read out by the padre, many together for the poor families, and individual masses for the families that could pay more. The procession from the church where they had just attended the tiring masses was under way, moving around and around the square, the prayers chant-like, led by the padre, with the people echoing and responding to his words. The pungent scent of burning incienso filled the air, and the altar boys rang bells as they followed slowly behind the priest, while others sprinkled dark purple flower petals before the procession.

Remedios sucked on the guagua de pan that came from the basket of Dia de los Muertos bread her grandmother had baked that week — the little bread men and women representing the dead. This one had red sugar eyes and bright green hair and lips, and she wore a colourful dress. Esperanza, her grandmother called this one — Remedios's mother's dead sister, Esperanza, the one her sister would be been named for. "Her name means 'hope'," her grandmother said. She stuffed little Esperanza into her pocket to place later on the altar in their home, an altar that held the large picture of Sainte Marianita de Jesus, and many many candles. It would also hold some of the flowers they brought back home from the cemetery.

Remedios felt hungry, and wondered when they could return home and eat the good, thick locro soup, and drink the hot purple jelly-like colada morada that her mother only made for the Day of the Dead feast.

The colourful pageant lasted a long time, with large wreaths carried back and forth through the square, with little stampas of the saints, and prayer cards for the dead affixed to the red and yellow flowers. The padre held a big banner with a picture of the Virginsita , and two other priests carried an enormous one of Santa Marianita de Jesus, who gave her life to save the city from earthquakes, both images decorated with glitter and seashells and many flowers. Remedios felt sleepy and sat on the hard ground, leaning against her grandmother's legs.

And then, when she opened her eyes, the light had faded from the sky and the night descended over them like a dark figure swooping across the heavens to stifle all life She realized they were now in the cemetery.

Here, the home of the dead. Stacked in cement drawers, one atop the other, four and five high. Many dead but little space, her mother said. She stayed seated on the ground before the graves of their ancestors while the adults placed beautiful white death lilies, and floral wreaths against the graves and behind the marble plaques that bore the names of the departed. The air became thick with the scent of flowers, and alive with the hum of chanting, and Remedios felt drowsy.

"Bring them!" the padre called. Suddenly, the night had become black, with only the light of the stars overhead. Dogs! So many! Where had they all come from? Hardly any of their neighbours could afford a dog. These animals roamed the streets, wild, in packs, competing with the people for food. How had they been lured here? It was the food scraps; Remedios had never seen so many dogs in one place, nor so much food handed over to them.

Much time passed with heated discussions as the men observed the dogs and argued in a friendly way: which animal was strongest, which the weakest? Would the large one be more determined than the second largest? And this little white one, it showed aggression — perhaps he would grow to become the dominant male that mated! Finally, finally, one was selected. A she-dog not so small, with brown fur, but she seemed to lack energy. The weakest, her grandmother said. " Someter ," her uncle said, telling the dog to submit.

Remedios stood rooted to the earth as Uncle Antonio sliced the throat from side to side. The animal reared, gnashed her teeth, howled — a haunting sound. She dropped to the earth, first on her front knees, then her side. Before she stopped twitching, the women rushed to the corpse and collected the spilled blood into basins, Remedios's mother among them. Each family gathered as much of the precious life-blood as they could, struggling to keep it from seeping into the earth. Then another dog was captured and brought snarling to the front, and Remedios tensed, tears still stinging her eyes. He was strong, this one, filled with life, not as large as the biggest animal, but his spirit felt enormous, and all could sense that. "The one best suited to survive," Uncle Antonio said, and Remedios watched her uncle feed that dog the blood of his slain sister. And then she watched her uncle sip of the blood himself.

"Here, Remedios, drink this," her mother said. "It will make you strong. You are the strongest, you must survive."

Obediently, she placed her lips against the cool metal basin and drank the steaming thick blood down, as if it were milk. "The weak feed the strong," her grandmother had said as she drank. "Sometimes the strong ones escape the herd and become wild, because once they have tasted it, they can only feed on blood. It has always been this way and will be this way again. The strong must be encouraged to survive, or all die."

Remedios stared at her blood-covered hands. Why did they not repulse her as before? She sucked the sweet juice and could almost feel it charging her body with energy, just as she now remembered the blood of the weak dog sparking through every inch of her being.

She put the roast away and returned to her bedroom, to the dresser. Carefully she removed the rosary from the leather pouch and held it under the night-table light.

So many teeth! Some looked so fragile they might crumble to dust if she touched them too much. Others seemed larger, stronger, more capable of cutting, chewing, taking in and transforming the food that would nourish and sustain. And then the one so unlike the others. One designed by nature for survival. A fierce tooth. It could defend and protect, or destroy. She lifted the rosary over her head and placed it around her neck, letting it drop under her T-shirt. She felt the cool teeth rest against her skin. The point of one tooth pressed slightly between her breasts.

Remedios did not even need to ask herself the question she had been avoiding, for she knew in her heart the answer. The vampire tooth had come from her own mouth. A tooth unlike the others. The tooth of the strongest. The one who could live and survive in a place not like her homeland. The one who could look after an entire family, and make certain they were provided for. The one who had the strength to prey on the weak in order to survive, for survival was crucial. Her grandmother had said this; this is why they fed her the blood of the weak dog. Why her mother had named her God's remedy; her mother was wise. She knew Remedios was born to remedy the wrongs that had been her legacy.

And now, images came to Remedios of the vampire, and of el Chupa-cabra , and she no longer felt threatened.