The Summoning

Emily looked from Robert to Woods and back again. "Elvis killed my daughter."

"The tape is rolling. Tell us again exactly what happened." Robert smiled sympathetically and handed her a Styrofoam cup of coffee. A long time ago he had dated Emily. In those days, before his marriage to Julie, he had even hall thought that he and Emily would marry, although he could not imagine himself married to the woman now seated before him. Many times, over the years, he had thought of her, of their short time together, and he wondered if she, too, remembered those old days, or if her time with him had just blurred into a hazy, indistinct past. He wondered what it would have been like had they married. Would he look older now? Would she look younger?

That was what he hated most about living in a small town--the past was always intruding. You could never get a clean start if your history was a part of your present.

Emily sipped the coffee, looked up. Her voice was surprisingly calm, eerily devoid of emotion. "Elvis Presley killed Pam. We were walking home from her piano lesson, and we saw him waiting under a streetlight at the corner of Ocotillo and Indian Hill. Pam recognized him first.

Then he ran toward us, and I thought he was going to tackle us both, but I just felt a... a rush of air, and then both of them were gone."

"Elvis and Pare? ....... "Yes." Emily leaned forward in her chair, and around her neck Robert saw a gold chain and a square of green. A jade pendant.

He stared at the chain around her neck. "May I see that?" he asked.

She frowned, fingering the necklace nervously. "This?

What for? Pam gave that to me last Christmas." "Humor me."

She unhooked the necklace, handed it to him.

"What did Elvis look like?" Woods asked. "Did he look like he was dead? Did he look like a ghost? Do you think it might have been an Elvis impersonator, someone dressed up to look like--"

"It was Elvis, and he was dead, and he looked like he did the day he died."

Robert was examining the jade. It was a simple square with some sort of Chinese character carved on it, He handed it back to her. "All right," he said. "We've searched that area of the town, and my men are combing the rest of Rio Verde with Pam's picture. We'll get a posse together and search the surrounding desert if we have to, but we need as much information as you can give us."

"That's it. That's all there is."

Let's go through it step-by-step, from the moment you left the house to take Pam to her lesson." your

An hour later, they were all exhausted, Emily was crying and they still had no new information. Robert dismissed Emily, thanking her, promising they would keep her informed, and dispatched Ted to take her home.

Robert sighed, popping out the tape and carrying it out to Lee Anne

"Type up a transcript and fax it to Rossiter, okay?"

She nodded. "Okay."

Stu walked in, limping.

"What happened to you?"

"Nothing." He moved behind the counter and sat down at his desk, painfully grimacing as he stretched his right leg out in front of him.

"Charley horse."

"Great. People are dying and Elvis has come back to life and my officers are incapacitated by charley horses." "I'm not incapacitated." He frowned. "Elvis?"

Robert waved tiredly. "Have Lee Anne explain it to you while she types. We have a missing person. You're going to be out there searching next shift."

He walked back to his office. Woods was seated at his desk, contorting his face. "My mouth tastes like I've been gargling with sewer water."

"Really? That's nice. Get out of my chair."

The coroner stood. "Medusa Syndrome," he said. "I'd bet money on it.

She saw the vampire kill her daughter, or abduct her daughter, and the shock was too great. Now she thinks she saw Elvis."

"You never heard of the Medusa Syndrome a month ago. Now you're an expert?" "

"Let's call in Jacobson, have him look at her."

"He still hasn't gotten through to Vigil."

Woods took a cigarette out of his pocket, looked at it. "The only thing I can't figure out is how come the vampire didn't take her down, too. Why just the daughter?" "The jade."

"What was all that about? I was wondering why you wanted a peek at that necklace."

"According to the Chinese, jade scares vampires away. Works like a cross is supposed to."

"So we have ourselves a Chinese vampire here?" Robert shrugged. "I don't know. Could be."

Woods put the unlit cigarette in his mouth. "Clifford and the horses were cremated Monday. They won't be coming back."

"Good."

The two of them were silent for a moment. "I think people are missing," Woods said finally.

Robert didn't respond right away. He kicked his shoe against the floor, trying to dislodge a small rock pressing against the sole of his foot. "What people?"

"I don't know. It just seems to me that there are fewer people around town than there's supposed to be. I went into the pharmacy yesterday, and while it's never the most happening place in town, it seemed downright deserted. Even the Basha's parking lot looked kind of empty."

It was true. Robert had not wanted to admit it, might not have even noticed it on a conscious level until Woods had brought it up, but now that he considered it, Rio Verde had seemed unusually quiet since the weekend. With the absence of the recreationers and the coming of the cold weather, it was as if the town had emptied out, leaving only a skeleton crew of citizens.

"Maybe people are scared. Maybe they're leaving." "Maybe," Woods said doubtfully. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means most people around here have a tough time just making their car payments. You think they can slid demy decide to take a few weeks off work and stay at a hotel in Scottsdale because they're scared of a vampire? You think they're packing all their belongings, calling moving vans, and heading off for California?" The coroner shook his head. "That looks great in movies, but real life economics ensures that that won't happen here." "What's your explanation, then?"

"People are staying home, not going out. They're frightened. Many of them might not even know why. But they're scared. It's in the air now, Robert. It's not working behind the scenes anymore. It's out in the open." He took the cigarette out of his mouth. "And I think some people have.. disappeared. Like Pam Frye."

Robert stared at him. "But people would report that.

Wives, husbands, parents, kids. Someone would call that in."

"Maybe."

There was a knock on the door frame, and Robert turned to see Jud and Steve standing in the hallway out side the office. "What is it?"

"We found a girl's shoe in the drainage ditch behind

Basha's," Jud said. "We think it may be Pam Frye's." "Why are you here then? Why aren't you searching?" "We found it an hour ago,"

Steve explained. "We've been searching the ditch and the area behind the store since then and haven't found a thing."

"Where's the shoe?"

"Tagged in an evidence bag. We thought you might want to call in the room, have her look at it before we devote any more time to that area."

Robert nodded. "Good thinking. If it is hers, we'll focus on that sector. If not, we can move on." He looked at Woods, then back at the two officers. He cleared his throat. "I know you may be thinking this already, but I just wanted to make it official: We're dealing with a vampire here. That's what we're looking for now."

Steve nodded. "what does Agent Rossiter say about that"

"Who gives a fuck what he says?" es, sir." haven't told Rossiter yet. But I will."

"It's punishment," Jud said. "Those people who died were punished for their wickedness and their sin. Maybe Pam Frye's been punished, too.

Maybe the whole town's being punished."

Robert turned to face him. "Where did you hear that crap?"

The policeman looked embarrassed. "Pastor Wheeler. He says this is the work of God."

"The work of God? And you believe that shit?"

"I believe in God more than I believe in vampires."

Robert shook his head disgustedly. "I can't believe you're stupid enough to fall for that."

Jud's face reddened again, but this time from anger. "We have freedom of religion in this country, sir, and I can go to whatever church I want without having to get my boss's permission. You can tell me what to do on the job, but no one tells me what to do in my real life."

"You're right," Robert said. "Sorry." He glanced again at Woods, who raised his eyebrows questioningly. "Call Mrs. Frye," he told the policemen. "Have her come down and identify the shoe. Have Lee Anne ring me when she's here."

Steve nodded. "Yes, sir." Both he andJud headed back down the hall.

Robert closed the door. "What do you make of that?" "Is that officer a religious man?" "Didn't used to be."

Woods put the unlit cigarette in his mouth. "Wrath of

God. That scares me."

"You buy it?"

"No. But it scares me that other people do." He examined the map of Rio Verde on the wall opposite the window. "It scares me a lot."

Sue stood uncomfortably in the middle ofiJanine's living room, waiting for her friend to get out of the bath room, acutely conscious of Janine's mother lying passed out on the couch.

"One more minute!" Janine called.

Sue did not answer, not wanting to wake the snoring woman. She glanced slowly around the room. The interior of Janine's house looked like the office of a cut-rate travel agency, the paneled walls decorated with posters advertising the sightseeing attributes of various countries, the posters tacked up at off-center angles that were supposed to be artistic but instead looked sad. "Early white trash," Shelly called the decor. Sue could not bring herself to be quite that harsh, but she had to agree thatJanine's mother would not win any awards for interior decorating.

Janine walked in from the hallway, adjusting her tasseled cowgirl jacket. "Thanks for coming. I don't know what I'd do without you.

"That's what friends are for," Sue whispered.

"So says the song." Janine nodded toward her mother. "And you don't have to whisper. She's out like a light."

"We'd better get going. I have a busy day ahead of me. I have to drop the car off for my father. I work at the newspaper in the morning and the restaurant in the afternoon. What time do you want me to pick you up to night?"

"I'll get a ride." Janine straightened her hat. "God, I hate car problems."

"Who doesn't? "They're talking about laying people off at the ranch, you knows. That's why I'm filling in today, to earn some brownie points."

"Laying people off?

"They said it's because of the stories in your paper."

Sue bristled. "That's stupid. The paper printed an article about a murder, and now the Rocking D's immediately going to start firing people because the bad publicity might scare some people away next summer? That doesn't make sense."

"No," Janine admitted. "But it sounded logical when Hollis talked to us. I mean, he has a point. Why does the paper always focus on bad and negative things? Why doesn't it ever show some of the positive aspects of our town?"

"The paper focuses on bad things? Since when? All the Gazette's ever had in it are ads and fluff stories about old people. You've said so yourself. Now people are being murdered, the paper's reporting it, and you think the coverage is too negative?"

"You're getting awfully fired up about the responsibilities of the newspaper lately."

"Yeah, well." Sue felt her face flush. She looked at her watch. "We'd better get going. Or else we'll both be late."

Janine followed Sue out the door, closing it and locking it behind her.

She put the keys in her right front pocket, and there was a clanking rattle as they fell through a hole in the pocket and down her pants leg onto the ground. She picked the keys up, putting them into her other pocket. "So what are you going, to do with the extra money you're making at the paper?" "I'm saving it for college." "Still?"

"It's expensive." /" "Why don't you break down and do something fun for a change? Celebrate. All you have is that old record player. Why don't you buy a new stereo? Put a CD player on layaway at Radio Shack."

"Radio Shack? You expect me to trust that place? It's an electronics store, and they don't even know how to use a cash register. They still write everything out by hand."

"I'm just saying do something fun for once. At least with your first paycheck."

Sue shook her head. "I'm not getting any younger."

Janine nodded slowly as they walked out to the car. "That's true.

Neither of us are."

There was a resigned sadness in her friend's voice that made Sue think of the unborn baby, and she found herself surreptitiously glancing at the other girl's abdomen. Had she made a decision yet? Had she told her mother?

Maybe that's why her mother had gotten drunk last night and passed out on the couch.

Sue unlocked the passenger door; walked around the front of the station wagon. From down the street came the sound of a souped-up engine, roaring, growing louder. A red Mustang sped by.

"Go back to China" a male voice yelled.

There were hoots of encouraging laughter, and then the Mustang squealed around the curve of the road and was gone.

"Assholes," Janine said.

"Who was that.

It looked like Bryant Taylor's car."

"God, he's twenty years old, and he's still cruising around yelling insults at people?" Sue shook her head. "When's he going to grow up?"

"He and his buddies are probably looking for a high school couple walking to school now, so they can yell, "Fuck her! I did!" "

Sue laughed. "I remember that one."

The two of them got in the car, and Sue started the engine, put the car into gear, and made a U-turn in the middle of the street.

Janine pulled down the sun visor to examine her face in the small makeup mirror. "Have you talked to Shelly lately?"

Sue shook her head. "Not since last week. She never seems to be home when I call. Why?"

"She's never home when I call either, but I saw her yesterday at Circle I'm worried about her. She's... I don't know. I think she's losing it."

"Losing it?"

"I went over to talk to her, and she started giving me all this church talk, all this stuff about blood and death and Jesus and I don't know what all. It was creepy."

"Shelly?" Sue said, surprised.

Janine nodded. "Shelly. And, I don't know how to put this delicately, but she smelled. Bad. Like she hadn't bathed for a long time, you know? It's hard to describe, but you'd understand if you were there.

It was weird. Scary. The way she looked and the way she was talking, I kept thinking--I know this is cold, but I kept imagining her morn, dead, in the kitchen or something, stabbed.

Shelly hates her morn, you know."

"I don't think she hates her."

"I think she does, and the way she was acting yesterday .. ." Janine shivered. "I don't even want to think about it."

"A lot of strange things have been going on lately." "You can say that again."

Sue drove for a moment in silence. "What would you say," she said finally, "if I told you there was a vampire in Rio Verde?"

"I'd say I've heard that one before."

Sue did not take her eyes off the road, but she reached into the open purse next to her. Her fingers found what she was looking for---one of the small jade stones that her grandmother had given her--and she offered it to Janine, opening her palm. "Here. This is for you."

What is it? This is a stone!

"What is it?

Jade. It will protect you from vampires. '

"I thought crosses did that."

"Not according to my culture."

Janine said nothing, looked at the jade. "You're serious about this, aren't you?"

Sue nodded, feeling a little embarrassed but not as much as she'd expected. "These people who were killed, the man at the Rocking DID, they were killed by a vampire, or what we call a cup hu #rngsi."

Janine licked her lips. "One of the maids said she saw a vampire," she admitted.

"What did she say he looked like?"

"A she."

"The vampire was a woman?"

"Yeah. La Verona."

The flesh prickled on Sue's arms. La Verona, the wailing woman of the canals, was an Arizona legend that had been used by more than one mother to ensure that her child did not venture too close to open waterways. In the version Sue had heard, La Verona had been tall and wraith-thin, with white skin and long black hair. In Sue's mind, La Verona had always had vaguely Asian features, and it was that image that chilled her now, made her feel so frightened.

"Where did she see the vampire. Sue asked.

"By the river."

She pulled onto the dirt road that led to the Rocking DID. "Keep that jade with you, okay? No matter what hap pens. And tell other people, anyone you can. Get one for your mother." "

"A jade rock?

"Anything made out of jade. White jade's the best, the most powerful."

Janine looked at her suspiciously. "How come you're such an expert in all of this?"

"It's a long story. Remind me to tell you sometime. After it's all over."

"After what's all over?"

"After the cup hugirngsi is dead."

Rich was pasting up the paper in the back room, his tape player cranked up, playing an old Yes cassette. Jim Fredricks was with him, cutting halftones to size and running them through the waxer before slapping them down on the sports page.

Rich glanced at Sue as she entered the room. "Hey," he said, "what's up?"

"I was going to ask you." She nodded to Fredricks. "Hi."

The sports reporter nodded back.

"So," she said, "any new developments?

Rich critically eyed the column of type he'd just pressed down on the page dummy. He pulled up the wax paper and repositioned it. "Woman claims Elvis stole her daughter."

Sue sucked in her breath. "The cup hugirngsi." "What?" Fredricks said, turning around to look at her. "Vampire," Rich explained.

The sportswriter looked from Sue to the editor and back again, trying to determine if they were pulling his leg. Apparently deciding that they were serious, he quickly turned his back and returned to his sports photos.

Sue stared at Rich. "why are you here, then? Why aren't you helping your brother?"

"Help him do what." The editor shook his head. "I can't spend all my time rUnning around. I have a paper to put out."

"But--" ' "No huts. I can't do anything by following my brother around. What I can do is make sure that the paper comes out on time, like it always does. We can reach more people that way than any other."

She nodded. "Are you going to run my feature?" "Did you write it?"

"Sort of."

Sort of?

"It's not typed yet, but I've written it." She reached into her notebook and withdrew several folded pages, unfolding them and handing them to him. "Here."

Rich scanned the first page, the second, the third. He looked up at her. "There's no attribution here."

"I didn't have time to talk to anyone."

"This isn't an article. It's a report. And it's only about Chinese vampires."

"That's what we have here, a cup hug/rngs/." "We don't know that. "I know it."

He looked at her, met her eyes, then turned away, nodding. "All right.

Type it up. Bring me your disk when you're through. I need it within the hour."

"I will." She took the pages from him and hurried off to her desk, where she grabbed her floppy disk from the middle drawer. She pulled her chair up to his VDT, turned on the machine, and after loading her disk began to type.

She was nearly finished with the article when she heard voices from behind the dividers in the front of the office. Male voices. Two of them. She heard Carole tell them that Rich was in the back, pasting up, and then the men-Rich's brother Robert and what had to be the tallest man she'd ever seen--were rounding the corner into the newsroom.

Robert nodded at her. His eyes looked tired, and it appeared as though he hadn't shaved; there was brown and black stubble on his chin. "Hi there," he said. "Hi."

Rich emerged from paste up an X-acto knife in his hand. "I thought I heard your voice," he said to his brother. He smiled at the big man.

"Hey, Pee Wee."

Pee Wee nodded absently to the editor, but he was staring at Sue, studying her. There was nothing sexual in his gaze, nothing sleazy or secretive or even remotely salacious, only an open, honest interest, and although he did not take his eyes off her, she found that she didn't mind the attention. "Aren't you going to introduce us?" he asked Rich.

The editor shook his head. "My manners again. I guess I should have gone to finishing school. Pee Wee, this is Sue Wing, the newest addition to our newspaper family. Sue, this is Pee Wee Nelson. I don't know if you rem em her, but he used to be police chief before Robert."

The big man smiled at her. "Pleased to meet you, little lady.

There was SOmething about Pee Wee that put her at ease, that made her feel comfortable in his presence. She smiled back at him. "Hello."

"He's retired now," Rich explained. "Lives alone in the desert, spending his time living off the land and making mirrors like some leftover overage hippie."

Pee Wee laughed.

"He's very talented, though," Rich said. "And a great feature story. I think we tap him for an interview and photo essay at least once a year."

The big man squinted at Sue. "You know, you look familiar to me. I don't know how, but it seems like I met you before somewhere."

"I don't think so," she said politely.

"Maybe I'm just getting senile."

"Sue's writing an article on Chinese vampires," Rich said. He cleared his throat. "She thinks that's what we have here in Rio Verde."

There was silence. Spoken at a different time, in a different tone of voice, those words would have been cruelly mocking, dismissively condescending, but Rich had said them straight, seriously, with respect, and that was how they were taken by the other two men. She was acutely aware of the fact that she was not embarrassed by the revelation, but proud.

"She's the one who told me about the jade," he explained.

"I was doing some reading yesterday," Robert said, "'and in the Basil Copper book I checked out of the library it talks a little bit about Chinese vampire legends. It didn't say anything about using jade for protection."

Sue turned to him. "So?"

"Well, are you sure you got your story straight on this?" Sue's jaw muscles tightened. "Are you going to believe a paragraph in some book about vampire /egends or my grandmother, who's had firsthand experience with the cup

"Just calm down there, hon.

"My name's not "Hon." My name's Sue."

Rich grinned.

"I didn't me ann

"Believe it or not, there are things that weren't told to Western writers about the cup hugirngsi. Western scholars don't know everything there is to know about my culture. I know a little something about it myself."

"I was just asking," Robert said humbly. "I believe you." He held out his right hand. "i'm wearing a jade ring, see?"

Pee Wee laughed. "I like her," he said to Rich.

The editor grinned. "I'm just glad she's on our side." There was silence among them for a moment. Robert scratched his stub bled chin.

"Have you asked your grand mother where she thinks the vampire might be? I assume Chinese vampires hide during the day like American vampires. He has to have a place somewhere."

"There are no "Chinese vampires' or "American vampires." Those are only different ways of looking at the same creature, the cup hugirngsi."

"Whatever. Do you know where he is?

Sue paused. "I felt it at the school," she said. "The high school."

She looked at Rich. "The night I tried to sign up for your class."

He licked his lips. "At the school?"

She nodded.

"Did you notice anything about it?" Robert asked. "What did it look like?"

"It's old," she said quietly. "That's what stood out the most to me.

It's very, very old."

"Where did you see it?"

"I didn't see it, exactly. I felt it. I sensed its presence. It was like... I don't know. I just knew that it was there. And I knew it was ancient." She met the police chief's gaze. "It was by the lockers, at the end of the main corridor."

"That's a place to start."

Rich stared at the blade of his X-acto knife, turning the knife in his hands. "What if it is as old as you think? What if it is centuries old? How can we right something like that? Our little lives pass by in a blink of its eye. We're nothing to it; we're no threat."

"My grandmother is."

Pee Wee shook his head. "If it's always been here, how come it didn't start killing until now? I don't buy this invincible stuff. That's crap." He nodded toward Sue, smiled at her. "I'm with Sue here. I think we can right it."

"I hope so," Rich said."

Robert nodded. "Me, too."

Robert and Pee Wee went into the paste up room with Rich, while Sue finished typing her article. Robert and Pee Wee left soon after, and she went into the back to help Rich and Fredricks put the paper to bed.

Robert returned alone a little after noon. Fredricks had gone home nearly an hour before, and she and Rich were alone in the back room. It was Rich's turn to pick up Anna from school, and Robert offered to accompany his brother on the trip. It was obvious to Sue that the police chief had something he wanted to say to Rich alone, so she declined Rich's invitation to join them. The editor promised before they left that he would bring back tacos and a Coke for her lunch, and she gratefully and hungrily accepted.

They'd been gone only a few minutes, and she was still looking through her desk drawer for a blue correcting pencil with which to go over the pages, when the front door to the office opened and she heard Carole's cheerful greeting. "Good afternoon, sir. May I help you?"

The visitor had the pained, gruff voice of an older man. "I need to talk to Rich."

"What does this concern?" the secretary asked.

"I have an item to put in the "Upcoming Events' column

"Then you need to speak to Miss Wing. She's out of the office right now."

"Who's Miss Wing?"

"The chink that Rich hired."

Sue felt her stomach drop and her chest tighten. She had to remind herself to breathe. The secretary's voice was just as saccharine sweet as always as she continued to talk to the man, but Sue heard only the tone, not the substance. The wordmthat word--was still echoing in her mind.

Chink. It was the fact that Carole knew her personally and still chose to refer to her in such a degradingly depersonalized way that hurt her the most. In that telltale moment, she had been granted a glimpse behind the facade, and she knew now that Carole's grandmotherly niceness was only a show, a front.

It felt to Sue as though the ground had been pulled out from underneath her. A moment ago, this newsroom had been her home, a place as known and comfortable to her as the restaurant, but now she felt like an intruder, her surroundings suddenly alien.

In high school, she'd never encountered any overt racism, but she'd heard the jokes out of the corner of her ear. "Her pussy's sideways, too," Bill Catfield had said once to his friends. She'd wanted to tell him that her eyes weren't "sideways," that her mouth wasn't

"sideways," and that even a pinhead could deduce from that that her vagina would not be "sideways" either, but she'd walked by and pretended not to hear, trying to ignore the snickers of Bill and his friends.

She'd done a lot of ignoring over the years. And she'd hought all that was done with.

But apparently not. She closed her drawer, walked over to Rich's desk and looked through it, and went back to paste up before realizing that if she was going to find a blue pencil, she would have to get one from Carole.

She didn't want to face the secretary, was afraid to face her. Her hands were shaking slightly, and for some absurd reason she felt guilty, as though she had done something wrong, but she forced herself to walk around the partition to the front office.

Carole smiled sweetly at her. "Oh, hello, honI didn't know you were here."

"I uh, was in the back," Sue lied. "Pasting up. I was wondering if you have a blue correction pencil I could use."

"Why sure." Carole opened her middle drawer, took out a pencil, and handed it to Sue, who took it with trembling fingers. "By the way, a man stopped by with an item for "Upcoming Events." " She handed Sue a pink "While You Were Out" note. "He said to give him a call."

Sue nodded. "Thanks." She walked quickly back be hind the modular wall into the newsroom. She vowed to herself that she would not be intimidated by the secretary's bigotry, that she would not allow the old woman's attitude to dictate her actions or affect her in any way.

But she was still shaking as she went into the back room and started to proof the front page.

Sue felt drained by the time she arrived at the restaurant. She wanted to go into the back and talk to her grand mother, but before she even reached the cash register her mother was walking toward her, motioning toward theta ble where John was busily writing on a mimeographed worksheet. "I want you to help your brother with his homework."

Sue did not even feel like arguing. She dropped her notebook on the table. "Fine," she said in English.

She pulled up a chair and sat down. John, seated opposite her, papers fanned out before him, textbooks piled near his elbow, looked up. "I don't need your help," he said.

"Mother wants me to help you. I don't want to." "Why do I have to do homework today anyway? It's Friday. Why can't I just do it Sunday and take today and tomorrow off?."

"Talk to them."

"They don't understand anything."

"Tough." Sue leaned forward to look at his worksheet.

"What do you need help with?"

"I told you. Nothing."

"Then why did Mother tell me to help you?"

"Because they're fighting and they don't want you to go back there.

We're not supposed to know."

Sue listened. Sure enough, she could hear the low, angry tones of a hushed argument coming from the kitchen. "What are they fighting about?" she asked.

"The menus." '

"What about the menus?

"Who knows? Who cares?"

Sue sighed, leaning back in her chair. She wished some times that she and John were closer. She wished she could talk to him, seriously talk to him. But they'd never had that sort of relationship; she'd never been the patient, understanding older sister, he'd never been the adoring younger brother, and it was too late for them to change now. Their roles were set, the confines of their relation ship clear

E Had he been acting differently lately? That was something she had not been able to determine. Her grand mother and parents had been closely watching him also, she knew, and although none of them had discussed it, all of them had been tiptoeing around him, treating him as they would someone with a fatal disease. Maybe he sensed it, maybe he could tell.

Maybe that's why he was so angry.

Influenced.

John pushed his paper across the table toward her, spinning it around.

"Okay," he said. "Number five. See if you can figure it out."

Sue looked down at the worksheet, read the question, a simple geometry problem, and turned the paper sideways between them so they could both look at it. She leaned forward over the table and explained to him how to figure it out.

He sat back in his chair, frowned at her. ""Ya tsa may," he said.

She hit his shoulder. "Shut up. Your breath's worse than mine."

"He won't want to kiss you." "Who?" "The editor."

She shook her head. "Don't be stupid." John grinned. "You like him, huh?" Sue reddened. "Knock it off." "I'm telling Father." "Telling him what?"

"That you like that old guy." "He's not that old." "See? I'm telling."

She pushed the paper across the table at him. "Fine.

Do your own homework. I hope you fail."

"I didn't want your help anyway."

She walked around the register, into the kitchen. Her parents were still arguing, but they shut up the second she came through the door.

She opened the refrigerator, grabbed a can of Coke, and continued through the kitchen into the back room, where her grandmother was plucking a chicken. "Hello, Grandmother," she said.

The old woman turned down the volume on the cassette player next to her, atonal Chinese music fading into a pleasant muted tinkle. Her fingers continued to pull feathers from the chicken as she looked up at Sue. "More have died," she said.

Sue looked at her grandmother, confused, not knowing if that was a statement or a question. "I don't know," she said, a response that applied either way.

"More will die."

Sue sat down on an overturned vegetable crate next to her grandmother.

"Why will more people die? If we are going to right the cup hugirngsi, why don't we right it now? Why are we waiting? Can't you find out where it is hiding? Can't we go there and destroy it?"

Her grandmother did not answer. "I dreamed last night of amirror man.

A giant who makes mirrors." "A real giant?" Sue asked. "Or a tall man?" "A tall man."

"Pee Wee Nelson."

"Do you know him?" Her grandmother did not sound surprised.

"I just met him today. He used to be the police chief. He is a friend of my editor and his brother, the current police chief."

The old woman nodded, as if this was what she had expected to hear. "We must talk to this tall man. We will need amirror to use against the cup hugirngsi. '"

"A mirror?"

1 "Baht gwa. The mirror with eight sides." The old fingers moved away from the chicken, traced a delicate octagon in the air. "It will reflect and frighten the cup hugirngsi. Even tse raor are afraid of their own appearance."

"But what are we going to do? Are we going to wait for the cup hugirngsi to come to us and attack?"

"No," her grandmother replied, resuming her plucking of the chicken.

"We will go to its lair and confront it there."

"Where is that?"

I do not know."

"How will we find out where it is?"

"ZJi Lo Ling Gum. '"

Sue shook her head, frustrated. "Well, when will we find out?"

"when it is time."

"What if we find out too late? What will we do then?" The old woman's voice was low and filled with an emotion Sue had never before associated with her grandmotherwfear. "I do not know," she said quietly.. "I don't know." " stared at the figure in disbelief. Fifteen thousand.

Fifteen thousand people had died of exsanguination in the United States since the FBI had begun keeping statistics. And that only included the information that had been entered into the computer. Who knew how many more cases were sitting in files that had not yet been in put? The pre-1920 backlog was not a high priority, and updating of the computer files was being done piecemeal. Fifteen thousand.

Rossiter turned down the intensity knob on the screen, the amber numbers fading into black. A pattern had emerged here, but it was not a pattern that made any sense. With few exceptions, the murders recorded had traced a recognizable path across the country that corresponded to a very definite time line. It was as if the murderer or murderers had crisscrossed the nation for the past six decades, killing as they went, draining the blood of people from the West Coast, the Midwest, the East Coast, the South, and the West.

The amazing thing was that there was nothing more to go on, no other tie-ins, not even an increase in other crimes along those routes. In a few cases, there had been arrests, but no convictions, the individual trials obviously attempts by the politically ambitious to prove to the voting public their criminal-catching credentials despite the o1> vious lack of evidence.

If these deaths really were connected, how had the killers survived in their travels? They hadn't robbed stores or houses along the way, apparently they had not even stolen from the victims. Had they taken ordinary day jobs to earn money while they went on their cross-country killing spree? Were they now working as clerks at the drugstore in Rio Verde? Attendants at the gas station? It just didn't jibe. Some of the murders were too far apart in too short a period of time. There had to be pieces of the puzzle still missing. From the facts available to him now, it could reasonably be deduced that the murderers had not had to eat, buy gas, or find places to stay, that the killings themselves had been sustenance enough--and he knew that could not be the case.

Sustenance.

It was still in the back of his mind, though he didn't want to admit it.

Vampires.

Rossiter closed his eyes, massaged his temples. He was not an overly imaginative man. Even as a child, he had never been afraid of ghosts or monsters or the dark. His fears had always been more concrete: accidents, adults, the tangible dangers of the real world.

But he had not been able to shake this vampire fixation, and when he tried to rationally analyze each new piece of information he uncovered, his mind kept drifting back to thoughts of the undead. He'd considered pulling in another agent to look at the data, maybe Buetell or Hammon, who were assigned to the case anyway, but he didn't want to give up his baby just yet. The more of a hot dog he was, the more he brought in on his own, the greater the reward would be careerwise. Before he started adding others onto the bandwagon, he had to be sure that his contribution was definitive and documented, that it would be clear to everyone that this was his idea and that the essential work had been done by him.

One interesting thing he'd discovered was that the Bureau did maintain quite a bit of information on vampires. He'd checked out several books and articles from the Bureau's library, three of which had to be sent from D.C., and he'd accessed two studies on the subject that had been conducted by operatives in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Of course, the existence of such information didn't mean much--the Bureau had files on anything and everything even remotely related to murder and death--but if he ever decided to pursue the vampirism angle, he at least knew he had Bureau sources he could quote for backup.

Not that he would ever consider ascribing a series of murders to vampires.

Unless... Unless he could prove the existence of multigeneradonal medical vampirism within a specific family.

A family of medical vampires that had killed fifteen thousand people?

He had to stop thinking about this. He had to put it out of his mind.

He opened his eyes, stared at his darkened computer screen. One of the reasons his brain was running along this track was the last series of faxes he'd received from that hick police chief in Rio Verde.

Apparently, a housewife claimed that her daughter had been abducted by Elvis. Ordinarily, he would have assumed that the woman was in shock because her daughter was missing or that she was already planning her insanity defense in case her daughter's body was found and she'd done a poor job of hiding her involvement. But the fact that the police had not ordered any psychological tests for the woman and were apparently treating this as an ordinary missing persons case, and the fact that this incident, bizarre as it was, fit cozily into the mainstream of current events in Rio Verde, made Rossiter take it a little more seriously himself.

Could Elvis be a vampire?

That was just too far out to even consider.

He needed to get out of Phoenix, get back over to Rio Verde, and check things out for himself. He'd made a big deal of his jurisdictional authority on his last trip there, but he hadn't been back since. He'd been so absorbed in this computer search that he'd virtually abandoned legwork the past week or so and had given the case back to Captain Hick by default.

He was turning into a petty bureaucrat.

He was turning into Engles.

Working here could do that to an agent.

Rossiter reached into his pocket, took out his key ring, and found the key to the computer. He shut off the monitor, locked the keyboard, but kept the computer on to retain the information he'd accessed. He stood, pocketed his keys, then walked over to the elevators. He was going stir-crazy in here. Outside, the day was overcast] "patch of light gray and white clouds covering the sky over Phoenix, a wall of black storm clouds massing above the desert to the north. Across the street, a small group of cowboy-hatted Indians stood blocking the doorway of a bar, talking among themselves. Next door, a team of well-dressed lawyers were posed on the courthouse steps, addressing a news crew from Channel 10. In the real world, it was business as usual.

But in Rio Verde, people and animals and insects were having the bodily fluids sucked out of them through holes in their necks, and Elvis Presley was kidnapping little girls.

What would J. Edgar do in a situation like this?

Go home crying to mama, a small mean part of him said.

He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled a cigarette out of the pack, put it in his mouth, and lit it. He stared up at the sky and wondered if it was going to rain.

It was raining outside, a light drizzle, and though she couldn't hear it on the roof, she could see the mist on the stained glass windows and could feel the cool dampness in the air. Sitting at her desk, opening today's mail, Corrie glanced over at the Pastor Clan Wheeler. He was at his own desk, leaning back in his chair and smiling at her. She smiled back.

For the past week, the pastor had kept her busy doing menial paperwork, filing old invoices, paying bills, reading and answering all mail, even the form letters. He had remained with her at all times, had been so omnipresent as to be suspicious. She began to wonder if he suspected her of something. He definitely seemed to be watching her, keeping an eye on her.

She took the electric bill out of its envelope and put it in her in-box. She hazarded another glance at the pastor. He was still smiling at her. "

She felt happy being here, content in the presence of the pastor, but she was starting to worry about her position in the church. For the past week, the chapel and all other rooms within the complex had been sealed off from the outside, the doors padlocked, and she was confined to the office. If she had to go to the bathroom, the pastor made her use one of the porta-potties set up outside for the construction workers and volunteers. Out of all of the rooms in the growing church, she was allowed only in this one.

All that had been strange enough, but today things were even stranger.

It was nothing that had happened, nothing she could pinpoint. It was a feeling. Things were different today.

She suddenly wished she'd worn the jade necklace. Last week, Rich had tried to bully her into wearing it, telling her that he'd bought it in order to protect her from vampires, but she'd responded that her faith in Jesus was the only protection she needed. She'd made a show of leaving the necklace at home, on her dresser.

Now she wished that she'd worn it. Something within her sensed that the necklace should have been worn to day, that it would have helped her, would have .. . protected her. From what she did not know, but her neck felt bare and naked, like her finger had the time she'd lost her wedding ring.

"Corrie," the pastor said.

" "Yes?" She looked up. In person, in a one-to-one set ting, Wheeler's voice did not have the authority that it had on the pulpit, but what it lost in strength it gained in intimacy, and in many ways that was even more powerful

"Jesus wants to meet you."

A thrill of excitement shot-through her, but she was aware of another feeling, a feeling of apprehension some where deep inside her.

The necklace suddenly seemed very important.

"He wants you to deliver the sacrifice."

Corrie's hands were trembling, and her mouth was dry.

"He wants me to deliver the sacrifice?" The preacher stood. "Yes."

"I'm honored," she said.

"Follow me." Corrie followed him outside into the drizzle, around the side of the building to the locked door of the first addition. Wheeler withdrew a key from his pocket and unlocked the door, pulling it open.

They walked into the addition. Like the outside, the inside of the building was painted black. She would have thought that extra lights would be installed to compensate for the darkness, but the illumination in here was purposefully dim, the primitive bulbs a soft yellowish white. In the murky shadowed corner, she saw figures moving, and she heard the sound of sawing. Construction, as always, was continuing.

She followed the preacher through another set of doors and down an unlit hallway. There were windows here, but they were of the darkest stained glass---navy blue and crimsonmand let in very little light.

Then they were in the chapel.

Corrie had wondered why sermons had been held outside for the past two Sundays, and she'd assumed that it was because of the construction and remodeling that were taking place in the chapel.

She saw now that that was not the reason at all. Wheeler stood just inside the doorway, beaming proudly, staring at her, gauging her reaction. Corrie looked into the chapel, awed, impressed, and, above all, enraptured. The church she had known was gone. There was no floor, only board paths over dirt that led toward three huge holes in the ground. Each hole was approximately the size of her bedroom and partially ringed by a small group of men and women. Piles of trash stood behind each group. Wooden bridges, apparently made from the backs of pews, stretched over the tops of the holes. The altar was still in place, but there were bodies lying atop it, leaning against the pulpit, placed in the choir cubicles. The bodies were all mummified, and although they appeared to be ancient, she thought she recognized some of the faces. The windows had all been painted black.

And it was beautiful. "Come with me," Wheeler said, and she followed him into the chapel.

She stared at the people standing next to the openings in the earth.

These, she assumed, were part of the, church's inner circle, those parishioners who had been with the preacher from the beginning and whom he knew to be loyal. Among the first group she recognized Bill Covey.

And Tammette Walker from the bank. Some of the others looked familiarmshe'd seen them in church or around town--but she could not put names to the faces.

She wonder, when these people had come in here. how. She did been in the office since eight this morning and had heard or seen nothing, no one going in or out.

They reached the first hole, and she saw that what she had at first taken for trash was actually a collection of small trees and shrubs.

Next to the shrubs were coffee cans, filled with what looked like ultra-black and unusually large coffee beans.

Wheeler noticed the direction of her gaze. "Insects," he explained.

"Snacks for the Savior."

She nodded, looked toward the other openings. Dead animals--cats and dogs and mice and rabbits were piled next to the second hole.

The nude, unmoving forms of two women, a man, and a child were lying behind the third group of people, the child lying lengthwise across the buttocks of the women.

Corrie returned her attention to the first hole. It was the bugs and plants that struck her as the most peculiar, and although she knew that she should be shocked by all of this, particularly by the people, she was acutely aware of the fact that she was not. Her thoughts felt strangely slow, her brain numb. '

Covey smiled at her. "We proffer our offerings to the Lord, and He looks upon us with favor. Are you to deliver the sacrifice today?"

"Yes," Wheeler answered for her. "Where is the infant Corrie looked into the opening. The hole did not continue straight down, as she'd assumed, but sloped, curved, turned into a tunnel some fifteen feet below the rim. It was dark but not black; there was a hazy glow coming from somewhere beneath the earth.

One of the women from the group by the third hole, an old lady Corrie did not know, brought forth a baby and handed it to the preacher. The baby was dead, its tiny eyes staring blindly at nothing as its head flopped from side to side on its too small neck. It had been a boy before the castration.

Covey and another man walked into the gloom beyond the other side of the opening. They returned with a heavy retractable metal construction ladder. Holding the ladder by the top rung, they placed it over the hole. The other sections scoped downward, clanking into place as the ladder expanded. The bottom of the ladder reached the bottom of the hole, or the point where the hole began to curve, and the two men leaned the top of the ladder against the side of the dirt.

"Go down," Wheeler said.

Corrie had always been afraid of heights, had never even liked stairways with gaps between the steps, let alone ladders, but now she had no fear and walked around to the opposite side of the hole, accepting Covey's hand as he assisted her onto the top rung.

She climbed quickly down.

Wheeler came after her, clutching the dead baby in his right hand, holding onto the ladder with his left.

The roof of the tunnel was high, Corrie noticed, and rounded, as though it had been created by the passage of a giant earthworm. The dirt on the floor and roof and sides was smooth. Looking up the way she had come, she could see, around the rim, a ring of joyous faces. They were singing. A hymn. "Shall We Gather At The River," it sounded like, although those words did not seem to correspond to what was being sung.

Wheeler reached the bottom and immediately moved away from the ladder.

There was excitement in his step and also fear. "Jesus is waiting," he said. He did not even look at Corrie but began walking down the tunnel toward the far end, where a pink glow pulsed faintly.

Corrie followed him. That numb sense of emotional disassociation was still with her, but there was a pleasant glow beneath the numbness, a contentment spreading outward from somewhere deep within her being.

Wheeler turned to look at her, and there was joy in his face, rapture in his eyes. "Jesus walks these halls," he said wonderingly. "He lives here now."

He lives here now.

The words made her feel warm and tingly inside. They stopped walking.

Corrie estimated that they were now under the building next door to the church. The preacher handed her the dead baby. She took it from him, entranced by the cold rubbery feel of its skin, by the inert heaviness of its form. Wheeler cleared his throat, and when he spoke it was in the strong oratorical tone of his sermons "We have come to praise Thee, oh Jesus. We have come to pay tribute to the Lord of Hosts."

There was the sound of wind, but there was no wind, the sound of water but no water, and then, out of the pink glow before them, came Jesus.

He glided rather than walked, moving with a fluid smoothness, and His presence was as awesome as Wheeler had said. More so. He was perfection, divinity in human form, the living embodiment of God.

Corrie fell instinctively to her knees, as did Pastor

Wheeler. Tears of joy slid down her face, but she did not wipe them away, she did not want them to stop. She held forth the body of the infant. Jesus stepped up to her and, with tender fingers, took the baby.

She was nearly blinded by His beauty, by the elegance of His being, nearly stunned into silence, but she man aged to whisper, "For you."

Jesus nodded graciously. He held the baby to His lips, bit carefully into it and, with kneading fingers, began to drink.

"Welcome," Wheeler said, "to the Kingdom of God."

Robert walked into his office, tossed his hat at the rack, and missed.

He did not bother to pick it up but sat down, slumping tiredly in his chair.

It was then that he noticed what had been left on his desk: a gun, a badge, an ID card, and one sentence on a sheet of yellow legal paper:

"I cannot serve both God and mammon."

It was signed by Jud and dated yesterday.

Robert stormed out of his office, clutching the note in his hand. "What is this shit?" He strode over to Lee Anne desk, waved the paper at her. "Did you see him do this?" She looked up at him, confused.

"Who?"

"Jud." He dropped the note on her desk, watching as she read it. "Did he talk to you about this?"

"No," she said. "Stu?" He turned toward the other officer. "Were you here when Jud put this on my desk?"

Stu shook his head. " "Shit." Robert reached down, grabbed Lee Anne phone, and dialed Jud's number. The line was busy, and he slammed the receiver in its cradle. "Get him for me," he ordered the secretary.

"Keep trying until he answers and patch him through. I want to talk to him."

"Yes, sir." Robert strode angrily back to his office, telling himself to calm down, not to overreact. He walked over to the window, stared out at the highway, trying to figure out why Jud would just quit like this without first talking to him. The two of them had been friends for years, since they'd both been patrolmen, and they'd never, to Robert's knowledge, had a serious falling out. Even if he made up his mind to quit, Jud still should have talked to him.

What the hell was he going to do with one less man and all this crap going down?

Robert glanced toward the fax machine, grateful for once for its presence. The machine, until now an annoyance and a reminder of the FBI's unwanted interference, suddenly represented a link with the outside world, an anchor to reason and reality.

He needed that right now.

He looked out the window again, noticed how few cars were on the highway. Complaints about the church had tapered off the past two days. Complaints about every thing had tapered off. He didn't like that. It wasn't natural. There were bound to be fights somewhere in town, noisy neighbors, illegally parked cars blocking driveways.

Something. But here at the station, normally command central for all town trouble, it seemed as if Rio Verde was deserted. No phones rang; no people came in.

Lee Anne had noticed it too, he knew. As had Stu. Both of them were less talkative than usual, jumpier, more on edge. Stu was on desk duty and was catching up with his paperwork, but there was a strange, almost desperate quality to his typing, Robert thought. Lee Anne had spent half the morning staring at a single article in People magazine.

He was not feeling so hot himself. Last night, he had been awakened long after midnight by the sound of low laughing, a sound that grew quickly in power and volume. He had recognized the distinctive tone and pitch of the laughter and had immediately pulled open his bedroom shades, and he'd seen, standing out in the desert in the moonlight, beneath the thin leafless branches of a palo verde tree, what he was afraid he would see. The Laughing Man.

The figure disappeared the second he laid eyes on it, fading back into the blackness, the laughter dissipating into the sound of a light breeze, but the feeling that the Laughing Man was still out there, watching the house-waitingnmade Robert unable to fall back asleep, and he spent the rest of the night watching old Westerns on TNT, his loaded pistol and a clip of extra ammunition on the end table next to him.

Tonight he was going to have two officers stake out the house, armed with guns and jade, holy water and crucifixes. Maybe then he would be able to get some sleep.

The phone rang, an inside call. He hurried over to his desk, picked up the receiver. "Yes?"

It was Lee Anne "Jud's line isn't busy anymore, but he's not answering. Do you want me to keep trying?"

"Keep trying until you get him."

"Gotcha."

Robert hung up the phone. He sat down in his chair, picked up Jud's badge, hefted it in his hand, then threw it against the wall, where it hit with a disconcertingly tiny thump.

Rich stopped by at lunch to deliver copies of the newspaper, laying a stack on the front counter next to the March of Dimes donation can, and bringing one back to Robert's office. He dropped the paper on the desk and pointed to Sue's story beneath the fold on the front page, to the two-deck headline "Vampires Can Be Killed, Chinese Experts Say."

Robert smiled wanly. "Chinese experts?"

"People believe authority. And I think Sue's grandma qualifies."

"So when do we get to meet this old woman? We're sup posed to be following her lead, taking her word as gospel, and we've never even met her. I don't feel right placing my trust in someone I don't know. It doesn't sit well with me."

"I thought we could go over to the restaurant for lunch, meet her now.

I have some things I want to talk to her about, too."

"Now?" Robert shook his head. "I have to wait for Joe

Cash from the state police to call."

"About what?"

"Pare Frye. I told him she was kidnapped here in town, in front of her mother, that we found her shoes in a ditch, but the Elvis bit threw him off, and he's insisting that we expand the search statewide."

"What about the FBI? Do they know?"

"They know and they don't care."

Rich shrugged. "I don't suppose we can talk to them about vampires, can we?"

"I'm not bringing it up."

Rich sat down in the chair in front of his brother's desk, turning his body sideways and draping his legs over the chair arms. "We'll have a late lunch, then. We'll go after he calls. Sue said they'd be there all afternoon." "The old lady knows we're coming?" "I guess."

Robert leaned back in his chair, tapped a pencil on his knee. "I was thinking. Maybe Wheeler's on to something.

Maybe this is the Second Coming."

"What is this horse shit?"

"Things are supposed to get bad before Jesus returns. Read your Revelations."

"Come on. You're no churchgoer and neither am I." Robert shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I'm not saying I believe it. But one of my officers pointed it out to me the other day. He goes to Wheeler's church."

"Jesus--"

"Exactly."

Rich looked at his brother and both of them laughed, the spell broken.

"Okay, I don't believe it," Robert admitted. "But I can't help thinking that these two things are connected, the vampire and Wheeler's Second Coming. Who knows?

Maybe Wheeler does know something we don't." "Shit."

"People are seeing dead rock stars and dead child molesters and vampires. That's not the normal course of events."

"Wheeler doesn't know his ass from a porkpie hal Even though I don't go to church, I think there is something after we die. Some sort of afterlife. But I don't think it can be understood by us. And the idea that the nature of God can be fully understood by a semiliterate Neanderthal like Wheeler... I just don't buy it."

"Oh, but you think your part-time employee's grandma does possess the secrets of the universe."

"What is it with you? What do you have against Sue?" "Nothing."

"It doesn't seem that way to me."

"That's just because you want to pork her."

[ Rich swung his legs off the chair and stood. "I don't have to listen to this."

"Oh, get off your high horse. Can't you even take a joke?"

"That wasn't a joke." "Okay, I'm sorry." "Yeah. Right."

Robert stared at his brother for a moment, then nervously cleared his throat. "I heard laughing last night, Rich." Rich glanced toward the window, not responding. "I heard the Laughing Man."

"No, you didn't." Rich shifted in his chair, looked at his brother. "I know this is some pretty scary shit, but..."

"But what."

"Look, there's no such thing as the Laughing Man, okay? Just drop it.

That's kid stuff. And it's not going to help us out here."

"Kid stuff? You saw him too, Richie. You saw him when

Morn died. You heard him."

"No, I didn't."

"The hell you didn't. Who was that then, huh? Who did we see out there?"

"Look, we were both under a lot of stress."

"We saw the Laughing Man. You know it and I know it." Robert stood.

"And I heard him again last night." "Bullshit."

"Oh. You believe in vampires, but you don't believe in the Laughing Man. You're picking and choosing your monsters, huh?"

"We have bodies that have been drained of blood. We have no proof of the Laughing Man."

"We have me. I saw him. I heard him."

"Medusa Syndrome," Rich said, looking straight at his brother.

"That's not it." ....... "No? It was when Emily saw Elvis steal her daughter. It was when Mike was living in a septic tank. It was when Sophocles Johnson was making underwear clothes."

"It's not the same."

"It's exactly the same."

"Fuck you." The phone rang, two rings, an outside call, and Robert reached over and picked up the receiver. "Carter." He glared at Rich.

"Yes," he said. "Yes." He put his hand over the mouthpiece. "It's Cash."

Rich nodded disgustedly. "Fine." He walked outside to wait in the hall.

The old lady was nothing like he thought she would be. Robert didn't know what he'd expected--a wise, saintly Buddha-esque guru, he supposed, or maybe a smug condescending know-it-all--but he had definitely not been prepared for this mild old woman who sat on an overturned plastic bucket shelling peas.

She looked like a turtle, he thought. Her face was wrinkled her almond-shaped eyes unblinking, and her small fragile head looked as though it could be recessed into her body on its retractable neck. She spoke no English at all beyond the word "Hi," and all communication was directed through Sue, who translated for both sides, but Robert was surprised at how much respect he immediately had for this old lady.

There was something in her soft, almost musical voice, in the matter-of-fact way in which she continued to shell the peas as she spoke, that gave him a feeling of confidence in her. When he looked over at Rich, he could tell from his brother's expression that he felt the same way. Sue's parents had ignored them as they'd walked through the kitchen to the back of the restaurant, continuing their cooking chores as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening, as though this sort of thing occurred all the time. Robert found himself wondering if they knew about the vampire at all, or if this was some thing between grandmother and granddaughter.

Rich did most of the talking asking questions and writing down the answers in his little notebook, but finally the old lady turned to face him. She said something to Sue, and the young woman translated. "She wants to know why Pee Wee Nelson is not with you. She calls him the 'tall man." "

Robert shrugged. "Should he be here?"

"My grandmother wants him to make baht gwa, a mirror. She says we need it to right the cup hugirngsi." Sue paused. "She dreamed of Pee Wee the other night."

Robert didn't know what dreaming about Pee Wee had to do with anything, but he knew enough not to say so. "What kind of mirror is it?" he asked.

"A mirror with eight sides." Sue spoke rapidly in Chiand the old lady nodded, tracing an octagon in the nese, air.

"You want us to bring him over here?"

Sue spoke again in Chinese; again the old lady nodded. "Yes."

"Does she know where the vampire is? Does she want to... ride around with us? We can take her to the spots where he struck, where he killed people. Maybe she can get some vibes or something from that."

Sue translated, and the grandmother smiled, revealing small stained teeth. She spoke rapidly to her granddaughter, and at length. "It does not work that way," Sue explained. "Di Lo Ling Gum does not depend on the material world. It does not matter where she is. She can learn as much sitting here as she can seeing the bodies of the dead. When she is to know the cup hugirngsi's lair; it will be revealed to her."

"Isn't there any way to, push it along?"

Sue shook her head. "I already asked her that. She says no."

"So more people could die?" "More people will die."

"And there's nothing we can do?"

"Tell them to protect themselves. Tell them to wear jade. Tell them to place willow branches on their doors and windows."

"But there's no way to know where he will strike again?"

Sue translated, her grandmother answered, and she shook her head.

"No."

"Will you come with us to the town council meeting on Thursday?" Rich asked. "Will you tell this to the council, so we can come up with some type of civil defense measures?"

This time, Sue did not even have to ask her grand mother. "Yes," she said. "We'll come."

Corrie sat in her car across the street from Taco Bell, looking through the front windows at Rich and that slut, sitting across from each other at one of the tables and eating. Jesus had been right. Rich was slipping it to that Oriental whore. No wonder he'd been so eager to get rid of her, to pack her off to a new job so he could set up his little teaching scare and pick up a young bimbo.

Of course Jesus had been right, she told herself. Could

Jesus ever be wrong?

No.

She knew that now.

But there had been some doubt. What interest could the Son of God possibly have in the minutiae of ordinary lives like hers and Rich's?

Why would He spend His valuable time playing fortune-teller for her when He could be ending world hunger and revealing the cure for cancer?

It was blasphemy to think that way.

She stared at the Taco Bell window. Behind the hot pink words painted on the glass that advertised the "Fiesta Deal," she saw Rich laugh, nod. In her mind, she saw him going down on her, burying his face between her legs and licking her wet pussy while the slut moaned and thrashed beneath him, her slitty eyes closed in ecstasy.

He would pay for his adultery.

And she would definitely pay. Jesus hated chinks. He had reserved a special place in hell for those slant-eyed heathens. And there was no way the Son of God would tolerate this sort of harlotry in the town of His rebirth.

Corrie smiled to herself. A month ago, a week ago even, if she had learned of her husband's unfaithfulness, it would have devastated her. tut she was stronger now. The Lord had given her strength.

Let them do what they wanted. Let them consort in public. Let them fuck in the middle of the street for all she cared.

She would have the last laugh.

I Jesus would see to that.

She took her hands off the steering wheel, pressed them together, closed her eyes, and began to pray.

The Rio Verde Town Council met on the third Thurs day of every month.

More than one council member over the past few years had tried to get the meeting day switched from Thursday to Tuesday since Thursday was a good night for TV. But the mayor, who owned Desert Ac cess Gable, and Councilman Jones, who was the manager of Radio Shack, had always successfully defeated such efforts, citing tradition and stating that if an individual believed that television was more important than town business, then that person did not belong on the council.

The two men also mentioned at each of these junctures that, if desired, shows could be videotaped and watched at a more convenient time.

With VCRs and blank tapes purchased from Radio Shack, Rich had always thought, and though he'd never said a word about it, he had stored that idea away as the basis for a future editorial.

Tonight, though, the meeting concerned nothing so frivolous.

Tonight they were here to talk about vampires.

For the first time since the water-rate increase controversy two years back, the council chambers were filled, although this time the mood was tense, the room over flowing with frightened people who ordinarily had no interest in civic affairs. Townspeople filled all of the extra seats, and the crowd spilled outside to the front of the building where a large group had gathered to listefi to the proceedings through the door. Most of the people, Rich noticed, looked tired, nervous, on edge. He saw homemade crosses hanging around necks, smelled garlic mixed with sweat.

In addidon to the mayor, council, and town manager, the leaders of most of the churches were here, as were most of the members of the Chamber of Commerce, including Hollis and several of his cronies. Rich sat between Robert and Sue, who was seated next to her father and grandmother. In the audience he could see the FBI agent and the guy from the state police.

"I should've prepared something," Sue said. "I hate talking in front of crowds. I'm going to freeze up."

"You may not even have to talk at all," Rich told her. "We'll see how things go. Robert has some prepared statements, so do I, if we need them, and if that's not enough to convince people, we may ask your grandmother some questions so they can get it from the horse's mouth.

Basically you'll just be a translator."

Robert leaned behind his brother and addressed Sue. "Don't forget, we already have a head start. People read your story in the paper. That already gives us some legitimacy."

Sue nodded and said nothing.

The meeting was called to order, and in a frayed and worried voice Mayor Tillis announced that the usual reading of the minutes would not take place today so that they could proceed directly to the matter at hand.

He looks old, Rich thought. Old and scared. "We're here to talk about vampires," the mayor said. He scanned the room, waiting and prepared for a reaction, but there was none. No one smiled, no one laughed, no one spoke. There was only a hushed and fearful silence. "We will hear from our police chief," the mayor said. "Robert Carter." "

Robert stood. "Thank you."

He began with the discovery of Manuel Torres's body and Donna Sandoval's assertion that she saw Tortes walking with Caldwell Burke, and continued through to the abduction of Pare Frye, spelling out the events clearly and

In' chronologically. He mentioned the expert opinion of

Woods, who nodded in agreement, and went into just enough detail on the murders to let people know what they were dealing with.

Rich glanced over at the FBI agent and the state policeman, to see how they were reacting to this. Both had been invited by Robert to the meeting, but neither had been told in advance what exactly was going to be discussed. The state policeman was openly smirking, feeling smugly superior to the rural bumpkins surrounding him, but the FBI agent had no smile on his face. He appeared to be genuinely interested in what was being said.

Rich fried that in his mind for later.

Robert put down the paper from which he'd been reading. "Hard as it may be for us to believe, we have a vampire here in Rio Verde. I know such things aren't supposed to exist, and two months ago I would've bet my bottom dollar that they didn't, but I believe now that they do. And that's why I wanted to speak today. One is here. And it is killing people. Our people. I think we need to figure out a strategy for dealing with this creature, for protecting ourselves from it and killing it."

Matt Calderon raised his hand and began speaking in a too-high voice even before the mayor nodded toward him. "Why don't we feed him someone with AIDS?" Calderon asked. "We could test everyone, maybe find someone staying at the ranch, and when he bites into that AIDS blood, that'll be the end of him."

"Vampires don't get diseases," the mayor said. "They're already dead.

That's a nitwit idea."

Hollis stood and began to speak, though he had not been recognized.

"There are no such things as vampires," he said. "I wish you'd all stop--"

He was drowned out by the loud sound of angry disagreement from the assembled crowd. "If there's no vampires, who killed Terry Clifford?" someone asked. "I saw one!" Buford exclaimed from the back. "Me too" someone else echoed.

The mayor pointed at Hollis. "Sit down," he said. "We're not here to debate the existence of vampires. That's something all of us except you seem to agree on. We're here to decide how to protect ourselves against them. How to kill them, if possible."

The questions came fast and furious. Where did the vampire live? What did it look like? How old was it? Had any of the victims become vampires themselves? Robert answered as best he could. ' "How are we going to kill him?" Buford asked. ""That's the main thing we need to know. Silver bullet? Stake?" "Yeah!" someone said, "Stake him!"

Robert glanced over at Sue. She took a deep breath, nodded. "I'll let Sue Wing tell you about that," he said.

Sue stood. She was isibly nervous, her hands trembling, but she nodded to the mayor and the council, then turned to face Buford. "What you call a vampire, we call a cup hugirngsi in my culture. It's basically the same thing, but the difference is that we do not believe that the cup hugrngsi has anything to do with Christianity. It is not a monster that preys only on the members of one religion. It kills anyone. It kills animals. It even kills plants. It exists and it has always existed, and that's why the symbols of Christianity won't stop it. You can't use holy water or crosses like you can in the movies. Jade--"

A tall cowboy standing next to the door smiled patronizingly at Sue. "I read that article too, and, no offense, babe, but what we got here's an American vampire."

Lee Hillman nodded. "This thing's a bloodsucker, not a rice eater."

There was a chorus of good-natured chuckles.

Sue felt the blood rush to her face, her cheeks burning with anger.

"Listen, you ignorant redneck, s--"

"There's no call to use language like that," the mayor said sternly.

"This isn't a game!" Sue said. "Don't you realize that?"

"I don't know who you think you are---" Councilman Waiters began.

Pee Wee stood, his frame dwarfing all those around him. "Let her speak," he said, and the argument quieted down. He nodded toward Sue.

"Go on."

"What you've seen in the movies is wrong. The cup hug/rngsi doesn't care about Christian symbols. It was around long before Christianity.

But it is afraid of jade. It can be hurt by the wood of the willow tree. It can be turned back with the baht gwa, amirror with eight sides. These are what you need to be arming yourselves with." She looked around the room, saw hostility on some faces, indifference on others, interest on only a few. "We can kill it," she said, and she purposely made her voice softer, more sympathetic. "But until we do, you need to protect yourselves and your loved ones. My parents have a willow tree. I think a few of you ranchers have some too. Use the branches to make spears. Wear jade or carry it with you. Do not go out at night."

Rich nodded. "If we just behave sensibly, if we just act on what we know, we can get through this thing."

"How did a Chinese vampire get all the way over here in America?"

Councilman Jones asked suspiciously.

"They brought him!" a woman yelled. "Her family brought him with them!"

"There's no such thing as a "Chinese' vampire," Sue said. "There are only cup hugirngsis. They're the same everywhere."

"Then how come your stuff works against him, and ours doesn't?" a man called out.

"I don't know," Sue said patiently. "Information gets changed over the years, over the miles. Somehow you got the information wrong. It's like that kid's game where you start a message at one end of a room and whisper it to the person next to you, and by the time it gets to the other end of the room, it's screwed up." She looked down at her grandmother, placed a hand on the old woman's shoulder. "We know about these things because our culture is thousands of years old. And continuous. We've learned a few things over the centuries. America is only a couple of hundred years old."

"Maybe we could burn the vampire," Mayor Tillis interrupted. "Find out where he lives and torch it. Or we could douse him with liquid nitrogen, freeze him."

"You're thinking of scientific solutions," Rich said, looking exasperatedly at Sue. "Listen to what she is saying. This is not something that obeys the laws of science. This thing has nothing to do with logic or reason. We need... I don't know, magic to right him. Sue just told you what you need to do to protect yourselves

"We can just drag him out into sunlight," a young man said. ""Let him fry and turn to dust."

"Whatever we do, we need to catch him firstl" Will Overbeck shouted. "I think we should set a trap. I'll donate a cow, Lem could kick in a goat, maybe some of the other ranchers would be willing to fork over some chickens. We could slaughter them all, spread the blood around, like they do for sharks, and then wait. When he comes to eat! you got him! got him."

Robert looked over Rich's shoulder at Sue, shook his head disgustedly.

"They're not listening to us," Rich whispered.

Dozens of people were speaking at once now, their competing voices worriedly anxious and, at the same time, defensively belligerent.

"This demon can only be fought with prayer," Pastor Wilkerson from the Lutheran Church was saying from his seat.

Mrs. Church, the librarian, vehemently shook her head. "I cannot sit idly by, praying for God to do something when I can do it myself. God gave us brains and free will so we could make our own decisions, so we could right our own fights. The Chinese girl said the vampire's afraid of jade instead of crosses, and I believe her. God has al lowed this information to be placed in front of us; now he is waiting to see what we do with it."

"Exactly," Robert said.

The mayor banged on his desk with a gavel. He stood and continued to bang until the room was silent. He looked slowly around the room. "I don't know if we've Succeeded in reaching an agreement on anything yet, but I do suggest that we proceed in a logical and orderly fashion. I am proposing that we adopt an emergency curfew, that we ban all children and adults from being on the street after dark until such time as this situation is resolved. Once the proposal is seconded, I will open the floor for discussion."

"Basha's is open twenty-four hours," Jim Kness, the manager of the grocery store said. "That's corporate policy. I can't change that.

I'm going to be arrested for doing my job and keeping the store open?"

"What about the movie theater?" someone said.

"I can't go shopping until after I get off work, and I don't get off until it's dark."

Robert raised his hands for silence. "We won't enforce any curfew." He looked over at the mayor. "Sorry, Al. But we do need to decide how we're going to deal with this."

Tom Moore, the Baptist preacher, jumped up from his seat and rushed into the center of the council chambers.

"Vampires," Moore announced loudly, "are the spawn of Satan. They are among us because we asked them here with our wickedness and our sinfulness. But Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, has returned to protect us, has offered us sanctuary from the adversary if only we dedicate ourselves to obeying the word of God." He turned slowly on his heel and raised his arm until he was pointing at Sue. "This heathen has asked us to adopt the ways of evil, to forsake the holy word of God--"

"Shut up," Robert said, facing Moore. "Just shut the hell up. This isn't your church, this is a town council meeting We're here as citizens of Rio Verde, not as individuals. We're here to draft a civil defense plan for our town, not to promote our own interests. If you have nothing to contribute beyond your racist bullshit, then stop taking up our time. We have work to do."

There was the sound of two hands clapping from the back of the now silent audience, and Buford stood, grinning hugely, hands high over his head, applauding. To the side of him, someone else began to clap. The applause grew. It by no means included most of the assembled people, but it was definitely close to half, and Rich felt proud as he looked at his brother, standing tall and proud against the preacher.

Moore turned without a word and walked out of the room, the crowd parting before him to let him through. Some people watched his departure with concern, still others hurried to join him, but most remained where they were,

Robert did not even wait until the preacher left the chambers. "We don't have time to play games here to night," he said. He looked around the room, and to Rich it seemed as though he had gained a stature he hadn't had a few moments before.

What a difference the perception of power made. "The important thing right now is that we get the word out and make people aware that there's a vampire loose in Rio Verde. He's already killed four people, maybe more, and God knows how many animals. He'll kill again. You can believe in the Chinese stuff or not, but make sure that you and your families and your friends and your coworkers stay indoors after dark.

If you have to go someplace, run to your car, run from your car, stay inside locked buildings as much as possible. All of the murders so far have taken place outside, in the open air. I don't know if it's true that a vampire has to be invited before he can come in"--he looked at Sue, who shook her headm'but he's not going into people's homes or places of business. So far. If we take precautions and don't act stupidly, we'll get through this."

The questions were again shouted chaotically, but they were more serious, more thoughtful, more specific. Many of them were addressed to Sue, and she and her father tried to answer them carefully and thoroughly.

"I am going to need volunteers!" Robert announced. "I want to establish patrol teams to watch for the vampire each night, and I don't have the manpower for it. You'll be in pairs, either patrolling the streets or stationed in appropriate locations, and you'll be outfitted with two-way communications devices. If that thing makes a move against anyone in this town, I want to know about it. We'll be on him so fast, he won't know what hit him. If anyone's interested, come up to me afterward. I have a sign up sheet here, and I'd be glad to have you aboard."

This time the applause was unanimous, erupting simultaneously throughout the members of the crowd.

"We got to them," Rich said to Sue. "They heard us." "Maybe."

"Maybe?"

She frowned. "Your brother made it sound as though jade is an option, like they can use jade or a cross; that it doesn't matter as long as they believe in the cup hugirngs's existence. But the creature doesn't care whether you believe in it or not. It exists, and jade and willow can ward it off. Crosses and garlic and the rest of those movie things do nothing."

"But they know that now. They heard you. They listened." "Maybe," she said again.

Robert had moved to the center of the council chambers and was surrounded by a clamoring group of men and women trying to talk to him.

Rich could see that a clipboard was being passed around. Apparently, there was no shortage of volunteers.

It was late, and it was dark outside--a fact that seemed to be just below the surface of everyone's mind. People kept glancing toward the door, toward the blackness beyond the exterior lights of the building.

The crowd outside had virtually disappeared, and it was not too long before the inside crowd began to thin out. Rich sidled up next to his brother. He saw the FBI agent, who had remained unmoving in his seat until now, stand and approach. Rossiter stopped in front of Robert.

"I need to talk to you," he said. "Where's Cash?"

"Cash is an asshole."

"You're noLW'

"I believe you about the vampire," Rossiter said. "I'm willing to support you on this. The FBI's behind you." He looked toward Sue, her father, and grandmother. "I'd like to talk to the Chinese girl."

"Sue Wing," Robert said.

"What?" "She has a name. Her name is Sue Wing."

"Right." Rossiter looked at his watch. "Finish this up and meet me in your office in ten minutes." He turned to leave without waiting for a response.

"Make it twenty," Robert said.

Rossiter did not turn, did not seem to have heard him but continued walking.

Rich grinned. "I guess he'll just have to wait an extra ten minutes."

Robert grinned back. "I have a sneaking suspicion it'll be closer to fifteen." He turned back to the excited men and women in front of him ..... Rich leaned against the front counter next to Woods. The coroner was tired, and more than once had announced he was going home, but he continued to tough it out.

This was too important to miss.

Sue sat at Lee Anne desk, her father and grandmother in borrowed chairs next to her. Robert and Rossiter leaned against the desk opposite them. The FBI had been asking questions for over an hour, of all of them, but mostly of Sue and her grandmother.

"How much firepower are you going to need?" he asked Sue. "How many men should I have assigned to this case?"

She shook her head. "I told you. We don't need any of that."

"It can't hurt." ,

"Human weapons are of no use against the cup hugirng,s/. And, yes, it can hurt. We need seven men. Seven men to be chosen by my grandmother." "Because seven is a lucky number." "Right."

"But it just seems to me that it would be prudent to have some backup."

"Do you understand what I'm telling you? You can have nuclear weapons, and it won't make any difference."

A flicker of interest crossed the agent's features. "Now that would be interesting."

"Jesus."

"I think we've had enough here tonight," Robert said. "We're all tired; we're all a little cranky. Let's just go home and get some sleep." "No," Rossiter said. "I'm not finished here."

"We are." Sue stood. She said something in Cantonese to her grandmother and father, and the three of them rose. They walked around the desk and toward the gate in the front counter. She turned, looking over her shoulder, and smiled at the agent. "Keep in touch."

Rich grinned at her as she passed by on her way out:

Pastor Wheeler looked at his watch. It was midnight Exactly. He walked onto the makeshift platform and faced his congregation. They were seated before him on chairs, benches, boulders, and the hard ground of the vacant lot. Behind them, in its exquisite blackness, was the Church of the Living Christ.

In three days it would be completed.

In three days, the Second Coming would be upon them. Wheeler looked out upon his flock. There were easily two hundred people here tonight.

In the first row, he saw Bill Covey seated next to the Methodist pastor.

They were all coming around. Just as Jesus had said they would.

It was too bad that only forty of them would be chosen by the Lord to live, but, as the Savior liked to say, those were the rules of the room, love 'em or leave 'em. And, of course, those of the faithful who voluntarily sacrificed themselves on the altar or in the pits would be rewarded in Heaven and would not perish but would have everlasting life. The rest... The rest would get what they deserved, He felt exhilarated, and he breathed deeply, taking in the cold desert air.

After Jesus' rebirth, the Word would spread, and soon people from all over the state, all over the country, all over the world, would come to pay horn age to the Living Christ. And Jesus would pass judgment on them.

The preacher smiled upon his congregation. He began to speak. He spoke of the wickedness of the world and the goodness of God, and then he said what Jesus had told him to say. "Chinksl" he said, grinning fiercely. "The heathen Chinee! The Lord Jesus Christ has foreseen that the yellow race will try to prevent Him from accomplishing His goals and bringing to light a brave new worldl It is up to us, the servants of God, the Christian soldiers, to prove our love for Him by stopping this pagan plotI"

Wheeler looked upon the sea of rapt faces before him, pale blurs in the night. He lowered his voice, but it could still be heard clearly in the hushed stillness. "They will try to attack the church. They must be stopped. Go home tonight and get your guns, your knives, your axes, your hatchets. Anything that can be used to defend the house of the Lord. Bring them here to me." He grinned. "When they attack, we will be ready. And we shall overcome. We will hurt them and torture them and feed their bleeding yellow bodies to Jesus, and He will pick his teeth with their bones."

Heartfelt murmurs of "Amen" echoed throughout the crowd of men and women gathered in the darkness.

The preacher looked toward the church where, faintly, he could hear the sound of hammering.

Three more days.

It was going to be glorious.

Sue sat on the floor of her grandmother's room, her nostrils filled with the mingled scents of ginseng and chrysanthemum. It was nearly dawn. John and her parents would be up soon. Although she and her grandmother had been talking since they'd returned from the police station, Sue did not feel the least bit tired. In many ways, she felt more awake than she ever had.

She'd learned a lot this night. Legends and facts and the connective bridges between the two. The tales and truths her grandmother told her she would have dismissed two months ago, cringing with embarrassment at the old woman's uneducated backwardness. But, since then, her attitudes had changed, her mind was not as closed as it had been, and she knew that there was nothing her grandmother could say that she would not believe.

For the past two hours, the old woman had been lying on her bed, eyes closed, but now she sat up, turning to look at Sue. "Are you a virgin?" she asked.

Sue stared at the carpet, at her toes, anywhere but into the eyes of her grandmother. Her face burned with the heat of embarrassment, and she found that she could not answer the question.

"Have you had sex?" her grandmother asked gently.

Sue knew her answer must be important, knew that it had to have some relevance to the cup hugirngsi, but still she could not meet her grandmother's eyes. "Not really," she said.

"You have not accepted or tasted the seed of a male?" Tasted? Was this her grandmother speaking? Sue shook her head quickly, not looking up, wishing she was anywhere but here.

"Good," her grandmother said, touching her head.

"You are the second of the seven." "Who is the first?" Sue asked. "I am."

"And the others?

"I do not know. Perhaps the mirror man, perhaps the policemam" "Pee Wee and Robert? What about Rich, my editor?" Her grandmother's gaze darkened. "No."

A wave of cold washed over her. Sue nodded, wanting to ask why but not daring to question her grandmother's wisdom. "What about Father?" she asked. She felt guilty for the way her parents, her father in particular, had been pushed aside during this whole affair. It did not seem right, and she felt that despite the communication problems her parents had, both in their family and among other people, it was only right that they should share center stage with her grandmother and herself.

"No," her grandmother said.

Sue stared again at her feet, licked her lips. "Why is it important that I am... a virgin?" She had a tough time even saying the word.

"What if I had not been?"

"It would make no difference."

Now Sue looked up at her. "Then why did you ask?"

Her grandmother smiled slightly. "I just wanted to know."

Sue blinked dumbly, then started to grin. Tasted? In the midst of all the horror, in the middle of the craziness, this struck her as funny.

And for the first time since the beginning of this long, long night, she began to laugh.

Rich awoke to feel a hand on his penis, fingers firmly grasping his shaft as a thumb rubbed the sensitive area directly below the tip' trying to stimulate him" He pened morning," up his eyes, looked at Corrie, pulled away, out of her grasp.

"Not this he said. "I don't feel to it."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I just don't. I'm not in the mood."

Corrie glared at him. "Who've you getting it from then, that Oriental slut?"

"What?"

"Has she been servicing you, your big white studlil'less?" "What the hell are you talking about? You're the one who never wants to do it anymore. You're the one who's been acting for a month like sex is something good Christians don't do."

"Yeah? Well, I want it now."

"Well, I don't."

"Why? Aren't you man enough?"

He rolled over, faced away from her. "I'm not going to listen to---"

"Or did little Miss Hong Kong Whore suck it all out of you last night?"

He sat up. "That's it. I've had enough of your bullshit."

"The truth hurts, doesn't it?" There was a malicious smile on her face, cruel derision in her eyes, and he thought to himself that this was not Corrie, this was a person he did not know.

Anna was already awake and watching cartoons, and he forced himself to put on a cheerful front as he made breakfast. Corrie came out, already dressed for work, as he was wiping egg yolk from Anna's face with a washcloth.

"Hi, Mommy," Anna said. There was a formality to her voice that seemed unusual, and Rich looked at her.

Corrie smiled at her daughter, pulled back her hair, kissed her forehead. "Morning, cutie"

Anna wiped off the kiss, frowned.

"I'll take you to school, but Daddy'll have to pick you up, okay?"

"I want to go with Daddy," Anna said.

"You go with your mother," Rich told her.

Ii

Anna said nothing.

Corrie straightened, fixed Rich with a flat gaze. "I may be late tonight. Don't wait up."

Rich tossed the washcloth in the sink, He looked at her, frowned. "I want you to be careful."

She appraised him coolly. "You don't think I can take care of myself?

"It's not that."

"What is it, then?"

"I'm worried about you. I care. I'm concerned." "Oh. So dictating what I do shows concern." "I just said be careful."

"I can take care of myself. I'm in better shape than you are. At least I get out and exercise. All you do is sit in front of that damn computer all day." "You're not in better shape than Manual Torres or Terry Clifford."

She turned away from him. "Fine."

Rich turned to Anna. He bent down, gave her a light tap on the rear.

"Go brush your teeth," he said.

Mommy is getting ready to go." Anna hurried down the hall, and he again faced Corrie. "Why are we even fighting?" "Because I don't like the way you treat me."

"The way I treat you? There've been all these murders here, so I tell you to be careful, and you jump down my

"I don't like your condescending attitude."

"Go to hell." He walked into the kitchen, grabbed his and Anna's plates from the counter, and placed them in the sink.

Corrie started down the hall, "Don't take it out on me because you can't perform your manly duties," she said sweetly She smiled daintily at him as she went to get Anna.

Things were different at the paper. Especially in the early afternoon.

As he sat at his desk, proofreading the account of the council meeting he'd written, he glanced over at Anna and Sue, talking together at the far desk, and smiled. Being here with them, it felt almost as though they were a family. There was that same sort of easy naturalness, that comfortable familiarity. It was a very different feeling than the one he experienced with Corrie. When he, Corrie, and Anna were together, it was like the meeting of two single parents sharing joint custody of their child. There was none of the sense of togetherness that had once marked their relationship or which now characterized his relationship with Sue.

Maybe Corrie was right. Maybe they should have left, gotten out of town, blown this burg. Maybe they would have had a chance someplace else.

Were his loyalties to this town, to this newspaper, really more important to him than his marriage?

He didn't know. That was the truth: he didn't know. He wished he could come to the revelation that always came to movie protagonists, realizing in one clear thinking instant that it was family that was really important; everything else in life was superfluous.

But he could not make such an assumption. For him, it did not seem to be true.

Could they really save their marriage if they moved somewhere else? If so, why couldn't they save their marriage if they stayed here?

He looked over at Sue, brushing her hair back from her forehead. He had never really noticed, before Robert had commented on the matter and Corrie had made her wild accusations, how pretty Sue was. Well, he had noticed, but it had been a distanced intellectual recognition. He had seen her only as a student, as an employee. But he saw now that she was pretty.

Very pretty. Sexy.

The thought made him uncomfortable, and he tried to push it from his mind, knowing he was edging dangerously close to sexual harassment territory. How many bosses or supervisors had felt themselves attracted to one of their employees, had subtly used the power of their positions to exploit that situation?

What was wrong with him? He was married, for Christ's sake. With a daughter.

He remembered when he and Corrie had been Sue's age. It seemed like only yesterday, but it had been what?

Nine years? A decade? More? He recalled, when he was twenty, how old he had considered people in their thirties.

Did he seem that old to Sue? It was hard to believe. He still felt young, still thought of himself as young, still identified more with people her age than with other middle aged adults. /

Other.

Middle-aged. :

Adults.

Was that what he was? He felt depressed all of a sudden, but then Anna ran over, a crayon picture of Big Bird in her hand, and his spirits instantly rose again. He praised her work, then made a big show of proudly tacking it on the cork bulletin board next to his desk. He rewarded Anna with a big kiss.

She ran off to see Carole in the front, and he swiveled in his chair to face Sue. "So who's going to be in this party of seven besides me and Roberg Does your grandma know yet? How about Rossiter? I think he wants in on the action."

"Maybe," Sue said evasively.

Something about her answer sounded suspicious to him. "Sue?" he said.

"I don't know yet who she wants."

"You don't even know about me or Robert?"

"Your brother will be part of the group."

He looked at her. "And me?"

"She says she wants someone else," Sue admitted, not looking at him.

Rich's face hardened. "I don't care what she says. I'm in. I may not be Joe Macho, but I can take care of myself"

"That's not it," Sue said. "There's more to it than that "I have to talk to her some more."

"Talk to her, then. But I'm in. Tell her that. I'm in." "I'll try,"

Sue said.

After work, he and Anna came home to a dark house. He knew Corrie had said she was going to be late, but the sight of that dark house disturbed him, and though he pretended for Anna's sake that everything was fine, as soon as he turned on the lights and the television, he went into the bedroom and dialed the number of Wheeler's office.

He let the phone ring ten dines before hanging up. He walked back into the living room and was about to suggest to Anna that they grab some Taco Bell food and cruise by the church on the way back the black church

--when Corrie walked in, tired, angry, but obviously alive and all right. He was grateful, but he said nothing, only sat down on the couch, pretending he'd come in to watch the news

Corrie made dinner, Cajun chicken. It was the sam old game: he did not talk to her, she did not talk to him but they both talked endlessly to Anna.

Everyone went to bed early.

Rich was awakened by a small hand pressing against his shoulder.

"Daddy?

He opened one eye, saw Anna standing next to the bed in the dark. "What is it, honey?"

"There's a man outside my window."

He was instantly alert and pushing off the covers. man?" He swung his feet onto the floor and grabbed baseball bat from under the bed.

"Yeah. And he keeps laughing at me."

Rich felt his body grow cold.

No. Jesus, no.

"I don't like the way he laughs, Daddy."

"I'll take care of it, sugar." Rich tried to smile at his daughter, though he was not sure how well he succeedo His smile felt faint and plastic on his face. "You wait in bed here with Mommy.

"I'm afraid." i "I'll take care of it. I'll make sure no one's there, an when it's all safe, I'll come and get you and tuck you in bed, okay?

How does that sound?" i "Okay," Anna said uncertainly.

Rich walked slowly down the hall to his daughter's bedroom. Robert had said he'd seen the Laughing Man. was that what the vampire looked like? The Laughing Man That was one thing Sue's grandmother was always vague on--the way the vampire looked. She made it sound : though its appearance varied, changed. Could it assume the shape of other monsters? Of fears?

If it was the vampire, they were safe. There were willow garlands around all the doors and windows. Sue's family had spent the past few days making them from what remained of the willow trees after the fire, and she'd brought some into work. He had availed himself of the Wings' generosity, picking up two long garlands and cut ting them to fit, placing them around the doors and windows after dinnen

Anna's door was open, her light on. He walked into the room and turned off the light. Her curtains were closed, but when he opened them he wanted to be able to see. The light would make the world outside as black as pitch, and he wouldn't be able to see a thing other than his own reflection.

He walked slowly across the floor, bat in hand, almost as though he expected to find someone hiding in the curtains. Winnie-the-Pooh stared at him blankly from the baby chair in the corner of the room. He stepped over

Anna's Ping-Pong paddles ..... He stopped.

He could hear it from here, through the glass, through the curtain, and the hackles rose on the back of his neck. He had heard it before and he recognized it. That familiar throaty chuckle, that low, quiet laugh that would not stop but would continue without pause and grow slowly into loud, wild guffaws.

He forced himself to walk forward, push aside the curtains and look into the side yard. And there he was. The Laughing Man.

Rich was frozen in place, unable to move, unable even to think. He was suddenly confronted with his worst night mare, and though he'd known what to expect, had been halfway prepared for it, he had not anticipated the incapacitating terror that had taken hold of him.

The Laughing Man looked at Rich from beneath his brown derby and chuckled. He was standing next to the storage shed not five feet away, hands clasped primly before him, wearing the same dark brown suit he had always worn, and he was laughing. Rich had never seen the Man this close before, and for the first time he noticed the complete absence of lines or character on that mirth struck face, the one-dimensional unreality of the perpetually smiling eyes.

The chuckle grew, increased in intensity, became a chortle, a cackle, a laugh, and there was no gap, no pause for air, only that inhuman unstoppable laughing. "Daddy?" Anna said behind him.

He turned, the spell broken, to see his daughter's frightened face looking in at him from the hallway. He let the curtain fall. "I'll be there in a minute," he said, and his voice sounded surprisingly normal to his own ears. He waited for her to leave, go back down the hall, dimly aware that the laughing had stopped. When he was sure was gone, opened again. she he the curtain

The side yard was empty.

He let the curtain fall once again and, still with a death grip on the bat, walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. He returned to his bedroom, where Anna was lying on his side of the bed, and Corrie was looking at her through mostly closed eyes.

"Is he gone, Daddy? Is the man gone?"

"What man?" Corrie said sleepily.

"Yes," he whispered to Anna. "He's gone. But I think you should stay with Mommy and Daddy tonight."

She nodded, and he saw the relief in her eyes. "Okay."

He crawled next to her, the covers over to bed pulled both of them.

Let's go to sleep now, he said.

"All right."

He smiled. "Sleep tight."

"Don't let the bed bugs bite." Anna smiled.

She was still smiling two minutes later when she fell asleep.

Corrie waited until after Rich left for the office to tell Anna that she would not be going to school today. Her daughter had not yet learned that school was something to be hated and avoided--she still enjoyed going to kindergarten each daymand she looked crestfallen when Corrie told her that today they were going to do some thing different.

"But Jenny said I could play with her on the teeter totter Anna whined.

"She never lets me play on the teeter-totter."

"You can play with Jenny tomorrow. Today we're going to do something extra special!"

"What?"

"I can't tell you yet. But I'll give you a hint--it's even better than ice cream!"

Anna should have been thrilled. Should have. But was not. There was reluctance in the way she nodded, apprehension in the way she followed her mother into the bed room. Corrie ignored her daughter's mood. She dressed Anna in her best pink outfit, clipped the matching pink barrettes in her hair, and gave her the little pink purse to hold. The two of them walked outside together. Corrie unlocked the car, opened it, but Anna backed up. "Come on," Corrie said. "Get in."

Anna shook her head. Her daughter was afraid of her, Corrie realized.

She knew that should make her sad, but somehow it didn't. It made her angry. "Get in the car" she ordered.

No daughter of hers was going to go against the word of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Anna reluctantly got into the car. Corrie slammed her door, walked around, and got in on the driver's side. She found and put in the Beach Boys' "Endless Summer," Anna's favorite tape, while Anna buckled her shoulder harness belt, but it made no difference in her daughter's attitude.

Corrie only half listened to the music as she pulled of the driveway onto the street. She found herself thinking about Rich. He had seemed strange last night. Nervous. He had not said why he'd asked Anna to sleep with them, and she wondered if he'd heard the voice of Christ.

She had heard the voice. She'd heard it clearly.

And it had told her to bring her daughter to the church.

The morning was clear, but there were clouds in the west, a light band of gray that stretched across the horizon, dividing the sky. She felt good as she drove, content to the core of her being, happy and grateful that she had been chosen to do the Lord's bidding. Her contentment grew the closer she drove to the church, Jesus' home. He lives here now.

Corrie pulled to a stop in front of the interconnected black buildings, unbuckling her shoulder harness. Anna did not do the same, as she usually did, but instead remained tightly buckled in place. She was tense, her little neck stiff, her eyes wide as she stared at the church. "I want to go to school," Anna said.

"You're not going to school today," Corrie said. "I want to go home."

"You're going to church."

"Daddy doesn't want me to go to church." Anna was clearly frightened.

"I don't care what Daddy wants. Mommy wants you to go to church."

Anna reached instinctively for the thin bracelet around her mist, holding it tightly, her fingers pressing against the small piece of jade.

"And you don't need that," Corrie said, reaching over and ripping the bracelet off her daughter's wrist. She threw the bracelet out the car window. It landed in the gutter on a bed of dead leaves.

"Nol" Anna cried.

"Shut up," Corrie said, and there was enough seriousness in her tone of voice that Anna was cowed into silence. "It's time to meet Jesus"

Corrie said.

Anna burst into tears. There was none of the usual sniffling and blinking, the attention-grabbing preliminaries that gradually grew into a full-fledged cry, there was only this sudden onslaught of full blown emotion, and Corrie was momentarily taken aback, unprepared for this response. Anna had not behaved like this for over two years, since her Terrible Temper Tantrum days, and Corrie was brought back to herself by the ferocity of her daughter's reaction. Anna was frightened. No, not just frightened. Terrified. And it was her responsibility as a mother to comfort and reassure her daughter.

She reached instinctively for Anna, ready-to give her a warm hug and tell her everything was okay, when a more reasonable, less emotional voice within her said that Jesus would not like this. This was not what He wanted.

Instead of hugging Anna, she slapped the girl across the face. Hard.

"Shut up," she said. "The Lord Jesus Christ is waiting for us."

Anna did not shut up. Her crying grew louder, wilder, and when Corrie unbuckled her shoulder harness and tried to drag her across the car seat toward her, Anna put up a right, kicking and lashing out with her small fists.

"I'll help you."

Corrie looked through her window to see Pastor Wheeler smiling in at her. Her heart gave a quick involuntary leap in her chest, then she was opening the door and climbing out. "I'll get her," she said.

"She's my daughter." Corrie walked around the front of the car and opened the passenger door, grabbing Anna by the arm and yanking. There was a muffled crack, the sound of a twig snapping under a blanket, and then Anna was not crying but screaming, a single long sustained note that sounded louder than an air raid siren in the morning stillness.

Corrie knew that she had broken her daughter's arm, but the feeling that rushed through her now was anger, not sympathy, and she did not let go, pulling harder until Anna was all the way out of the car.

Wheeler took the girl's other arm, put a hand over her mouth, and between the two of them, they dragged the girl into the church.

The church.

It had changed, even since Tuesday, the last time she'd been here. The empty shells of the Savior's sacrifices were arranged around the perimeter of the chapel in staged scenes from the scriptures, and they were beautiful: the resurrection of Lazarus, the death of John the Baptist, the confrontation between David and Goliath. The bodies were positioned in amazingly lifelike poses, their forms sculpted into Art by the hand of Jesus..

She let go of Anna, leaving her in the pastor's hands and walking slowly around the openings in the floor, following the walls of the chapel. She stared, mesmerized, at the sculptures, awed and overwhelmed by the divine inspiration that had created wonderment from such un inspired material. Tears of joy rolled down her face as she recognized the mortal coils of several of the people who had volunteered their lives for the glory of Christ, and she thought that this would indeed be a glorious way to slough off the burden of life.

She reached the front of the chapel and stood there for a moment, staring upward. On the raised pulpit was an oversize throne made from the bones of men and the heads of jackals.

The Throne of God.

A thrill of fear and excitement, exquisitely mingled, ran through her as she eyed the magnificent chair.

"Jesus is waiting," the preacher reminded her.

The sound of his voice broke the spell, and she turned to face him. He was on the other side of the first hole, both arms locked around Anna.

She nodded and started around the hole toward him. It should have smelled horribly here, she thought, surrounded by the castoff vessels of those who had ascended to heaven, but Jesus had somehow metamorphosed the odor of the dead bodies into a scent more lovely than that of the most fragrant and beautiful bouquet, and she breathed deeply as she walked, inhaling the perfumed air. She reached the other side and held her arms out for her daughter, but Wheeler pulled away.

"He is come," he said.

There was coldness in the air, the coldness of the grave. It lasted only for a fraction of a second, but it was enough to cast doubt on everything she'd experienced here, everything she saw before her. She suddenly thought that she should take Anna to the Emergency Room and get her arm set.

And then those thoughts fled.

Jesus arose from the opening n the earth on a beam of light, His radiance illuminating the interior of the chapel, brightening even the dark corners of the pulpit. Corrie fell to her knees, her heart hammering crazily, the accelerated pulse thumping in her head and chest and stomach, echoing between her legs in a sensuous thing.

"I have brought them," the preacher said.

"Yes." The Savior's voice was like golden chimes in clear spring air..

I love you, Corrie wanted to say, but her lips would not move, no words would come.

Jesus smiled upon her. "I know. "He touched her head gently, tilted it.

Bit into her neck.

Corrie died screaming, thrashing in agony, the substance of her form withering, shrinking as the liquid drained out of it and into the hungry open mouth of Jesus

Christ.

Five feet away, trembling with terror, Wheeler watched.

At one time, he would have looked away, would not have been able to stomach the final minute, but now his gaze was riveted, and he licked his lips with a dry tongue, a thirst growing within him.

Bloodthirst.

Jesus turned, still holding Corrie's shrunken head, and fixed him with eyes of deep solid crimson. The Savior's gaze moved to Anna. He nodded.

With trembling fingers, Wheeler pushed the girl forward. She was whimpering, a quiet, almost inaudible sound released reluctantly from between tightly closed lips. She was not moving, obviously in shock, her eyes fLxed and glassy, and she did not react as Jesus touched her shoulder and drew her to Him.

Jesus bent her head to the side, pushed her hair out of the way, bared her neck. He bit down, but only slightly. A streaming wash of dark blood spilled over her white neck, coursing down her pink dress.

"This is her blood," Jesus said. "Drink of it."

Wheeler hurried forward, put his mouth to the wound. He did not even have to suck. The liquid was drawn into his mouth automatically, a hot, sourly bitter substance, thick and viscous and intermittently chunky.

And it was good.

Across the desert, the radio picked up only middle-of the-road stations that seemed to play exclusively hits from the sixties and early seventies. Glen Campbell. The Carpenters. The Fifth Dimension.

Melanie. Joe South.

The songs made Robert feel slightly sad. Nostalgia, he supposed. The first sign of encroaching old age. He didn't know whether his life had been less complicated then or whether the world had been less complicated, but it had been a happier time, a more innocent time, and both he and the world had since moved on.

He had been to Phoenix, had spent the morning at the federal building with Rossiter, and what he had been shown had been enough to curl his hair. After that prima donna shit the agent had been pulling for the past month, it was strange to see him open and cooperative, offering help and information. Robert was shocked to find that Rossiter had an entire vampire file, a massive list of people over the past several decades who'd had the blood sucked out of them. Neither he nor the agent knew whether this was the work of many vampires or if their vampire had simply been traveling around, but Rossiter wanted him to ask Sue and her grandmother about it.

Robert felt good that he had finally been let into the agent's confidence, that he was finally being treated as though he was an equal, but he knew that it was only occurring because Rossiter thought he could be of some tse to his career. The agent was no longer rude and disnissive toward him, but he was toward his own people. He'd been curt to one of his fellow agents, downright asty to an assistant, and Robert realized that this selfish axogance was a fundamental part of Rossiter's personalty. Perhaps it was what made him a good law enforcement fighter. Perhaps it was why he was Robert's age and so much more successful in their field. But if that's what it took to get to the top, Robert thought, he didn't want it. Rich was right. Rio Verde really wasn't such a bad place to be,

Rossiter also appeared to be acting somewhat secretive Lbout the existence of the vampire. When he'd asked obert to accompany him to Phoenix, to the FBI offices, obert had envisioned a meeting with a task force, a conrence with business-suited experts who would map out quick coherent strategy to deal with the problem. un stead they'd walked unnoticed to the little cubicle Rosrapidly called an office and had not discussed anything with anybody. Instead of world-class minds addressing themselves to the situation in Rio Verde, he was presented with eroxed copies of declassified information and was asked to consult Sue's family....... It seemed strange to him, and he said as much to Roslater, but the agent assured him that, within the next few days, the big guns would be called in. "This is a bureaucacy," he explained. "We work differently here than you in on your little police force."

Robert left around noon. Rossiter said he had to check n with his supervisors, make a report or something, and le would be following later. He wanted to meet again with Sue and her grandmother and plan a specific strategy for tracking down and disposing of the vampire.

The vampire.

It was amazing to Robert how quickly he, and everyone had accepted the existence of a vampire in their midst. Even Rich had come around. The supernatural was supposed to be fodder for B-movies and pulp fiction, believed in the real world only by the ignorant and uneducated, an embarrassing reminder of a more superstitious past. But apparently those roots were not buried as far as people liked to pretend. Or perhaps all of those books and movies somehow sustained a tolerance for such ideas.

Whatever the reason, the revelation that vampires were not the figment of some author's imagination but were honest-to-God beings had not thrown everyone for a loop.

There were those few Medusas, but other than that, people were willing to confront the problem with the new information at their disposal.

That gave him hope. :

He drove into town on 370. He hadn't realized how much the black church had grown until he saw it from the perspective of the highway.

It was now the dominant structure in Rio Verde, its black hulking shape visually overriding even the formerly prominent mine. The church was the most visible object when Robert rounded the curve of the first foothill, thrust into prominence by the stark contrast of its blackness with the pale tones of the earth, rock, and surrounding buildings. It looked to him like a shadow, a shadow that was growing, spreading, and would eventually encompass the whole town.

That was a strange thing to think, Robert told himself. Strange but appropriate. He found his attention focused on the church as he passed the first few shabby shacks and trailers on the outskirts of town, and he still saw its shape, imprinted on his mind, as he pulled into the parking lot of the station.

People were missing. It was now confirmed. No one had called, no reports had been made, but he had instructed Ted, Steve, Ben, and Stu to canvas the town, to look for anything suspicious, to try to determine whether anything out of the ordinary was occurring. They'd found two abandoned cars, several empty houses with open front and garage doors, and more than a few dead dogs and cats. Throughout the town, businesses were closed. Traffic was nonexistent.

Robert took the list from Ted. Whether people were missing because they did been frightened off and had left voluntarily, or whether they'd been .. . taken, this news was disturbing.

Rossiter arrived just after five, a few moments after Woods, and the three of them met Rich at the paper. They waited several minutes for Pee Wee, called his house and got no answer, then left a note for him and went to Sue's.

The meeting was short and maddeningly uninformafive. The old woman had apparently said she was tired, had gone to her room, and would not come out. Sue and her parents seemed to accept this as a matter of course, but Rich and Woods and Rossiter also seemed to accept this as SOP, and that made Robert angry. They placidly accepted the news that nothing was going to be accomplished tonight, and spent fifteen or twenty minutes re hashing information that they'd already gone over twenty times.

Didn't they realize that lives were at stake here? Robert left alone--angry, tired, and frustrated. He'd come with Rossiter, but there was room in Woods's car for the FBI agent, and he decided to let the coroner take Rossiter to his motel He wasn't in the mood for companionship tonight.

He sped toward home. It was cold outside, all trace of Indian summer long since gone, but he felt warm, sweaty, and he drove with the windows open, Lynyrd Skynyrd cranked up on the stereo. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. Maybe he was getting a fever. Maybe he had the flu.

Or maybe it was stress.

He gunned the car as the asphalt changed to dirt. ROn me was singing

"I'm on the Hunt," and Robert sang with it. at the top of his voice. It felt good to scream out some rock and roll, cleansing.

The rocks and cacti on the side of the road were black amorphous shapes, but on the hill beyond his house was a strange white object that stood in sharp contrast to the otherwise uniform darkness. He slowed the car as he neared his drive, finally pressing the brake pedal all the way down. At the top of the hill, clearly visible by the light of the half moon, was something bright and fluttering. It had no distinct shape but grew and contracted in rhythmic billows, segments reaching out and retracting, twisting and turning, dancing with the cold desert wind.

The sight sent shivers down Robert's back, and he thought he heard whispers on the breeze. The fluttering thing on the hill was unknown, yet somehow familiar, like something half-remembered from a long-ago nightmare, and the agitated mutability of its shape struck a chord within him.

He put the car into gear, turned onto the driveway, and sped through the darkness, maneuvering the tricky bumps and ruts by instinct. He slowed as the drive opened onto the front of his house and slammed on the brakes.

Pee Wee's pickup was parked in his carport.

Robert got out of the car and hurried across the dirt, heart thumping. Pee Wee's passenger door was open, the overhead light on, but the big man was nowhere to be seen. Robert called out his friend's name, yelled it more loudly, then walked backward out of the carport. He would have sped inside the house, checked to see if Pee Wee was there, but the front door was locked and his friend could not have gotten in.

The burning overhead light worried him.

Pee Wee never wasted energy.

He continued to call the big man's name. Could Pee

Wee have tried the back door? Was the back door open? Robert hurried around the side of the house.

And stopped dead in his tracks.

The tall saguaro next to the kitchen window, the one his father had specifically told the home builders to save when constructing the house, was now thin and anemic instead of thick and healthy. He could see that much even in this weak light. The huge cactus was a skeleton of its former self, and as Robert moved closer he saw exaggerated ridges beneath the dry wrinkled skin and drooping needles. " '

He'd been here.

The vampire.

Robert reached into his pockets for his crucifix, his jade. Had Pee Wee been killed by the vampire or simply taken? He looked quickly around. He saw no corpse, but every boulder, every cactus, every shrub, was suddenly the location of a potential ambush. The desert was silent. Completely silent. There was not even the whisking sound of nocturnal animal scuttlings.

He glanced to the right, toward the thing on the hill. There was something threatening in its unnatural fluttering, and Robert's grip on the jade tightened. He let go of the crucifix, allowing it to fall limply back to the bottom of his pocket. He knew he should go into the house, call the station, at the very least pick up a flashlight, but instead he began walking across the rocky ground toward the hill.

The wind increased in intensity as he reached the bottom of the slope, coldness whipping his hair, stinging his face, but he did not stop, did not even slow down. All of the saguaros here had been drained. In the pale moonlight, the once formidable army of cacti that stretched up the incline looked now like a regiment of stick figures. The destruction was crude and obvious, like a trail left deliberately by the monster, a swath of drained life that cut through the living desert.

He reached the summit, panting and out of breath. He stared at the figure before him. It was Pee Walthoug] he'd already known thatmand somehow the inevitabili! of this outcome scared him more than its actuality. That big man was wrapped in whitish clear plastic, a tarp some sort, no doubt taken from the back of his picku[ Beneath the wind-tossed, still-fluttering plastic, Robe1 could see the dead, dried body of his old friend and mentor, shoved flat against a spiny saguaro, wrinkled fac caved in on itself, the shape of the body conforming to the skeleton.

The vampire was not here. He knew that, too, but he kept his fingers pressed tightly against the jade anyway. From this vantage point, he could see below him an it termittent trail of house lights leading into the larger pot of lights that was Rio Verde. Moonlight glittered on that moving water of the partially visible river. The town was small, he saw from up here. Small and helpless. A tin oasis of light in a desert of blackness.

The smell of blood reached his nostrils, and he turne to face the impaled corpse of his friend, but there was no blood. Even the plastic was spotless.

"Pee Wee," he said softly. "Pee Wee."

And the first tear spilled from his eye onto his cold cheek.

They were gathered in the chapel, over forty of them, and Shelly felt thrilled and honored to have been chosen as part of such an elite group.

"He is a glutton and a sloth," Pastor Wheeler said. "And according to the mandate of the Holy Scriptures, the written word of God, he must be stoned to death for his sins."

Sbelly's gaze turned toward the young boy standing at the edge of the hole next to the pew bridge. He was eight or nine, with short brown hair and a face that would have been cute were it not so distorted by fear. The boy tried again to bolt, but instead of a mad dash, there was only a frustrated twitch. His mother and father held him fast while Wheeler tied his hands behind his back. The boy stood trembling before them.

"You disobeyed your parents," Wheeler said.

"I didn't want carrots!" the boy's voice was filled with panicked terror. :' .: "You disobeyed the word of God."

"I don't like vegetables!"

The preacher unfastened and removed the boy's belt, ripped open and yanked down his pants. His jeans and underwear gathered around his ankles. "Walk," the preacher commanded.

"No!"

"Walk!" The boy's father pushed his son onto the pew bridge above the hole.

The boy began hobbling across the bridge toward the other side, looking fearfully over his shoulder.

Wheeler picked up a stone from the pile at the edge of the hole and threw it as hard as he could. It hit the boy's shoulder, and he screamed, whirled around, nearly losing his balance on the bridge. The fear on his face gave way to pain for a second, then fear resumed its dominance.

Other people picked up rocks, began throwing. bloodying The boy's his mother ear. hit him on the side of the head, His father hit him in the stomach.

One woman hit the boy in the eye, and there was a quick mini explosion of blood, a jet like stream that erupted from his socket.

This felt good, Shelly thought. It felt right. The boy was screaming at the top of his lungs, trying vainly to dodge the increasing number of rocks thrown at him while maintaining his balance on the bridge.

Shelly bent down and picked up from the pile a small flat hand-sized chunk of sandstone. She heaved it at the boy and was gratified to see it fly into his small dangling testicles. The boy fell, writhing, drawing up his legs, causing the bridge to tilt.

From inside of the hole came a pulsing glow, a divine whiteness.

The boy tried to stand again, but his hands were tied, his pants were around his ankles and he could get no purchase. The bridge tilted again, in the opposite direction, and with a primal yell, the boy fell.

Shelly moved to the edge of the hole with everyone else. She looked down into the opening and smiled.

Jesus fed.

Corrie's car was not parked in the driveway, and the house was dark when Rich came home. He looked at his watch. It was after eight.

Corrie had promised him before he left this morning that she would pick up Anna at lunch and take her home. This was supposed to be a day off for her. Pastor Wheeler in his infinite magnanimity had been so pleased with Corrie's work that he had graciously condescended to give her a day off with pay.

So why wasn't she home?

And where was Anna?

The thought occurred to him that they were at the church, and he cursed himself for being so selfish and stupid. He'd been so wrapped up in getting the word out to the general public, trying to play hero and save the damn town, that he had taken Corrie at her word and had not bothered to check up on her.

He should have known better than that. He should have called at noon.

And at one. And at two. Corrie had not been herself lately, and it was more than possible that she had taken their daughter to church in an effort to indoctrinate her.

Why was he thinking of Corrie as the enemy? Had their relationship really deteriorated to that extent?

He went inside, looked on the refrigerator to see if Corrie had left him a note. She hadn't, but he saw some thing in the kitchen that made his blood run cold.

The milk and bread and butter from breakfast were still out on the counter, the butter melted.

Corrie never left perishables out for more than ten minutes at a time.

On those rare occasions when she awoke earlier than he did and made herself breakfast, she put the refrigerated food away, making him take it out again when he made his own meal.

The bread and butter and milk had been left out all day. Something had happened to her and Anna. He knew it as surely as he knew that tomorrow was Saturday. He ran into the bedroom. As he'd known, as he'd feared, Corrie's jade necklace was lying on top of the dresser.

Anna was wearing her jade, though. He knew that. Would it be enough to protect both of them?

He felt himself slipping, his thought processes not reasoning as clearly as they should be, worry and panic di tracting him, injecting emotional responses where there should be none.. :

Robert. He needed to call Robert.

No. The church. He should call Wheeler first, see if they were there.

He dug through the notes and scraps of paper underneath the telephone that served as Corrie's address book, found the number of the church, and called it. He got an answering machine, Wheeler telling him in the slow placating tones usually reserved for obstinate children that he was not in right now, but he cared about what you had to say; you could leave a message at the beep. Rich left a message, then found Wheeler's home phone number, her and dialed it. No answer.

Corrie had no real friends in Rio Verde. Acquaintances maybe, but no friends, no one she saw socially after dark. Still, he called the women she did knowmMarge and where Peggy and she was.Winnie--but' as he'd known, they had no idea

Maybe she was paying him back for the pizza night. Maybe she'd just taken Anna out for dinner.

But she didn't believe in wasting money on eating out. He called Robert at home, let the phone ring fifteen times, in case he was in the shower or going to the bath room, then dialed the station. His brother wasn't there, but Rich talked to Ted, told him the problem, and the officer promised to let Robert know the second he came in.

"You want me to have Steve swing by the church on his patrol?" Ted asked. "See if anyone there can tell him anything? Those construction volunteers are still working all night." "Yeah," Rich said. "If you would. I'll make some more calls. I'll buzz you back in a few minutes."

"Make it ten."

Rich hung up. Underneath the end table on which the phone sat, he saw the peachy pink legs of a haft-dressed doll. He was filled with a sudden, aching sense of loss. He'd been about to try dialing the number of one of Anna's friend's parents, but he found that he had to put down the phone. He was shaking, and it was difficult for him to breathe. He hadn't realized until this moment how much he had taken for granted the notion that none of this would touch his family. He had made them take pre cautions, sure. He had done everything he could or was supposed to do. But deep down, on that bedrock emotional level that set the tone for the thoughts that came after it, he had not thought that he or Robert or Corrie or Anna would be touched by this.

Not even last night, when he'd seen the Laughing Man. He'd been terrified, but he had not, in his heart of hearts, thought that he or his family could be killed or even hurt. They were the good guys. The injuries would happen to other people, people he didn't know that well, peripheral people.

He knew now how wrong he was.

He reached out and picked up the doll. Maybe this morning, maybe yesterday, Anna had been playing with this toy, pretending it was another person, making believe that she was its mommy.

What would he do if something happened to Anna? Since the day she was born, he had not conceived of a future without her. His mind had concocted a million see narios. She'd been everything from the first woman president to a runaway hooker, and he had mentally prepared himself for all eventualities, deciding ahead of time how he would react to each situation.

But he had never imagined her death.

That was something he had never planned for.

He took a deep breath. They weren't dead. They couldn't be dead. At the very worst, they were being held hostage, and he and Robert and Sue and their team would rescue them at the last minute. Probably it was not even that bad. Probably the car had gotten a flat, or they were at Basha's or Dairy Queen.

Maybe.

Hopefully. His hands were still shaking, he was still having a tough time catching his breath, but he forced himself to pick up the phone and start dialing.

They were in the living room of Sue's house: Rich and Robert, Rossiter and Woods. Rich and the coroner sat on the couch across from Sue and her parents. Rich's eyes were bloodshot. He had obviously not slept at all last night, and his head kept falling forward and snapping back as he began dozing and then suddenly jerked awake. Robert and the FBI agent stood, Robert pacing agitatedly back and forth in front of the silent television.

"This is bullshit!" Robert said. "How long are we going to wait here and do nothing? I'm starting to think you guys don't know as much as you pretend." He addressed Sue but pointed at her grandmother. "How many people die before that old off her wrinkled have to woman gets ass and starts helping us here? ..... Robert," Woods warned..

"It's okay." Sue faced the police chief. "You can't hurry Iaht sic.

'"

"Lot sick?

"Fate."

Sue's father nodded. "World not follow your timetable," he said. "You follow world timetable."

"Exactly. Just because you want something to happen at a certain time doesn't mean it will. Even my grandmother cannot hurry laht sic.

Things will be revealed in their own time."

"It just seems to me that you're all being way too calm and inscrutable about this."

"The old woman knows what she's talking about," Rossiter said.

Sue fixed him with her gaze. "Her name is May Ling, not Old Woman."

"I'm sorry. I apologize."

"Okay." Sue looked toward Rich. He had been in bad shape when he'd first come over, and though he looked a little better now, she was still worried about him. He had been hoarse and despondently slump-shouldered when she'd opened the front door, and the first thing he'd said was, "Corrie and Anna are gone."

Her grandmother had spoken up immediately, before she'd even had time to tell her what he'd said. "Tell him he is now one of the seven."

"But I thought you said--"

Her grandmother frowned. "Things have changed." "He says his wife and daughter are missing." "I know. Tell him this..."

"Your wife and daughter are fine," Sue translated, and though she sensed the falsity in her grandmother's words, she tried not to convey that in her speech to him. "She said she does not know where they are, but they are safe. They sensed danger and protected themselves from it, going into hiding, and they are afraid to show themselves. They will be okay."

The look of relief on Rich's face told her that he had believed her, and as she looked at him, she understood how people came to believe in fortune-tellers and palm readers. They believed because they wanted to believe. It was easier to accept the reassuring words of others than face the truth yourself. She'd wanted to ask her grandmother what she knew about Corrie and Anna, and how she knew, but she did not. It was one thing to translate. It was quite another to knowingly lie.

There was pain in her own chest now as she thought of Rich's daughter.

Had something happened to the girl? She hoped with all of her heart that nothing had. She'd only known Anna for a short time, but she liked her and cared for her, felt almost as though she was a baby sister. She stared at Rich. She knew what he was going through. She recalled how she'd felt the other day when they'd been searching for John, when she'd thought the cup hug/rngs/might have taken him.

She hoped both Anna and Corrie were all right Rich looked up from the couch, met her eyes, and she looked quickly away.

She thought John should be at this meeting too, but for once her grandmother had sided with her parents and said no. He was too weak, too young. As far as she was concerned, his trial by fire had earned him a place here, but her grandmother had not agreed.

Influenced.

The word scared her. '

"We went out to Pee Wee's today," Robert said slowly. i "Went through his stuff."

Pee Wee. Another empty spot within her. There had been so many deaths lately. She wondered if at some point she would not be able to deal with any more of them, if an emotional wall would go up to protect her and keep her from feeling each loss so profoundly. Or if her emotions would just keep on taking hits as her battered psyche spiraled downward.

"Did he finish the baht gwa?" her grandmother asked.

Sue translated.

"One of them," Robert said. "The other's halfway done. They're both out in my car." '

Sue translated again, and the look that fell over her grandmother's face caused them all to fall silent. The old woman did not speak for a moment. ""Tell them to bring be seven of us. If you go, there will be eight. Someone the baht gwa inside," she finally said to Sue. Her voice was will die. We may die anyway, but if there are eight it will not as strong as before, and there was a slight quaver in be certain.

Is saving face worth the cost of a life?" it, though she was obviously trying to pretend as though

"No," he admitted. nothing had changed. "You and your father get the

"John needs you here. You must protect him." spears."

During this exchange, the other men watched them,

Sue and her father walked through the kitchen and uncertain of what was being said, not knowing if it was a into the laundry room to gather up the willow branches conference or an argument. Now her grandmother they'd sharpened earlier, while Robert and Woods went handed Robert the final spear. outside and brought in two oversize mirrors wrapped in

"For Mr. Buford," Sue translated. blankets. The two men unwrapped the blankets on the

Robert looked at the sharpened sticks. "Will we sue floor, revealing one octagon mirror the size of a small teed?" he asked Sue. "Does she know that? Can she tell us if we'll get the .. cup hugirngsi?" coffee table and another mirror, slightly larger, that was

"We will succeed," her grandmother said, and chills something between a pentagon and a hexagon, raced down Sue's arms. Her grandmother was lying.

Her grandmother looked at the baht gnoa, said nothing,

She felt it. She knew it.

She took the spears and gave one to Robert, one to Rich, one to the coroner, one to the FBI agent.

Di Lo Ling Gum.

She looked into the old woman's eyes, looked away,

"Hold on to these," Sue translated. "Until tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" frightened.

"We will succeed," Sue said. She tried to make her

Sue's pulse sped up as she translated her grandmother's words into English. "Tomorrow we will know." voice strong, enthusiastic, but she was not sure if any of

"She said there were supposed to be seven of us. the men believed her.

Who are the other three?"

They nodded.

Sue repeated the question, and her grandmother responded with only a few terse syllables. "She is," Sue said. tired!

""AndRobertme. frowned And Mr. "Buford look up. After everyone was gone and the house locked up, Sue took a shower. She felt dirty.

Unclean and uncomfortable.

"That's what she says."

"I must go also," her father suddenly announced in And the water on her skin felt soothing and good. She got out of the shower, dried herself, then put on a maxi

Cantonese. "I must right the cup hugirngsi. "' pad and panties before pulling on her pajamas.

"You cannot," her grandmother replied. "You must re main here and protect your family."

God, she hated having her period. She'd read some

"I cannot let women go out and do men's work while where that women were luckier than men because they stay here and do woman's work." were multi orgasmic but she thought she would gladly give

"It's the twentieth century," Sue told him. that up if she didn't have to suffer each month. Men were

Her grandmother turned to face him. "There are to really the lucky ones; they didn't have to go through this.

She had never gotten a sex lecture from her mother Or from her father, for that matter. It was simply some thing that was not discussed by the family. If she hadn' seen Carr/e and hadn't talked about it with her friend she would not even have known what to expect, she would not have been prepared for her period. She would have thought she was suffering from internal bleeding or something the first time it came.

Well, that wasn't precisely true. Menstruation had been discussed in seventh grade health class. But the discussions in class about menstruation and sex had been technical and scientific, so vague in practical application that she'd really learned nothing from them. The real fac of sex, the physical, go ly part of it, she'd had learn from her friends and, later, from the books she repdtiously read in the library.

She opened the bathroom door, and a cloud of steam escaped into the hallway. She glanced toward her parent" room at the end of the hall, saw her mother sitting on top of the bed, brushing her hair.

Why would her grandmother lie?

That bothered her. She had been so sure of everythin until now, so certain that her grandmother would tell them exactly what to do, they would do it, the cup g/rngsi would be destroyed, and everyone would live ha pily ever after. But she recalled now that her grant mother's only other encounter with a cup hugrngsi had been as a small child, and that everything she might have learned about stm-stm gwaig'wai, the supernatural, in Cm ton was probably only. theoretical. For all Sue knew, she might be making this up as she went along, acting entirel on instinct.

She remembered that the cup hugirngsi couldn't cro,. running water.

But had killed Aaron and Cheri in the river.

She reached her bedroom. The door was closed. She distinctly remembered having left it open before going in to take her shower. She frowned, turned the knob, pushed the door open.

And stopped. John was naked and kneeling before her bed. He had thrown the bedspread and the blankets onto the floor, and on the flat sheet in front of him were four or five used maxi-pads. Her maxi-pads.

He turned toward her, and she saw weak red smears on his chest and cheeks and forehead, blood on his lips and nostrils.

"What are you doing?" She stared at him, shocked, frightened, and filled with a deep humiliating shame. Influenced.

He grinned, and there was red on his teeth, on his tongue. "I love your blood," he said.

She grimaced in disgust, overcome with revulsion. The saliva in her mouth suddenly tasted putrid, and she felt like throwing up.

He picked up a maxi-pad, pressed it against his mouth and nose like a surgical mask, breathed deeply. He turned toward her, grinning. "I can smell you in the blood," he said. "I can smell your ripe pussy."

She backed away. "I'm telling Father. I'm telling Grandmother."

"Have you ever been fucked? I could do it to you if you let me in your bed tonight."

She turned, ran down the hall. "FatherI" she called. "Father!"

There was the sound of shattering glass from behind her, from within her room. She stopped running. Her parents and grandmother were already emerging from their respective rooms, her father tying the belt on his bathrobe, her mother and grandmother holding shut the tops of their nightgowns as they ran.

She hurried back to her room, reached it the same time as her father.

John had punched a hole through the window and was now trying to clear out the shards of broker glass still embedded in the window frame.

Blood was flowing down his arm in huge streams, and the remaining pieces of window looked like a pop art project, drops and droplets of red spread out centrifugally.

Her father ran past her, into the room, and grabbed John's shoulders, spinning him around, away from the window. John hit him across the face, a wet, sickening slap, and then her grandmother was in the room.

The old woman held her hands in the air and began chanting in a strange musical dialect with which Sue was not familiar.

Yet, already the chanting was having an effect on John. His arms were falling to his sides, the tension and aggre sive ness leaving his muscles. Sue looked over at her mother, who seemed as confused as she herself felt. Her grandmother wasn't a witch? Then what was this?

John's eyes were fluttering, starting to close, his body beginning to go limp. Sue tried to listen to the low words her grandmother was speaking and thought she made out the Cantonese phrases for "evil" and

"mother" and

John collapsed into his father's arms, and her grand mother stopped chanting. "Get him into the bathroom," she said. "I will treat his wounds."

"Will he be all right?" her mother asked worriedly.

"He will be fine. He will sleep for a day, and then it will be as if this never happened."

Her mother hurried across the room to help her father with John.

"Can you do that to the cup hugirngsi?" Sue asked. "Talk to it and put it to sleep?"

Her grandmother smiled. "I wish I could. But I can noL"

"Sue," her father said, as he pushed past her, John's bleeding body in his arms, "you sleep in our room tonight."

"No," her grandmother said firmly. "She will sleep with

Sue stood in place as they moved into the hall behind her, took John into the bathroom. She faced the broken window, a cold breeze ruffling her hair, and stared unblinkingly into the darkness of the night.

Pastor Wheeler knelt in the empty church and prayed, his elbows resting on the soft rise of Bill Covey's stomach. The old fuck had died happily, voluntarily, and though he'd thought that would admit him to the kingdom of Heaven, it would not. Oh, no. Wheeler knew that now.

There was room in Heaven for only forty more, and Jesus had come to earth to personally select those forty. He was separating not only the wheat from the chaff, but the good wheat from the bad wheat.

Wheeler heard the sound of muffled hammering from far away.

Tomorrow.

The Second Coming was tomorrow.

An electric tingle coursed through his body, causing his penis to stiffen. It would not be long now.

Wheeler closed his eyes. "Now I lay me down to sleep, with the girl across the street. If I should die before I wake, please, dear Lord, don't let me bake." He squeezed his hands more tightly together, prepared for the big sen doff. "Amen."

He opened his eyes, unclasped his hands. He pressed his fingers against Covey's naked body, felt the cold, bloated stomach, the white-haired chest. His mouth felt dry, and he knew what Jesus wanted him to do.

He took a deep breath, bent over, bit into Covey's neck, and as the cool blood spilled, pooled, he began to lick.

Mor Tillis was cold. He had wrapped himself up like a mummy while asleep, rolling around in his blankets until every square inch of his body was covered, but the freezing air had penetrated his defenses, and now he lay shivering beneath his comforter. His breath was visible, white in the darkened room.

The darkened room?

He had faJlen asleep with the light on.

The mayor sat up in bed, the movement awkward due to the bulky and closely wrapped blankets. He twisted his arms free, and reached to the left, his fingers finding and turning the black plastic knob just below the bulb on the nightstand lamp. Nothing. The light did not go on.

Then he remembered. He had been watching TV when he fell asleep also, a rerun of Mash.

Blackout. It had to be a blackout. He felt around the top of the nightstand for his glasses, found them, and put them on. The fuzzy monochromatic blackness was differentiated into shades and gradations, and he saw the outline of his dresser, desk, file cabinet. There was nothing out of the ordinary in the room, nothing there that shouldn't be, no unaccounted-for pools of shadow, but he still felt nervous.

As though there was someone in the room with him.

Or something.

Through the top of his pajamas, his fingers found the silver crucifm on the thin chain around his neck. He felt reassured just touching it, but the feeling that he was not alone did not go away. He extracted the rest of his body from the tangled blanket and swung his legs off the mattress.

A cold breeze blew against the skin of his feet from underneath the bed.

Instinctively, without thinking, he jumped, pushing off from the floor, leaping away from the bed. He sprang toward the bathroom and caught himself, his fingers grabbing both sides of the doorjamb.

Something moved within the bathroom, doubled by the mirror

The vampire!

The monster loomed out of the darkness before him. He was tall and aristocratic, vaguely European. In life, he must have cut an impressive figure.. In death, he was truly terrifying. His skin was the bluish white of an untouched corpse, and a palpable sense of coldness radiated outward from his form. There was no expression on the impassive face, only an all-consuming hunger in the red rimmed eyes and a glimpse of white fang between partially parted lips.

The mayor wanted to run but could not, wanted to scream but was unable.

The vampire smiled. Blood filled the thin, gummed spaces between his teeth.

No! The mayor fumbled with the top of his pajamas, then tore the top open and held forth his crucifix. The vampire chuckled, an evil inhuman sound that seemed more like an expression of disdain than mirth, and snatched the crucifix from the mayor's fingers. The mayor's skin burned where the vampire touched it, as though it had been seared with a branding iron, and he watched as the white fist clenched, grinding the silver crusefix to powder that slipped through the long, tapered fingers.

The burning pain awakened him, enabling him to throw off the shocked lethargy that had settled over his mind, and he quickly backed away from the bathroom. Taking a chance, knowing he had nothing to lose, that this was the only way he could even hope to escape, he turned his back on the vampire and ran out of the bedroom into the hallway. He raced down the hall to the front door, running as fast as he could, his heart pounding painfully in his chest. As he fumbled with the doorknob, he turned to look behind him and saw the vampire gliding smoothly and effortlessly in his direction. The monster was grinning, and his fangs glinted in the weak moonlight that shone through the open doorways of the den and bedrooms.

The door was locked, and the mayor tried desperately to turn the small piece of metal that would throw the deadbolt, but his sweaty fingers slipped on the catch.

And then a huge freezing hand grabbed the top of his head, palming it like a basketball, and turned him around. He was staring into the most ancient and evil eyes he had ever seen, and then his head was being bent, his neck exposed.

He felt himself die, and it was not at all the way he'd thought it would be. There was no floating sense of peace, no drifting off into a pleasant sleep. There was the sharp shocking pain of skin being ripped open, blood gushin out, the vampire biting harder, clamping down, teeth tearing through veins into muscle. Then he felt a sudd et slashing agony that jerked his entire body, burnin! through his innards like acid. Spasms of torment rippinl simultaneously through individual parts of his body that had never before experienced sense: spleen, appendi liver. He would have doubled over from the power full wrenching cramps, but the vampire was still holding hit up. He felt his bowel and bladder muscles give way, but nothing came out, and he knew that all of the fluids in his body were being vacuumed out through his neck.

His last coherent thought was uncharacteristically un. selfish: I hope they cremate my body. I hope they don't let me come back.

It wasn't just chilly, it was downright cold, and Janine wished she'd brought a jacket. Her breath escaped from between her lips in visible puffs of white, and she rocked her hands under her armpits for warmth as she hurried across the open area between the buildings. It was quiet tonight: no fighting cats, no howling dogs, no cawing birds, not even the whisk like scuttling of nocturnal bugs and lizards. No natural noises at all. There was only the muffled rhythmic sound of machinery the dishwashers in the kitchen, the heaters on the roof--and, from the rooms, occasional human voices and the fake, flat sounds of television.

She didn't like walking alone across the ranch, not since Terry Clifford's murder, but it was the beginning of the off-season, she was pulling double duty, and she knew that if she balked or complained, her hours would be cut. Or worse. Hollis seemed to be on a rampage, punishing anyone who even appeared to believe in the existence of vampires.

Vampires.

She looked toward the flat boxlike structure at the north end of the ranch. The stables.

She walked faster.

And the lights went out.

They went off first in the main building, then around the pool, then in the guest lodges. The recessed bulbs along the pathway faded away into nothing. She was un able to see even the path beneath her feet, and was forced to slow down, staying on track only by the feel of the concrete walk. She wanted to run, but she was afraid she would trip and fall, and she definitely didn't want that to happen.

She swallowed hard, forced herself to walk slowly for ward, one step at a time, though a feeling of panic was growing within her. Something was wrong. The ranch's backup generators weren't kicking in the way they were supposed to. The lights weren't coming back on.

She stepped on something. Something hard and brittle that cracked beneath her boot and felt like neither rock nor branch. She stopped, crouched down, looked.

It was a jackrabbit.

A jackrabbit that had been drained of blood.

Oh, God. She stood, wishing suddenly that she hadn't lost the piece of jade Sue had given her, wishing that she hadn't been too embarrassed to tell Sue she'd lost the jade and wanted another. But the time for wishing was past. The vampire was here.

She heard shouting from somewhere. It sounded as though it was coming from her left, from one of the guest lodges, but she couldn't be sure.

The darkness seemed to do something to the acoustics, to warp the directional capabilities of her hearing. She ran to her right, breaking away from the path and speeding through the sand towed the nearest building, navigating by instinct. The laundry room was in here. Assuming the vampire wasn't in the laundry room--and why would he be with so much fresh meat elsewhere?--she could lock herself inside and wait it out until morning. The laundry room's door and walls were especially thick, to muffle the sounds of the washing machines, and there were no windows. It was probably the safest place in the whole ranch.

Her right sank into the sand, and she slip[ nearly twisting her ankle, before quickly righting her" Her heart was pounding crazily, and she wondered if vampire could hear it. She thought, absurdly, that sound of a beating heart was probably like a dinner to a vampire, calling him, like an amplified tom-ton his head.

She ran faster.

She finally reached the building's double side do yanking open the left door and running inside.

Ramon and Jose were lying in the hall, outside the dry room.

It was dark in the hallway, but there was a flashli lying between the sprawled corpses on the floor, the shining through cracked glass onto a portion of Ram hand and Jose's shoulder.

Flashlight?

Her mouth felt dry. They had to have gotten the light out after the blackout hit. That was three mini ago, four at the most.

Which meant that the vampire was probably still in building.

She ran over, picked up the flashlight. She shone beam down the hallway. To the left, to the right. The way was empty. She saw no other bodies. And no yarn[

She ran. Her boots echoed on the wood floor. ' sound was loud in the stillness, would alert anyone--anything --in the building to the fact that she was here, but there was nothing she could do about it, and she forced legs to pump harder. The door at the other end of hall opened onto the parking lot. If she could make it of here, she could run straight to her car, take off and She reached the door, shoved it open.

And the vampire was right in front of her.

She stopped, nearly fell, but she grabbed onto the side of the closing door and only by luck regained her balance. The vampire was bending over a boy lying dead or unconscious on the sidewalk next to the parking lot.

He did not look like a vampire. He looked like a zombie, movie zombie, one of those poorly made up zombies from Night of the Living Dead. If she had seen this in a fright flick, she would have laughed. But the fact that the vampire in real life was not a sophisticated special effect but a B-movie monster with a bad makeup job was somehow much more frightening than anything else could have been,

The vampire bent over the boy. His head did not touch the child's neck but hovered about an inch above. She saw the boy's bodily fluids sucked up, vacuumed into the monster's mouth, a sickening mixture of red and green and brown and yellow that was simultaneously thick and thin, a torrent of combined liquids that spewed forth from the neck as the body visibly withered.

She'd been standing in the doorway for no more than three seconds, but the intensity of the scene before her was so great that every aspect of it was burned permanently onto her memory. She let go of the door, and the vampire looked up. She saw lust in those black-ringed zombie eyes .... She thought of the fetus inside her.

Her baby.

The monster grinned.

She broke, ran screaming toward the parking lot. There were other people screaming now: women, children, and most frighteningly, men.

There was not just one vampire, she thought. There were many. An army of the undead. They were here, and they were hungry, and they were taking over.

She turned and looked over her shoulder, but the vampire was not following. He had found another victim.

Ahead, she saw Sally Mae crying, leaning despairingly against the hood of a pickup truck, ShOt running out from her nose and over her lips.

Sally Mae did not seem to know where she was or what was happening, and her eyes registered no recognition as they looked into Janine's.

Janine grabbed the other woman by the arm, pulling her through the parking lot. "Come onI" She had already taken out her keys, and when she reached her car she quickly unlocked the driver's door. "Get inI" she said.

Sally Mae looked at her uncomprehendingly.

"Get in the carl" Janine screamed. She shoved the other woman onto the seat, pushed her past the steering wheel to the passenger side, and hopped in herself, slam ming the door and locking it. She started the car, floored the gas pedal, and peeled out, speeding toward the highway. '

"What in cow's ass heaven is that?"

RHal, the friendlier guide, stood and walked over to where his partner stood looking toward the ranch. "What?"

Tracy looked quizzically at her husband over the campfire. Ralph only shrugged.

"Listen. Don't you hear it?"

RHal shook his head. "No..." His eyes idened. "Yes!' "What is it?"

Tracy asked.

Rhal walked over, threw another branch onto the blaze "You two stay here by the campfire. We'll be back in two shakes of a lamb's tail."

Two shakes of a lamb's tail? Did they really talk like that, Tracy wondered, or was this something they just put on for tourists? "Where are you going?" she asked.

"Back to the ranch to see what's happening."

' Ralph stood. "We might as well go, too. It's getting cold out here, and I'm sure we'd be much more comfortable in our rooms than we would out in these sleeping bag"

"We're camping," Tracy said firmly, fixing him with a determined stare.

Ralph sighed, sat down. ""Whatever you say."

"What's the point of going to a dude ranch if you're just going to treat it like a hotel? Why did we come all the way out here if we weren't going to take advantage of it?"

"I said okay."

"We'll be back," Hal said, nodding at them. The other guide had already mounted, his horse, and Hal followed, slipping his foot easily into the stirrup and swinging his leg over the saddle. With a "Hey[" and a couple of clicks, the two cowboys were off, riding into the desert night.

Tracy leaned back on her sleeping bag, staring up at the stars. It was cold out here, but it was invigorating, and she felt' Trace

She turned her head toward Ralph. "Yeah?"

"Lookl"

She sat up, followed his pointing finger.

A bird was hovering in the air above the desert at approximately the spot where the ranch was located.

"It's a phoenix," Ralph said, his voice quiet and filled with awe.

It was.

Tracy stared at the bird. It was huge, the size of a small plane, and totally unlike anything she had ever seen. It seemed to glow from within, radiating a diffused white light that brought into extraordinarily vivid clarity every feather, every talon, every detail of the creature's majestic body. The bird looked more real than real, a three-dimensional being in a two-dimensional world. There were colors in its plum age that she had never seen before, that were not variations on black or white or blue or yellow or red, colors that wet not part of the known spectrum. : ..: /

"Are they having some kind of laser show?" Ralp asked. "Is that what this is? I don't remember readin anything about it in the list of events."

She ignored him. It wasn't a laser show. It was a bird, A real bird.

An honest-to-God phoenix. She re ache across her sleeping bag and grabbed the strap of her can corder case. She unzipped the vinyl bag and took out that camera. She wasn't sure there was enough light for her to shoot, and she knew instinctively that there was no way this magnificence could ever translate to videotape, but she had to try.

She aimed the camcorder at the bird, pressed down o the "Record" button, and began to speak for the beneit of the mulddi,r--ecdonal microphone. "It is about nine thirty, and we are in the desert outside the Rocking Ranch in Rio Verde .."

Jamped do the narrow dirt road that led to highway, refusing to look in the rearview mirror, concentrating solely on the portion of the road before them that: was illuminated by the headlights. Sally Mae lay huddle against the passenger door not moving, not speaking, n even whimpering.

They had passed no other vehicles, had seen nota lights or headlights, andJanine wondered if they were the only ones to have escaped. How many people were at the ranch right now? Fifteen employees, maybe.

About twenty five guests. , I Could the vampires have killed forty people?

She pressed down harder on the gas pedal, but the car was just heading into a turn and the vehicle fishtail wildly in the dirt as the road curved. Janine held hard to the wheel, struggling to maintain control, straightening out only after almost swerving into the adjoining ditch.

Ahead, her high beams reflected off the bullet-riddled face of the stop sign that stood at the edge of the highway. They'd made it!

She slowed down, the car bumping over the serrated steel of the cattle guard that separated the dirt from the asphalt.

And the car stalled.

Died.

No! Janine pumped the gas pedal, trying to will the car back to life, but there was no response, and the vehicle rolled back a few feet on the slight incline.

"Start, you piece of shift" Janine was screaming at the car and crying at the same time, tears blurring her vision as she turned the key in the ignition and heard only a series of impotent clicks. Sally Mae, still huddled in the corner, made a low, incoherent sound of abject terror. "Shut up!" Janine yelled at her. She turned, slapped the woman hard across the face.

And saw movement through the passenger window. "Help!" The windows were closed, there were no lights on the empty highway, no ears, no trucks, but she screamed anyway, a raw panicked shriek that threatened to permanently damage her vocal cords. "Help!" She pumped desperately on the gas, turned the key.

The monster was coming.

He lurched toward them out of the darkness, an over tall man in a frayed out-of-date suit, face rotting from the inside out, decay pushing through the thin layer of skin on the forehead, cheeks, and chin. He staggered around the front of the car, through the twin beams of the head lights, and around to the driver's side asJanine continued to frantically turn the ignition key. He grinned, revealing dirty bloody teeth. His bulging eyes looked downward from her face to her abdomen.

He knew she was pregnant. He could sense it. BiHe would eat the fetus,

"Don't morel" Janine screamed, though Sally Mae had not moved at all.

"Stay in here! The door's locked[ He can't get in"

A fist punched through the window, shattering the glass!

She did not even have time to cry out as strong fingers closed around her neck and yanked her outside, through the broken window, into the cold air of the night.

The hotel room was shitty. It was supposedly the best that the town had to offer, but despite the bland pleasant clean lines of the accommodations and the reassuring presence HBO and CNN on the television, there was something set ond-rate about the room, as though it was straddling that line between adequate and shabby and was leaning clearly toward the latter,

But Rossiter didn't care. He felt good, charged, mot alive than at any time since he'd left the Academy an happier than he'd been since he'd come to this hellisl state.

This was big.

He'd known it in the back of his mind when he'd co related the figures on the computer, but it had been cox firmed when he'd met the Oriental girl and he grandmother, This was big, not in a pulp-novel Melvi Purvis G-man way, but in a manner that was far more profound.

He was not just catching criminals.

He was fighting the forces of evil.

He had not talked with Engles when he'd told Robert he would--he'd spent that time severing des with the stale police and kicking those dipshit lazy-assed bastards off that case--but he had called his supervisor and left a bri message on his answering machine, providing just enough description to keep him out of trouble with protocol. He' then immediately called Washington and, after some necessary phone bullying that led him quickly up the chain of command, had made a full report to James F. Watley, head of the Bureau's Western Division. It was foolhardy, perhaps--he knew how crazy all this sounded. But he'd written his speech out beforehand, and he was an old hand at making the implausible plausible, and he believed he had successfully demystified the more fantastic aspects of this situation until it fit foursquare into the Bureau mold.

Nevertheless, he was surprised that Wadey did not nail him on several points, and he wondered if perhaps another department or team within the Bureau was working on a connected project. Or if a think tank somewhere had already postulated the existence of vampires.

Or if the director was simply writing him off as a loon. Whatever the reason, Watley's low key and reasonable reaction to his unreasonable hypothesis caused him to change his plans. He had intended to ask for backup, but had decided against it then and there. It was a dangerous decision, and an obvious violation of regulations, but he trusted the old Chinese woman. She'd come in on target so far, and there was no reason to believe she would steer them wrong as they approached the stretch.

He didn't want to share the glory with some Johnnycome-lately. This was his baby and his alone.

Fuck Wadey. Fuck Engles. Fuck everyone. When this was over, he would report directly to the Bureau chief. He would be able to write his own ticket. He sat down on the bed, watched a few moments of a comedy showcase on HBO, then switched to NBC, ABC, CBS, and, finally, an independent station. There was an old movie on. A monster movie.

What did they used to call that in the sixties? Serendipity. sue awoke and, for a moment, did not remember where she was. The contours of the the furniture the room were wrong, tings unfamiliar, and the bed was facing in the wrong direction. Then she saw her grandmother next to her, getting up, leaning against the backboard of the bed, and events of the previous evening returned in a rush.

Her grandmother glanced calmly over at her. " dreamed last night of the black church."

Sue nodded, feeling cold, remembering the dark and returning images of her own sleep-bound travels. "I did,

DID "

"It is there that we will find the cup hugirngsi. That is there it lives." the words were spoken with certainty, and Sue sat up, Taking off the blanket wrapped around her. She had ex pacted to feel different, to feel .. . something. She had knoned that when the time came, her Di Lo Ling Gum told kick in, that she would sense things, know things, though this morning felt the same as every other. Even the termittent impressions she had received the night before seemed to have deserted her. If she really did have

Lo Ling Gum, what good was it?

Was her grandmother feeling anything?

"So what do we do now?" Sue asked. "Just walk into church and confront the cup hugrngsi?""

"Yes."

Sue blinked, unprepared for that answer. "We don't have to go through some sort of ritual? We don't have to go there at a certain time?"

"No." Her grandmother smiled. "You have seen too many movies."

Sue got out of bed, picked up her robe from where she had placed it on a chair, and put it on. "if it is living in the church," she said,

"how come it has not killed the pastor? It does not need him anymore.

Why is it keeping him alive?"

"I do not know," her grandmother said, and her voice was troubled. "I do not understand why. That worries me."

Sue sat back down on the bed next to her grandmother. She looked into the old woman's eyes and saw not fear there, not determination, not any of the things she had expected to see. She saw sadness. She saw regret.

"Are we going to die?" she asked.

"I do not know," her grandmother admitted.

This time, Sue knew, she was not lying.

The town was crawling with reporters, state policemen, and gawkers of all shapes and sizes. The massacre had not gone unnoticed, and the miracle of satellite technology had made sure that the news had been transmitted to everyone in Arizona who could conceivably fuck up to day's plans.

The police station was the hub of all this madness, with cameramen lying in wait outside the front door, and a slow but steady trickle of townspeople led in to be inter viewed by Steve, Ted, Ben, and Stu.

Robert stood next to the front counter, scanning the room, a major tension headache thumping just below the skin of his right temple. He had been making the rounds of the room, eavesdropping on the interviews, trying to keep track of everything that was going on, but he had given that up and had now decided to let his men perform their jobs without him looking over their shoulders. He had too many other things to think about right now. He had to think about the cup hugirngsi.

He had to find a way for the seven of them to go over to Wheeler's church, armed with spears and amirror and wearing jade, and kill the vampire in the midst of this media circus. r Jesus, he thought, this was like a damn Saturday Night Live sketch.

He and Rich had been wrong. They weren't in a horror movie. They were in a comedy. A farce.

He massaged his throbbing head. Rossiter was in his office and had been on the phone for the past haft hour, talking to the FBI in Phoenix and Washington, trying to get authorization to shut down the state police investigation. Joe Cash was in the conference room on another phone, talking to his own people, trying to counteract the damage. Rich was leaning against one of the desks talking to Woods, who looked as though he hadn't slept all night. The coroner's face was wan, pale, tired. Rich didn't look much better.

Robert ran a hand through his hair, trying to quell the feelings of doubt that were rising within him. How effective were they going to be if they were all exhausted, exasperated, and not thinking clearly?

Right now, he wouldn't trust any of them to go after a high school wee hie bop per who'd bought beer with a fake ID, let alone confront a vampire who had just killed upward of thirty people. Maybe the vampire would be slow and fat and sated after his feast

Yeah, he thought. Right. An maybe he would just walk in and give himself up, too. ?... Robert looked over at Sue. She was standing beside her grandmother, who was seated in Stu's chair. Out of every ii one in the station, they were the only two who appeared calm and unruffled, and he hoped it was because they had inside information and had concrete assurances the rest of them didn't.i

He checked his watch, his headache flaring at the downward movement of his eyes It was after ten already, nearly ten-thirty. Where was Buford? He'd called the burger stand owner over an hour ago, told him to get his asS. over here immediately. Had Buford chickened out?

As if on cue, Buford walked through the door. He did indeed look scared. His face was pale, his clothes disheveled, and he carried a double-barreled shotgun with him into the station. Several people, obviously still shaken by the events of the night before, took a step back at the sight of him, thinking, no doubt, that he was about to open fire, but he strode quickly past them on his way to the front desk.

Robert motioned him over, then gave the high sign to Rich and Woods.

The four of them walked through the crowded room to Stu's desk, where Sue and her grandmother waited. He looked at the grandmother, and though he knew she couldn't understand English, he spoke to her.

"Okay," he said. "We're all here. Let's go into my office and talk."

"It sounds like there's a whole gang of them," Buford said after he had been briefed on last night's events. "An army."

"That's what some of the survivors are saying."

Sue looked at her grandmother, shook her head. "There is only one."

Steve and Ben were in the room with them, had come in because Robert had asked them to. Maybe only seven of them could go into the church, but he wanted some backup just in case something happened to them.

"I didn't know there really were vampires," Ben said. His voice was shaky. "I thought it was all made up for the movies."

"Now you know," Robert said.

"But why is the vampire afraid of jade?"

"You don't have to know how a television works to turn it on," Sue said. "You don't have to know what a microchip is to use a computer, You don't have to know why the cup hugirngs/is afraid of jade. All you need to know is that it is."

"So everything we think we know about vampires is wrong," Buford said.

"They can't be stopped with crosses or holy water or garlic or silver bullets "

"I think some of our legends have a basis in truth Robert said. "But it's like Sue explained at the meeting, they got distorted over the years." He cleared his' throat. "I think it's also a shape-shifter.

That's something you all should be aware of. I know we're entering science fiction territory here " He trailed off, grinned. "What the hell am I talking about? We're discussing a damn vampire, and I'm thinking you won't believe that it can change its appearance?" He shook his head. "From what I've heard and been able to gather, the vampire appears as different things to different people. Jesus, obviously. Elvis, according to Emily Frye. La Verona." He paused, looked at Rich. "The Laughing Man. I think maybe it appears to people as their fears. You always hear that in the movies--"It knows what scares you'--but I think it's true here. I think it does know what scares you, and I think it plays on that weakness. We all better be prepared for that."

They were silent.

"I think it can't show up in amirror," Robert said, "because it a mirror. It's a reflection of our own fears."

"No," Sue said. "It's not. And it can show up in a mirror, in the baht gwa. That is why we are bringing the baht gwa with us. The cup hugirngsi is afraid of its own reflection."

"Maybe it jeds off our fears," Buford suggested. Woods snorted. "Get off this fear kick. You guys've all been watching too many Twilight Zones. It's not feeding off our fear. It's not draining our emotions.

It doesn't give a damn whether we fear it or hate it or love it. It feeds off our blood and our semen and our urine and our saliva. The fluids of life. Period."

Sue translated, and her grandmother nodded enthusiastically.

"See?" Woods said.

"Then why does it appear as different things to different people?"

Robert asked.

"Because," Rich said. It was the first time he'd spoken, and they all turned to look at him. "Because there obviously is a connection between the cup had g/rags/and who ever sees it. It does take its form from an image buried in the viewer's mind, but it doesn't appear as a manifestation of a person's fears. It appears as a figure that that person believes can be resurrected" He looked around the room, at each of them. "Think about it. Jesus? Dracula? La Verona? Elvis? I can see people being afraid of Dracula or La Verona. Even Jesus, although that's slretching it, But Elvis? Come on. What I think is happening is that the monster appears not as our fears but as figures who, in our minds, can be resurrected--or cannot be killed. I mean, that's really the only thing these figures have in common: the fact that they have survived death. I think these figures can be from cultural or even personal mythologies, but that's what ties them together. That's what ties together Dracula and the cp hugirngsi. I think that's why there's al way been such an interest in vampires, why the myths are found in all countries and throughout history. That's what attracts people to them-the idea of everlasting life."

"That's great," Rossiter said. "But I don't give a shit if the vampire represents your repressed homosexual desire for your father or my need to crawl back into my mama's womb. As far as I'm concerned, vampires are creatures that have always been here and always existed. Like sharks. And instead of sitting around chatting about it, we ought to be out there tracking it down and killing it."

"We will," Sue said. "But it's not going outside of the church in the daytime, and we can spend ten minutes talking about it to prepare everyone for what they're going to see, to let everyone know what we're up against.

This isn't a movie. We can't just walk in there, find a coffin, drive a stake through its heart, and live happily ever after. There's more to it than that."

Her grandmother said something in Cantonese. She spoke slowly, and Sue translated slowly, mirroring her." grandmother's deliberate speech.

"My grandmother says that we don't know the extent of the cup hugirngsi's powers. We don't know if it can read minds or control thoughts. But there are a few things we do know: it is afraid of the daylight, it is afraid of jade and willow and mirrors and water. And it can be killed."

"Water?" Robert said. : ' "The cup hugirngsi cannot cross running water," Sue said, but there was no conviction in her voice.

"I hate to burst your grandma's bubble, but Cheri Stevens and Aaron Payne were killed in running water. In the river."

"I know. But my grandmother says it cannot cross running water."

A silence settled over them, and it was not a comfortable silence.

"If she's wrong about that Buford said. He left the thought unfinished.

"Wait a minute," Rich said. "Don't rivers in China flow in a different direction? Don't they flow north instead of

" south or something.

Sue's head snapped up. She nodded. "You're right," she said excitedly. "They do. They flow east." She spoke rapidly in Chinese to her grandmother, and the old woman's frown smoothed out, her wrinkled face returning to its normal placidity.

"I dreamed last week of a river of blood that flowed uphill," Sue said.

"We can use this," Buford said thoughtfully. "We can use this information to help us."

"How?" Robert asked. "Drag the vampire to the river?

"No. We make a fake river. Give ourselves some extra

[ Yes, Wood said, catching on. We di ditches round the church. We channel water or get some hoses. We make our own fake river and p he vmpire between the strearfls."

"That's just dumb," Robert said.

Rich shook his head. "We don't have time to dig ditches."

"We may not have to," Buford said. He looked at Robert. "I have access to hoses, the fire truck I say we hook those suckers up, point 'em east and let her rip. If worst comes to worst, at least it'll trap him in the church." "Until the water runs out," Rich said.

"Or until we can think of something else." .

Robert nodded slowly. "It just might work. Steve, Ben, you get to work on this."

"Call the water department," Buford said. "Ask for Compton, and tell him to tap off the main valves so we can get some pressure on the hill.

The church is on the slope, and pressure's sometimes a problem."

"How long can we keep these streams running?" Robert asked. "How big a reserve do we have to draw from?"

Btfford shrugged. "We'll have to ask Compton." He thought for a moment, figuring. "If I remember right, there's a hydrant across the street from the church. But the next closest one's about half a block down, by the old Big A. We're going to need all the hoses we can lay hands on. I'll call Chief Simmons and get him to opea the station.

We'll run the water through the truck pumlz on the far hose, but with the hydrant by the church we'll just have to trust the water pressure."

"Hopefully Compton'll be able to deliver," Robert said Buford nodded.

"Hopefully." He pushed up the sleeve on his shirt, looked toward Steve and Ben. "You guys make the calls. I'm going over to the fire station. Tell Simmons to meet me there."

Robert nodded toward Rossiter. ""You go with Buford," Robert told the FBI agent.

Roiter shook his head, "I'm not taking orders from you. I'm in charge of this---'"

"No, you're not." Robert faced the agent, and he was steeled with a new resolve. He was terrified, he didn't know if any of them would live through the day, but while the, did live, this was his town, and he was calling the shots. He suddenly realized that he had not thought of leaving Rio Verde lately, that he had not mentally planned his escape from town as he had so often in the past. If he made it through this, he decided, he would never again complain about being stuck in this place, in this job. He would thank his lucky sxs for his boring, safe, and predictable little life.

There were far worse fates.

Robert motioned toward Sue's grandmother. "She's in charge," he told Rossiter.

"Go with Buford," Sue said. The FBI agent opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. She knew that he wanted to maintain control. But he was also awaxc that. even if he had an army of FBI agents with him right now, armed to the teeth, it would make no difference. The cup hug/rngs/could not be fought with conventional weapons, and he knew it.

There was a knock on the office door. Rich, the nearest the door, opened it.

Ted was in the doorway, standing next to a tall, thin, moderately attractive middle-aged woman who was holding a videotape. The woman was nervous and did not look up. Her attention was focused on the tape she was turning over and over in her hands.

"She says she was staying at the Rocking DID--" Ted began.

"My husband and Iwere camping last night, and I saw something flying above the desert." She stopped turning the tape in her hands, held it out. "I thought it was a phoenix. You know, the bird? So I got out my camcorder. It kind of hovered for a while and then flew toward the highway. I got all of it on tape. Our guides never came back, and we were going to go back to our room, but we thought we might get lost and not be able to make it back in the dark, so we decided just to stay there. We found out what happened when we went back to the dude ranch and saw all the police cars..." She took a deep breath. "I think you should see the tape

Robert stood up, walked around his desk, took the videotape from her.

"May I keep this and make a copy? I will return it to you."

"Keep it," the woman said. "I never want to see it again.

"Have you looked at it?"

She shivered. "We looked at it."

Robert nodded to Ted. "Take her statement." He turned to the woman.

"Thank you again, Ms ?"

"Singleton. Tracy Singleton."

"Thank you, Ms. Singleton."

Ted escorted the woman down the hall, and Robert. turned back toward the others. "We have a VCR in the conference room," he said. "Let's check it out."

"Now we'll get to see him," Woods said. "A camera has no fear, no ideas, no thoughts, no biases. It just records what's there." ........

"Maybe," Sue said. :

They walked down the short paneled hallway to the conference room.

Robert switched on the lights, then rolled the TV around to the head of the conference table as the rest of them took their seats. He plugged in the television, and the videotape recorder on the metal shelf beneath it, popping in the tape He looked around quiet room. "Ready?"

They all nodded. "All right

There was silence in the conference room as the eotape began. Robert found that he was holding breath, and he forced himself to let out the air and tinue breathing. On the screen there was a nighttime of the desert near the ranch, an off-center comp osi with too much sand and not enough sky. Then the can shifted, focused, zoomed, and in the center of the pict floating in the air, was a tall pale figure that caused bumps to ripple over his body, caused his pulse to with fear.

The cup hugingsi.

They gasped as they saw it in its true form for the time. All of them.

Even Sue's grandmother drew in breath sharply. The reality was far worse than Robert feared. His imaginings had been horrible, but this st rous figure was beyond anything his mind had been to conjure. It was neither a dwarf nor a giant but was size of a tall man. Humanoid, it was extraordinarily almost skeletal, and naked, though it had no genitals. ] and bone junctures showed beneath the alabaster skh had a baby face---pudgy cheeks, small nose, char acre mouthmbut it was an old baby face. There were wrin where there should not have been, and the eyes were cient beyond reason, ancient and corrupt, filled with knowing evil that belied the innocence of the face's pl cal characteristics.

Although the head was hairless, of unnaturally white and unbelievably long hair grew unexpected parts of the body, dripping down from upper forearms, from under the chest, from the kn The hair blew wildly in the chill desert wind.

The creature smiled. There were no fangs, on!) overly large and toothy mouth.

Competing with the images was the soundtrack. Tracy Singleton was narrating, but her voice and observations were entirely superfluous, describing a scene she thought she saw, not the reality actually recorded by the camera. Muffled, far, far in the background, were screams and the sound of shattering glass, the noise of car engines racing and tires peeling out. Overlying this, almost overpowering it, was a liquid whooshing that was somewhere between wind and river, a strange antinoise that made everything seem as if it were happening in a vacuum instead of the real world.

The cup hugirngsi stared directly into the camera, an expression of pure malevolent hate on its twisted baby features. Then it sped away, turning from the camera and shrinking to a dot in the distance in less than a second.

The tape ended, the black of night followed by the gray and black dots of videotape static on the screen. The hissing of the speaker, loud and obnoxious though it was, seemed almost soothing after that hellish sound scape

"So that's what we're up against," Rossiter said. His usual arrogance was gone, replaced by a tone of cowed humility.