The Summoning

Woods, standing on the other side of the bodies, I0o over at the police chief. "You're right," he said. "We have a vampire here.",

"You through with the onsite?"

The coroner nodded. ::

"Take 'em away."

"You find anything?,".Noods asked, "Tracks?" "Not yet."

"There must've been other kids parked out h Maybe you should ask them if they saw anything."

"You do your job, okay? Don't tell me how to do mine." "Sorry."

Woods was silent for a moment. Looking do at the ground, he cleared his throat. "Let me talk to families. It's their choice, of course, but I think the should be cremated." . :+ :

Robert started to say something, then thought better of it and nodded.

"

"Thanks." Woods nodded to Ted, pointed toward the bodies. "Help me load these in the wagon."

Robert turned away, stared at the water. He found himself thinking not of the murders, but of the river. At one time, it was supposed to have become part of the Central Arizona Project, and for years there'd been talk of damming it up somewhere down the line, but the job had always proved too cost prohibitive. Their river simply didn't have the volume of the Salt or the Verde, and it did not flow through an area that would make its water easily accessible to Phoenix. Miles of concrete aqueducts would have to be built to connect the river to the rest of the Project, and in these tight fiscal times such funds were not available. Hollis and his partners in the Rocking DID had been grateful for that. The river, along with Rio Verde's close proximity to Roosevelt Lake, were big selling points for the dude ranch. And big moneymakers for the town. Rio Verde survived the winter from money earned during the summer season.

Robert wondered how tourists would feel if they found out that a vampire was prowling the river. lil' Rich stepped up behind him" "D their Parents know?"

"They're on their way over." ,-....... "Who had to tell them?" i: I

"Who do you think?" Robert looked up. There was the sound of tires skidding on dirt, car doors slamming. "They're here."

Rich glanced toward the police vehicles parked in the clear area behind them, saw a van next to that, a frantically running man and woman hurrying away from the van toward them. A station wagon pulled in seconds behind the van.

He turned away, looked back toward the water as Robert walked over to talk to the dead teenagers' parents.

Rossiter was already waiting for Robert at the station when he arrived two hours later.

Robert got out of the cruiser, adjusted his belt. The FBI agent was standing in front of a white unmarked government car next to two other equally obvious plainclothes agents. All .taree were blond, had matching hairtmts and government issue sunglasses, and it was only a slight differentiation in the shade of their dark suits that enabled him to tell them apart. i

The state police officer stood by himself, next to his brown, not-so-new car, pretending to look through a note book.

Robert walked directly up to Rossiter. He was hot, sweaty, and tired, there were mud stains on his pants and sweat stains on his shirt, but he didn't give a damn. "So are you actually going to try to help me, or are you just going to hang around and get in my way?"

""You need more help than I can provide." The agent's voice was flat, but there was an undercurrent of resentment in it. Robert got the impression that Rossiter was angry at him for not yet solving the case.

He was angry at himself for the same reason, but he was even angrier at this suited asshole who was supposed to be providing him with help and support but instead was giving him only pressure.

Rossiter took off his sunglasses, coolly put them into his jacket pocket. "I'm afraid we're going to be taking over this investigation from here on."

"What the hell do you think you're--"

"You will still be involved and participating in a hand son basis, but the investigation will now be coordinated through our office. It's out of your jurisdiction..Because of the very specific and idiosyncratic nature of these crimes, and the fact that a large number of victims are involved, this has been classified by the Bureau as the work of a probable serial killer and has been given a number two priority level.

Our territorial fights have been established with the consent of the state police." He nodded toward Cash, still standing next to his, car.

The officer nodded back.

"What the state police say doesn't mean shit around here." Rossiter sighed condescendingly. "Mr. Carter, you know how the hierarchy works-7..".

"No, I don't."

"Despite what you seem to think, you are not the head honcho here. You are answerable to the mayor and the town council, if I have to, I'll go through them. I'll bring court orders and federal injunctions, and I'll have you out of office so fast it'll make your head spin. The Bureau does not deal lightly with intransigent law enforcement officers." He withdrew a folded sheet of paper from the inner pocket of his jacket. "I have here a list of things that I need you to provide. Documentation related to the case. We are both working toward the same end, and I think it would benefit us both if you would cooperate."

Robert stared at the agent, hating the bastard even more than he had before, but realizing Rossiter had all the cards, and Robert could play only if the agent deigned to deal him a hand.

Robert reached out, took the sheet of paper.

"I'll need everything by noon tomorrow. If there's anything that you forget or can't find, you can fax it to me." Rossiter motioned to the other agents. "Let's look at that scene."

Rich shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He tried to tell himself that it was merely a leftover reaction from his own high school days, a residual fear of the principal's office that he had never quite outgrown, but he knew that was not the case. 9.. ' ;::

It was something else. " '::: He stared across the desk at Principal Poole. The older man was appropriately subdued, the expression on his face suitably mournful, but there was nothing subdued or mournful about his eyes or body language. Rich had talked to a lot of people over the years, and he had developed a sort of sixth sense about these things.

He could tell when people were holding back or were outright lying by observing the way they sat, the way they moved, the way the other elements of their faces responded to the words coming from their lips.

And he knew that Principal Poole was not saddened at " all by the deaths of the two teenagers.

"It's tragic," the principal said, shaking his head sympathetically.

"It is always tragic when life is taken from people so young." ,

Rich dutifully wrote down the quote.. "Both Aaron and Cheri were model students, were irreplaceable members of our student body family, and they will be greatly missed. Mr. Cheever, our yearbook adviser, rmedme that the new yearbook will be dedicated two fine students."

Rich closed his notebook. Ordinarily, he would have stuck around longer, asked a few more questions, just in case he needed to fill some extra space on the front page, but right now he just wanted to get out of this office. The principal was making him very uneasy. The air in here felt stifling, and the way the older man kept staring at him, studying him, set his teeth on edge,..

He stood, smiled professionally. "Thank you, Mr. Poole. i Think I have enough here. If I have any follow-up questions, I'll give you a call."

The principal smiled. "You do that." He stood, extending his hand.

Rich shook it. He started toward the door, had almost reached it, when the principal cleared his throat. "Mr. Carter?" ":: " "

Rich turned. v-:.: .:- :

"Can I tell you something? Off the record?"

"Sure."

"Aaron and Chefi? They deserved what they got." Rich stared at the principal. There was no dichotom' now between the eyes and the expression on the rest c the face, between the words and the body language. E, erything was in sync. Rich felt the hairs bristle on the bac of his neck.

"They were engaging in premarital sex, and they wet punished for their sin."

Rich put his pen in his pocket. He tried to keep h voice light. "I don't think they were killed because of skinny-dipping session at the river and a little back se boogie."

"The Lord does not look upon moral transgressions lightly."

Rich smiled thinly. "I'd have to say we disagree on t subject, Mr.

Poole. But again, thank you for your time He turned to go.

"Your wife would not be so quick to dismiss this warning." My wife?"

Again, he faced the principal..,

"Your wife is a devoted servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have seen her at church--"

"Don't talk to me about my own wife." "She is preparing herself for the Second Coming. You should prepare yourself too." - .. Rich walked out of the office without saying goodbye. He did not stop to look back until he was safely beyond the administration building. Outside, Rich realized that he had been holding his breath, and he exhaled. Through the partially darkened window of the principal's office, he saw two figures watching him: the principal and his secretary.

What the hell was going on here?

He walked out to his pickup, got in, and took off. He did not look back .... Sue stared out the window of the cafe, seeing not the highway and desert outside but the reflection of her face and the faces of her friends, transparent ghosts against the solid blackness of night. -"I

"Shelly, Janine, and Roxanne were talking--about music, about guys--but Sue wasn't really paying attention. She was thinking of what her grandmother had said, about the deaths, about the cup hugrngsi. It was ludicrous to think that a vampire was stalking the town, and she should have been able to laugh it off, but the disbelief wasn't there. : :"'

She thought of Aadn and Cheri, of the photos Rich had taken of their bodies.

Somewhere outside, in the darkness, something was stirring. A monster.

A cup hugirngsi. It was crazy, but it was true. She knew it. She could feel it. Her grandmother was right; she had sensed the creature before, at the school that night, and though she'd wanted to deny its existence, she could not. She did not know if the creature was prowling through the town, slinking through the shadows in search of victims, or lying in wait out in the desert, but she knew that it was somewhere in the night, somewhere close. And tonight or tomorrow or the next night it would strike again.

She shivered and looked away from the window, picking up a French fry from the plate in front of her and dipping it into the smeared puddle of ketchup.

Shelly was complaining about her mother again, hinting broadly that she needed a roommate if she was going to be able to afford her own a49apartment.

Sue looked around the cafe. They had spent many a weekend evening like this, hanging out, ordering soft drinks and fries, commenting cattily on the groups of guys and girls at the other tables, friends and enemies alike. But she noticed for the first time that, except for one elderly couple and families in booths, the care was empty. That was strange. The care was never empty on FriOay

There was a lull in the conversation, and Shelly silently ate a soggy French fry while the others sipped their drinks. The silence lengthened, dragged. Sue glanced over atJanine, who gave her a halfhearted smile. She'd noticed too. There never used to be any dead time when they got together; the conversation never used to flag.

Either they were drifting apart, the common interests they'd once shared disappearing as they grew older, or they knew each other so well that there was nothing left to say.

Whatever the case, Sue thought, it was depressing; and she found herself looking at her friends in a new light, wondering whether she would be friends with any of them if she met them now for the first time.

It wasJanine who broke the silence. "What's at the theater this weekend?" i): -" :

Roxanne shrugged. "Sorfi cop movie."

Sue forced herself to smile. "That's why God invented video."

"Yeah," Shelly said, "only you always want to see those boring obscure movies no one's ever heard of."

"A Room With a View?"

"That's not obscure. And it's certainly not boring."

"Not to you maybe."

I Roxanne laughed. "But you liked the naked guys, didn't you?

Shelly shook her head. "Two seconds can't ;s-ave a whole movie." ,!:

:

"You're hopeless," Sue said. ;.,:..: "

I The conversation was back on track, the awkwardness gone, and as the talk shifted to upcoming movies, Sue knew that she would still be friends with these three if she met them now. Sitting here, she felt as close to them as she ever had. She looked from Janine to Shelly to anne: Part of her wanted to tell them about what her grandmother had said, about the cup hugirngsi, but she was acutely aware of how ridiculous it would sound. A week ago, if one of them had suddenly told her that a vampire was killing people in town, she wouldn't have taken it seriously either.

But the temptation was strong.. " Maybe she could talk to them one-on-one.

Make sure that it is stopped.

Her brain suddenly felt heavy, slowed with the weight of responsibility as she recalled her grandmother's words. Her grandmother was right.

If she knew what was happening, it was her moral duty to tell everyone she could, to let them know so that they could protect themselves against it. But how could she make anyone believe her? People were already talking about vampires---the subject was not that far from people's minds--but what could she say that would convince them that it was true?

And what did she tuaow about protection against a cup hu rngsi?

She absently fingered the jade around her neck. She would have to talk to her grandmother, get some more information. ::.i .";:i

"I don't like any of them," Roxanne was saying. She turned to Sue.

"What about you?"

"Huh?" Sue blinked, caught off guard. "Horror movies. Do you like horror movies?"

Sue slowly shook her head. "No," she said. "I don't."

"See?" Roxanne grinned triumphantly. "Sue doesn't like them either."

Roxanne and Shelly had already left in Shelly's Dart, and Sue walked with Janine across the parking lot to her car. There was the hint of a chill in the air, a promise that the unnaturally warm weather would soon shift back to its normal patterns. It was not that late and across the street, at the theater, the early evening show was just get ring out while the line for the second show was beginning to form at the side of the building. Even amidst all this, activity, Sue felt nervous. Her attention was concentrated on the pools of shadow next to each car, the darkened area next to the dumpster at the side of the care, the alley next to the movie theater.

The places a monster could hide.

She wanted to tell herself that she was being stupid. But she didn't think she was.

They reached the Honda. Janine opened her purse, withdrew her keys.

She looked up at Sue but did not quite meet her eyes. "Can I ask you a question? A personal question?" ........ "Of course. You don't even have to ask." "Have you.." have you ever done it?" "Done what?"

"You know, had sex?"

Sue's face felt hot, flushed. "Not... exactly. Not all the way. Why?"

.: ..... "I'm pregnant," Janine said.

Sue stared at her in shock. "Really?" Janine nodded. "Who is it?" one you know." ..... "God." Sue leaned against the Honda's hatchback.

"This is serious stuff."

" didn't want to say anything in front of Shelly or Roxanne because ..

. well, you know Shelly. She'd give me a twenty-minute lecture. And Roxanne It'd be all over town in an hour."

"Have you told your parents? ..... Janine shook her head. "Are you going to?"

- - " "I don't know."

I "Are you"---Sue's voice was too high, and she coughed' going to keep it"

Janine shrugged, and the gesture suddenly seemed so adult. "I don't know."

"How did it happen? ...... Jane smiled wryly. "I know your family doesn't like to talk about sex, but I thought you'd learned about the birds and bees by now..."

[.

"You know what I mean."

She sighed. "He was staying at the ranch, and he thought I was staying there too, and , .. I didn't bother to straighten him out."

I God, this sounds like a TV show." .... Janine smiled. "Yeah, The Flintstones. The one where

Fred and Barney first meet Wilma and Betty at that hotel where they're working?"

"So what happened?" "I was off work in my street clothes, and I was standing by the bar. He was waiting to get in, and we sort of struck up a conversation. I ended up having dinner with him. He'd come to the ranch with two friends, but they were on the overnight Cowboy Campout. He hadn't wanted to go, so he'd stayed behind, you know, to swim and hang around. After dinner, he asked if he could walk me back to my room. By that time, I didn't want to admit that I worked there, so I said no. He asked if I wanted to come up to his room." ' "And you said yes." "Yes."

"How could you?" Sue shook her head. "What if he had AIDS? You knew nothing about this guy."

Janine smiled. "I knew he was cute."

"I'm serious."

"It's been a long time, you know? I mean, I broke up with Jim almost two years ago, and there hasn't been any one else who's even interested. That's the problem with this damn town. When you're born here, you know every one in it. I mean, do you think you're actually going to find someone here?

"No." ........... "Me either. And this guy... I don't know. I liked him; he liked me. We just sort of hit it off."

"What are you going to do now?"

"I have no idea."

Sue stared up at the sky, at the wash of stars against the moonless backdrop of night. She felt strange, adrift, disassociated from the events around her. The world she had lived in, the world she had known, had changed, moved from clearly defined black-and-white into a shifting realm of shadows. Janine was pregnant by a stranger. Yet she was not a slut or a whore, merely a frightened friend who was being unjustly punished for an understandable transgression. The supernatural, which had been merely the ticfional basis for books and movies, a conceit of popular entertainment, had suddenly moved from the periphery of make-believe to the arena of reality,

Reminded again of the cup hugirngsi, she looked be hind her, through the back window into the car. The Honda's seats were hulking black shapes in the enclosed darkness of the interior. The area in front of the vehicle was completely obscured by the night's gloom.

"Let's drive around for a while," she said. "And talk?"

Sue nodded. "There's a lot to talk about."

"I wish there weren't." Janine moved around to driver's side, opened her door, and got in. She unlocke the passenger door for Sue.

Maybe I'll tell her about the cup hugirngsi, Sue through] as she buckled her seat belt. But then she looked at the hopelessness on her friend's face and decided that was not the time.

Janine started the car, backed out of the parking lot "Are you sure you're pregnant?" Sue asked. "Positive. I took an EPT."

"Those things aren't supposed to be that reliable." "I'm a month late."

"Oh." Sue didn't know what to say to that.

They headed down the highway.

It was after midnight when Sue finally arrived Janine dropped her off in front of the house and wait until she had reached the porch before taking off. Noting had been decided, no resolutions had been made, b Sue knew that her friend felt better for having talked all out.

Everyone was asleep, and the house was silent as let herself in. She had hoped that her grandmother wouldn't be awake, but there was no sound coming from her room and no light shone from beneath the door. In her mind Sue saw her grandmother lying in bed, arms folded across her chest, bone white and drained of blood, her face that of an ancient mummy. She was tempted to knock on door just to reassure herself that the old woman was alive, but she knew that it would probably wake her up and her mother as well, and she continued down the hall to her own room.

She locked her door, checked her window to see if it was closed, and felt the half-circle lock on top of the sill to make sure it was fastened before taking off her clothes, putting on her nightgown, and crawling into bed. laundry room door was open, and the visibly escaping steam humidified the hallway outside. She quickly pushed the cart through the doorway to Ramon and backed away before she started to sweat and her makeup began to run. She was scheduled to work the desk this afternoon, and she couldn't very well take care of guests looking like the Bride of Frankenstein.

She waved to Ramon and Jose, then ducked out of the building and walked outside, around the boulder-enclosed pool, to the vending machines. She popped two quarters and a dime into the coin slot, pushed the button for Diet Coke, gave the machine a quick kick, and her can tumbled down into the cradle. She popped the tab and took a long drink.

She turned around, watched the two couples at the pool for a moment.

The two guys and one of the women were swimming, but the other woman, obviously pregnant, was lying on one of the chaise lounges in a maternity one-piece, casually reading a magazine. : One of the men said something, the pregnant woman turned, looked at Janine, and their eyes met. Janine glanced away and started walking toward the main building, moving behind the boulders so she couldn't be seen.

She walked slowly, sipping her drink, trying to finish it before she got to the lobby steps. She was still not sure how she was going to explain her pregnancy to her morn. She was not even sure how her morn would react. Her parents had gotten married when they were both seniors in high school, because they'd had to, because her morn had been pregnant with her. It was amazing toJanine how much her parents seemed to have forgotten from their younger days, how rigid and moralistic and unyielding they'd become in their attitudes toward her.

Janine felt bad about what she'd told Sue. She'd given her friend an overly romantic impression of what had occurred, and she knew she shouldn't have. But she simply had not been able to bring herself to tell the truth because the truth was so sleazy and sordid and cheap.

The truth was that she'd been filling in for Patty Pullen, cleaning one of the rooms, and Cutler, the new handyman, had seen the open door, walked in, and come on to her........ They'd done it there on the unmade bed.

She had not been sure then or afterward why she had done such a thing, why she had gone along with his crude suggestion. She wasn't a slut, at least she didn't think of herself as one, but she couldn't deny the fact that she'd agreed, with very little prompting, to have sex with a guy she barely knew, didn't really like, and whose first name she didn't even know.

And now he seemed to have disappeared.

She'd fucked up royally this time.

There'd been close calls in the past. The time after the Winter Formal in high school when she'd gotten drunk and nearly rolled her mom's car, making up an elaborate excuse about a crazy hit-and-run driver who'd forced her off the road. The time one of her mom's friends had seen her topless in the backseat of Bill Halley's Buick, and she'd had to go to the woman's house and actually burst into tears to get her to promise that she wouldn't tell her morn. But there'd been nothing like this. Those were minor in conveniences. This was a major problem.

This could affect the rest of her life. She looked down at her abdomen, which, thankfully, was still not showing. She was leaning toward getting an abortion, she thought it was probably the quickest and cleanest way out of this mess, but the idea frightened her, and she had no idea how to go about it. She needed to talk to her morn.

Janine finished her Diet Coke, wiped her wet hands on her jeans, and straightened her cowgirl vest before walking inside.

Sally Mae was working the front desk, and the older woman greeted her with a relieved smile when Janine walked through the door. "I was afraid you weren't going to show up."

Janine frowned. "I'm not late."

Sally Mae laughed. "No, I didn't mean that. It's just that I have a big date tonight, and I had this horrible feeling that something was going to happen to ruin it for me. Let's face it, dear, my luck with men hasn't been all good."

Janine smiled. "Go on. Get out of here." "My shift isn't quite--"

"I'll cover for you." "You're a good girl."

"That's debatable," Janine said. She glanced down at today's event schedule, posted on the counter. "So where did you meet this guy? Not here?"

"Oh, no. We met at church." Sally Mae lowered her voice. "He's one of the men who volunteered to work on the church for the Second Coming."

Janine's smile froze on her face. She stared at the older woman, not sure how to respond. "Oh," she said noncommittally.

"He's going to introduce me to Jesus."

Goose bumps arose on Janine's arms. "Well, you'd better get going," she said. "I can handle things here."

Sally Mae put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a quick squeeze.

""Thanks. I owe you."

Janine stood behind the counter, unmoving, and watched as the other woman grabbed her purse and, way ing, walked out the door.

She looked down at her stomach and, for the thousand time that day, placed her palm on it.

" It was a somber rather than festive Columbus Day. A three-day weekend for many people in the state, Columbus was the only holiday between Labor Day and Thanksgiving, and a lot of local businesses counted on the extra influx of tourists to get them through the season.

But though the tourists were here today, the businesses weren't. An inordinate number of stores were closed, and there was a general feeling of confused disorder along both the Highway 370 and Highway 95 shopping districts.

There were also a hell of a lot of crosses propped up in the closed storefront windows, and the funny thing was that Robert was not sure if the crosses were being displayed to ward off vampires or as a show of faith in Jesus Christ. People were not about to tell him which one it was, either. The sheriff had never been the most popular man in town--generally speaking, when he came in contact with people it was because they had done something wrong--but he was usually treated with respect. Not these days, though.. =; ........ - -. Things had changed. ,

He stood next to his cruiser in the Basha's parking lot, looking out over the forked intersection of 370 and 95. The afternoon was hot, and the highways were crowded, the gas stations and the parking lot of the Circle K filled with campers and motorcycles, boat and jet ski trailers. People from the Valley. Weekend warriors. Most of them would be off-roading. A few might even decide to stay in the area and spend the day at the river.

With a sinking feeling, he tried to imagine what would happen if a man or woman or, worse yet, a child from Mesa or Tempe or Phoenix, was found lying in the brush, drained of blood.

Robert stared at the mini-traffic jam on Highway 370 immediately in front of the shopping center. He felt as though things were out of control, and he was at the whim of events he could not influence. There was no way in hell that his men could keep tabs on everyone. They could only hope that there were no attacks. No deaths.

He'd ordered all policemen on duty today, Saturday, and Sunday to eschew the usual ticketing of minor violations and concentrate instead on preventative law enforcement: making sure that high-risk areas of the town and surrounding desert were adequately patrolled, keeping track of anyone or anything suspicious. Rossiter had told him that attempting to keep tabs on recreationers was a fool's errand, but despite what the FBI agent said, Robert felt obligated to try. This was his town, goddammit, and he couldn't be expected to stand around and wait for someone else to get killed without trying to do something,

Earlier in the week, he'd told his men to cooperate with the feds, but his manner must have spoken louder than his words because that cooperation had been grudging at best. He was sure that someone, somewhere down the line, was going to piss and moan about his attitude, and as he stared at a line of brake lights and listened to the sound of angry car horns, he wondered if there would be repercussions. His job certainly wasn't in danger--the town's police force and the FBI ran on different tracks in regard to personnel matters--but he had no doubt that Rossiter, could drown him in a shit storm of bureaucracy. Hell, maybe he would be better off if his job was taken away. It would force him to get out of this town and do something with his life.

Robert waved to Mona Payne, who passed by on her three-wheeled bike.

Once again, he thought of the rtunor a few years back that satanists had been meeting by the river. He'd heard the story from Garden Teague, not the world's most reliable source, and he'd put the old man's account of robed figures, bonfires, and ritualistic chanting down to the DTs. If Garden had seen anything, he reasoned, it had been some high school football players trying to score with their dates around a campfire, and it was only his inebriated mind that had cast it in such a

Now he was not so sure.

He knew that the rumors had never entirely gone away, and that people other than Garden Teague believed them. On slow nights, he and Frank Teller had made occasional trips out to the river, just to check out the situation. They'd never found anything, had never even come across the smoldering remains of a campfire, but he found him serf wondering now if perhaps Garden had really seen something. Maybe there were a group of satanists in Rio Verde who were into human sacrifice and blood drinking. It was certainly more plausible than the idea that a vampire was running around loose.

Vampire? ..... Robert ran a hand through his thinning hair, took another look at the traffic, then got into his cruiser, started the engine, and waited for a break between vehicles to speed across the highway. He cut through the dirt alley on the side of the Dairy Queen and turned right on Copperhead, pulling into the parking lot of the public library.

As usual, the place was empty. Mrs. Church, the librarian and the only other person in the building, was sitting behind the front desk reading a Sue Grafton novel. The only noise was the faint sound of an air conditioner.

People in Rio Verde didn't read much, Robert knew. They weren't illiterate, Mrs. Church had told him once, they were post literate They knew how to read--but books simply were not part of their lives.

Robert wasn't sure he agreed with her, but the fact remained that aside from a core group of senior citizens, the only people who consistently used the library were students with report deadlines.

It had been a while since he'd been in here himself, but when he opened the door and stepped inside, it was like stepping into a familiar home---his grandparents' perhaps so strong were the emotional echoes and sense of belonging. As always, the comforting odor of books was mixed with that faint lemony scent of furniture polish he'd never encountered anywhere else. On the walls were posters for the library's summer reading program, the Reading Olympics. The same posters had been used for the past thirty years. He remembered winning a bronze medal in the summer before sixth grade for his vacation yea ding efforts. Rich had won a gold medal. "It's been a while, Robert Carter."

He looked up at Mrs. Church, who had put down her novel and was smiling at him. He nodded sheepishly, feeling like a ten-year-old in the presence of the old librarian. "You haven't been in here in quite some time."

"I've been buying my books," he said to defend himself.

She laughed, and her laugh wasn't intimidating at all. "I wasn't criticizing you, Robert. I know you and your brother both read."

He stepped across the shiny waxed floor to the front desk, boots echoing on the tile.

The librarian stood. "You want some books on vampires, don't you?"

That was one thing he'd never gotten used to: Mrs. Church's ability to know, before you asked, why you'd come in here and what you wanted. As children, he and Rich had speculated on that subject. Rich's theory had always been that their mother called ahead and told the librarian what books the two of them were interested in that week. But, Robert had argued, why would their mother go to such lengths? It made no sense. He'd thought it was some form of ESP.

"Yes," he said. "Vampires."

"It's a popular subject this week. I'm not sure we have any books left. Why don't you check that middle aisle in back of the card catalogue. Top shelf, right side. We have our nonfiction volumes there. I assume you're looking for nonfiction?"

"Yes."

"Check there."

In all of his visits to the library over the years, Robert could not remember ever having used the card catalogue. Each time he had wanted a book on a particular subject, or even a specific work, Mrs. Church had always told him exactly where to go.

He walked around the dark wood of the catalogue and stepped into the middle aisle. Sure enough, all of the volumes were gone, only an empty space where they should have been. He quickly scanned the adjoining shelves, on the off chance that the books had been put back incorrectly, then poked his head around the corner of the aisle. "Do you have anything else on vampires?"

"There is general information in encyclopedias and reference books, and we do have a few overviews of the supernatural that would no doubt have information on the subject. Hold on a minute. Let me check. Maybe one of those books has been returned. I haven't looked in the bin this morning."

He walked back around to the front desk, and Mrs.

Church emerged from the back room beaming, four books in her hand.

"Here we go. Because of the popularity of this subject right now, I've given these books a three day checkout time instead of the usual two weeks."

Robert grinned. "You expect me to bring these back in three days?"

"You'll be fined if you don't, Robert Carter."

His grin withered under her stern gaze. "Sorry," he said meekly. "I was just joking."

She smiled. "So was I. You havea two-day grace period." She winked at him. "You think I don't know you by now?"

Robert glanced at the titles of the books: The Vampire: His Kith and Kin by Montague Summers; The Vampire in Legend, Fact and Art by Basil Copper; The Book of Vampires by Dudley Wright; The Vampire: Monster and Metaphor by Eugenia de Sprague He handed Mrs. Church his library card. She stamped two date cards, placed them in the pockets of the books, and handed everything back to him. "Is this sudden interest in vampires personal?" she asked.

"Or professional?"

Personal. I guess."

"But it might be both?"

He nodded. "It might be both."

She smiled at him, but there was a hint of worry in her smile this time. "I hope you find what you're looking for."

"I hope so, too," he said.

On his way back to the station, Robert stopped by the newspaper office.

Rich was in the paste up room, carefully placing black border tape around an ad at the bottom of one of the pages.

"Another big issue," Robert said, glancing at the layout, of the front page on the nearest light table. "Let's hope it's the last." Rich cut the border tape with an X-acto knife. "Anything new I should know about? We don't put the paper to bed until Wednesday. There's still time to rearrange the front page,"

"We'll see what tonight brings." Robert sat down in the metal folding chair next to the waxer. "Who's the babe?" Rich frowned. "The babe?"

"The Oriental chick at Corrie's desk." Robert leaned back until his head was against the wall and the chair was resting on two legs.

Rich shook his head. "That's Sue Wing. I just hired her on as a production assistant and part-time reporter. Her family owns the Chinese restaurant."

Robert grinned. "Anything going on here that I should know about2"

"I'm not even going to dignify that with a response." "I just thought that since she'd taken over Corrie'sjob here at the paper, she might be taking over some of her other duties too."

"Jesus, sometimes you can be a real asshole."

Robert laughed, setting the front legs of his chair back on the ground.

"Hit a nerve, huh?"

"No. She's a nice girl, and I don't want you talking behind her back.

You're the police chief, for God's sake. Haven't you ever heard of sexual harassment?"

"Heard of it." You'll hear more of it... Robert stood. Seriously.

Aren't you going to introduce

US?

Rich put down the X-acto knife. "If you can behave yourself and pretend to be a human being."

"I'll try." He followed his brother out into the newsroom. Sue looked up as they approached. She was pretty, Robert thought. In their younger days, they both might're made a play for her.

"Sue?" Rich said. "This is Robert, my brother, our esteemed chief of police."

She smiled shyly. "Hello."

Hh Robert said.

"Sue, our reporter-slashphotographerslash-production assistant, was the lone student in my aborted journalism class."

"Whatever happened with that?" Robert asked. "Did Pueblo ever pay you? What's the deal?"

"We worked out an arrangement. The class was canceled, but technically Sue's still enrolled because she's earning credits for her work experience here. So, technically, I'm still her teacher."

Robert chuckled. "Fill out an application at Taco Bell," he said to Sue. "You'll make a heck of a lot more than you will as a reporter."

She smiled at him. "I'm in it for fame, not fortune."

"You'll get more notice at Taco Bell too. And more respect." "He's just jealous," Rich told her. "Ignore him." He turned to his brother, motioned toward his desk. "Come on, let her get back to work, have a seat over here."

"I have to get a move on myself." Robert nodded at Sue. "Nice meeting you."

Rich followed his brother around the partition, past Carole's desk, through the front door. "That's what you stopped by for?"

"Actually, I've been getting quite a few complaints the past couple days about Wheeler's church. People there on Arrow say they don't like all that hammering and racket going on all hours of the night." "That's understandable."

"I talked to the man, gave him a friendly warning, but it was like talking to a wall. He had that damn phony smile plastered on his face, and he kept nodding and agreeing with me, but he didn't listen to a single thing I said."

"What do you want me to do, write an article about it? I'll tell you right now, I'm not taking on a church."

"No, that's not it."

"You want my advice? Get him on noise violations. Throw his butt in jail." .

"Rio Verde has no municipal codes coveting noise, hard as that may be to believe. When there's a loud party or something, we usually just issue a warning and things quiet down. If the situation gets too rowdy, we can usually crack down and cite other violations. But Wheeler knows his laws. I suspect he's skirted enough of them in his time to know where the borders lie. He can build all night if he wants to, hammer from dusk to dawn, and he knows it."

"So?" "

"So, to tell you the truth, I thought maybe you could get Corrie to talk to him.,"

"You can forget about that right now."

"He won't listen to her?"

"She won't listen to me."

Robert sighed. "I thought I'd give it a shot. With everything else collapsing around my damn ears, I thought maybe I could take the easy way out and solve the problem with a minimum of hassle. I don't want all those fanatics picketing the station because Jesus told them to build their church, and I told them to keep it quiet after dark."

"Well, I could try to talk to Corrie"

He shook his head. "Thanks anyway, but don't bother.

I'll just try to bully the jerk. Maybe he'll cave."

"I doubt it."

"I doubt it, too."

"Listen, you want to come by for dinner tonight after work?"

"Can't. I'm busy."I "We'll eat late."

Robert looked at his brother. "How come you never come over to my house? How come I always have to go over to yours?"

"Okay, forget it, then.

"No, I'm serious. Why?"

Rich shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other,

"We're closer to town." +=

"That's not it and you know it."

"You ever thought of getting a dog or a cat? Something to keep you company?"

+ "Stop changing the subject."

"That is the subject. It' always seems so so lonely out at Mom's place.

"My place."

"Your place. See? Even after all this time, I still think of it as Mom's." "You two used to come over when Julie was there."

Rich forced himself to smile. "We'll come over sometime this month, all right? We'll have a barbecue." "I'm not trying to force you."

"Let's not start that crap."

Robert smiled tiredly. "Okay, okay. We'll talk about it later." He opened his car door. "I'd better get back, check in, see who else has been murdered."

"That's not funny."

"No, it's not." i "Have you gone by Billy's garage sale lately?"

"You know I avoid that eyesore like the plague."

"You ought to check out what he's selling."

Robert ran a hand through his hair. Billy Gurdy had had a garage sale every weekend for the past twenty years. The rows of tables set up on the dirt in front of the ramshackle hut he called home were permanent, and although everyone knew that referring to his open-air thrift store as a "garage sale" was just a way to get out of paying for a business license, no one ever called him on it. He was poor enough as it was---and as old as God to boot and if it made him happy to circumvent county statutes by hawking his wares in front of his house each Saturday and Sunday, well, what was the harm in that?

Rich had always liked Billy, although Robert couldn't stand him. Rich claimed that it was because the old man had caught Robert stealing prickly pears off his cactus back when he was in junior high, and Robert had to admit that there might be something to that.

"I'll bite," Robert said. "What's he selling?"

"Vampire kits."

"Vampire kits?"

"Shoeboxes filled with cloves of garlic and popsicle stick crosses."

"Jesus." 91.1

"He told me he's sold over thirty of them already."

"You going to do a story on it?"

"You're the one who thinks there's a monster out there."

"Oh, it's my fault Billy's an opportunistic con artist."

"That's not what I said, and you know

"Okay, I'll go by and talk to him,"

"I think you should."

Robert got in the cruiser, closed the door, and rolled down the window.

He looked up at his brother. "You want to do an editorial for me on unwanted federal intervention in local law enforcement?"

"No, but you're free to write a letter."

"That's what I thought." He started the engine.

"Later"

"See you."

He backed out of the newspaper office's parking lot and headed toward the highway.

Corrie pulled up in front of the church, turned off the ignition, and sat for a moment in the ear, watching the other parishioners file in.

Rich had refused to let Anna her today, and while she'd been angry and accompany argued with him, a part of hera deep maternal part of her was also relieved, and she had not pressed the point as strongly as she could have. She was mad at Rich, but in a roundabout way, she was grateful to him for having taken the responsibility away from her.

She watched as Whit Stasson's family entered the church together. The crowd had thinned from a flood to a trickle, so Corrie exited the car and hurried into the church, afraid that she might be late, that she might miss part of the sermon.

The services were getting more crowded. More people were attending each week.

Maybe the Pastor Clan Wheeler had put the fear of God into them.

Wheeler emerged from the vestibule only seconds after she'd found a seat, and, without preface, he began speaking. As always the smooth oratorical tones of his melodious voice filled the church. Gorrie heard the words, understood their meaning, but at the same time was lulled by the voice.

" "Now could I drink hot blood," " the pastor quoted. "That's what Jesus said after throwing the moneylenders from the temple. "Now could I drink hot blood. And do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on." "

Corrie blinked, sitting up straight. That wasn't the Bible she realized. That was Shakespeare. Harlgl. That wasn't what Jesus said after throwing the moneylenders from the temple, it was what Hamlet said after the play he'd staged confirmed that his uncle had killed his father. A chill passed through her, and for a brief second she considered standing up, walking out, walking out but as she looked up at the preacher in the pulpit, he smiled beatifically at her, and suddenly it didn't seem to matter. The Bible, Ha/, what difference did it make? It was the words that were important, not their source.

Something seemed wrong with that too, something about that line of reasoning didn't seem right, but she couldn't concentrate, couldn't think why.

She sat through the rest of the sermon, through the construction update, through the hymns, and got up to leave with everyone else. She walked slowly out of the chapel, and from the addition, she heard the sound of the new children's choir practicing. Innocent young voices singing the song Pastor Wheeler had had her type earlier in the weel

Jesus loves blood this I know For the Bible tells me so

Corrie shivered and walked out to the car, glad that Rich had not allowed Anna to come to church. She would not right him on that anymore, she decided.

From now on, if their daughter did not want to go to church, she did not have to go.

Yes, Jesus loves blood! Yes, Jesus loves blood! Yes, Jesus loves blood! The Bible tells me so!

Wheeler, standing on the church steps, waved to her as she pulled away from the curb and headed for home.

The humidity was going to go up tomorrow. Terry Clif- could feel it in his bad leg. The damn thing hurt like felt like it was a fucking pincushion below the knee and it only did that when they were going to have or a real sweat basket motherhumper of a day. There were no rain clouds blocking the stars tonight. When was this unnatural weather going to end? Terry limped down the kitchen steps and hobbled the man-made meadow in back of the main build He heard screams and splashes coming from the pool

Those young California jocks, no doubt, trying to the bimbos they'd brought along on this trip. He irossed the lighted path that led between the buildings and continued in back of the sleeping quarters.

From the io pen window of one of the guest rooms, he heard the ounds of an argument backed by a soundtrack of gunfire from the TV.

Cable, he thought. Now that was a damn brilliant invention. If they'd had cable or satellite TV when he was riding the range, he might've stuck with it. If he could've come back to the bunkhouse after a day of roping and branding and watched some sex and shooting, he might back in Wyoming today.

Might. bly ..... Probably not.

Truth was, he was never cut out to be a cowboy. Not a real one. He had the knowledge, he had the skills, he had the talent but he didn't have the temperament. There was only so much of that lonesome self-suffcient don'tneednuthin'butmy-horse crap he could take. It looked heroic as hell in the movies. When John Wayne and Alan I.add rode tall in their saddles, afraid of nothing and nobody, he couldn't imagine anyone not wanting to be like them. But the reality of the cowboy life, working ten hours at a stretch, not being able to bathe for days at a time, eating shitty food, sleeping in worn bedrolls on top of rocks and ruts, being bitten alive by bugs, waking up in the middle of the night and listening to the farting of the animals and the sound of other men beating offmthat was something else.

He needed people, noise, light, civilization. He liked cowboying, but he had to admit that he was a dude at heart.

That was why he felt so lucky to have gotten in at the Rocking DID. ,

He'd been up in Payson for the rodeO when he'd heard through the grapevine that a dude ranch was opening down in Rio Verde and that the owner was looking for a horseman to manage the stables. He'd never heard of Rio Verde, had never done any stable work or horse maintenance for an animal other than his own, but the promise of a clean bed, a steady paycheck, and access to a hotel style swimming pool sounded mighty good. The other cowboys laughed off the idea, deriding it as pansy work, but he'd immediately hitched a ride to Globe and then to Rio Verde, where he lied through his teeth to the ranch manager who interviewed him. The manager was a city boy, and though Terry thought the man would catch on to him eventually, he figured he would have a good relaxing few weeks of work before anyone discovered that he wasn't qualified for the position. Only no one ever discovered it. He knew more about horses than anyone else who worked at the ranch, more than Hollis or any of his employees, more than any of the guests, and apparently that was good enough. And, of course, in time, he had learned by experience, through trial and error, and actually had become qualified for the job.

Now he was damn good at it, if he did say so himself.

The stables were separated from the rest of the ranch by a short stretch of artificially landscaped desert, a football-field-length section of ground that featured all of Ari zona's most famous and photogenic desert shrubs and cacti placed in well-thought-out order. The stables were located away from the eating, sleeping, and recreation areas in order to foster the impression that this was an actual working ranch--and to ensure that guests weren't disturbed by the sounds and smells of horses. They could feel like real ranch hands when they fed the animals, when they saddled up and rode the preexisting trails, but when they returned to their rooms or went to the dining hall or the pool, they needed to be able to leave that all be hind. They were paying for fantasy, not reality.

Terry had been thinking a lot about fantasy lately, about ghosts and monsters, legends and rumors. He was sup posed to be a rough, tough hombre, and for the most part he played the role well, but he'd become increasingly nervous the past few weeks about these nightly checkup runs. Ordinarily, he enjoyed his last lone visit to the stables. each evening, relishing the time spent with the animals His animals. It was here that he allowed himself to look with pride upon his accomplishments of the day, and it was here he felt most acutely his contribution to the success of the ranch. Since the murder of Manuel Torres, however, that peace of mind had been disintegrating. Each time he went out here now, the desert seemed darker, the stable area more deserted. More than once, he had thought that if something came for him here, no one at the ranch would hear it. Hi body would not be found until morning. Terry was not an overly superstitious man. He didn't have the type of imagination that saw aliens in every falling star or creatures in every shadow. But he had seen and heard enough over the years that he did not automatically dismiss such things out of hand. He'd heard tell of cursed Indian ground, haunted stretches of road, ghost towns that were home to actual ghosts. He knew the stories about the Mogollon Monster up in the Rim Country, had heard firsthand abut the dangers of staying too long in the Superstitions. He did also known Manuel Tortes, and the old mechanic's death had hit him hard.

Manuel had worked on most of the vehicles here at the ranch, had been the one to rebuild the engine on his own pickup, and Terry could not get used to the idea that all of his blood had been sucked out through a bite in his neck. No matter how you looked at it, that just wasn't something that was possible for a human being to do. That was the work of a vampire. Vampire talk was all around town, in the feed store, in Basha's, at First Interstate, practically every place he went. Hollis forbade such talk at the ranch, determined to keep his guests out of earshot of local news, but there was talk here too. Ran McGregor, one of the trail guides, had whispered to him the other day that he'd seen a coyote lying off in the brush that looked like all its innards had been sucked out, that looked like a pelt laid over a skeleton.

Maybe he was reading interpretations into things that weren't there, but it seemed to him that the horses had been a bit skittish lately too, and that worried him. He knew that animals were more attuned to changes in their environment than people were, more instinctive in their perceptions, and he couldn't help wondering as he came out here each night if something was out there in the darkness waiting for him.

For the past few weeks, and especially the past week, since the kids' bodies had been found in the river, his nightly rounds had been much less thorough than they usually were.

He reached the back of the stables and grabbed the raring at the side of the building as he slid down the dirt incline to the front. Before him, a long row of horse stalls stretched into the darkness, the identical black squares above the bottom gates through which the heads and necks of the horses usually protruded now empty. He stood there for a moment, not sure if he should proceed or hightail it back to the lighted safety of his quarters. Something was definitely wrong.

Ordinarily, when the horses heard him slide down the short slope at the side of the building, they became restless, whinnying and snorting, moving around in their stalls, anticipating the late-night snack he usually fed them. But tonight there was nothing, no snuffling or snorting, no sticking of heads out the open top halves of stalls .....

There was something else wrong too, something different something he couldn't quite put his finger on.

Terry reached over, next to the closed door of the tool room, and turned the metal knob on the outside wall. The knob clicked, and the series of overhanging lights above the stalls winked into existence.

There was a stirring in the first stall and Jasper, the ranch's largest sorrel stallion whinnied and poked his head around the edge of the opening.

"Hey, Jasper," Terry said. He walked over and patted the horse's head.

The fear he'd felt a moment before was gone, but the sense of unease remained.

Terry looked around. There were shadows outside the stable yard, areas of fuzzy blackness surrounding the saguaros and palo ver des troughs of darkness in the low ditch running parallel to the riding trail. There was no moon. It would be up in the early morning and would hang there pale and emasculated in the blue light of day until sometime around noon, but for now it was nowhere to be seen, and the world was black, the combined brilliance of billions of stars failing to make even a dent in the dark desert night.

' Behind him Jasper whinnied, a quiet sound of fear, the -familiar warning noise he made when he could smell something he didn't like but had not yet seen it. The horse shuffled, backing into the wall of his stall, causing the old boards to make a cracking, creaking sound. Other than that, the stable area was quiet. No sounds from the other horses.

No faint music from the guest rooms of the ranch. No barking dogs.

No cicadas.

Terry knew now why he had felt so nervous, why something had felt so wrong. The cicadas were silent. Their familiar background chirruping, something he took for granted and usually didn't notice at all, was missing, and it was the absence of that sound which had set him on

What could sea're cicadas into silence? - ....... :

It was a good question, but he did not want to know the answer. He found himself thinking of Manuel lying in the arroyo, of those kids' bodies trapped in cottonwood roots by the edge of the river. Cicadas didn't scare. They just didn't. They could be startled and temporarily hushed, but they got used to situations almost immediately.

If a person walked up to a tree in which the insects were roosting, they would shut up for a second, then would start up again, instantly adapting to the person's, presence.

But the cicadas had been silent now for over five minutes

Terry realized that he had not heard a single sound from any of the stalls other than Jasper's, and he limped to the next stall over, peeking in ....... Betty, the ranch's cutest filly, was lying crumpled and shrunken on the straw, half in shadow, half in the light. Even in that partial visibility, he could see that her body had been drained of blood and probably a lot of other things as well. Her well-muscled legs were thin straight sticks, and her ribs showed in shadowed slats across her stomach. There was a sickening stench of rot and decay in the small enclosure.

Terry backed up, nearly gagging, and hurried as quickly as he could past Jasper stallwjust as the horse crumpled to the ground.

The vampire!

His leg was hurting like a bastard, but he tried to ignore the pain and pull himself up the incline at the side of the building using the railing.

A black shape loomed out of the darkness above him. Terry would have fallen had he not been holding the handrail. He stared upward. There was something about the shape that was familiar to him, and he might have thought he'd seen the figure before, as a child, only he knew instinctively that that was impossible because the shape was so old, so very ancient, and he knew that nothing like it had been seen since long before his birth.

It was large, its bulk blotting out the Big Dipper in the sky behind it, and it began to move slowly forward, down the incline toward him.

It moved smoothly, as though not propelled by legs or feet. It did not gain clarity as it approached the details of its face and form were not revealed it remained as murkily vague as it had at the top of the short slope, but as it drew nearer he could hear it, a sound like liquid, like water.

"Love," the figure whispered, and its voice was low and assured and filled with the confidence of age. Terry heard wind in that whisper, and sand, and years. Years. Love?

*

He wanted to turn, wanted to run, but he couldn't. He was frozen in place, and he realized that even if he had been able to move, his gimp leg would not have enabled -' " him to run fast enough to escape. A slimy hand pulled his own fingers from the handrail, " closing over his fist. Another slipped around his body, "' lifted him up.

He smelled rot, death. -' The figure spoke again, and Terry realized that the * seven word it had spoken before had only sounded like

"love."

What the shape had really said was "blood."

Rich was sitting on top of his desk, notepad on his lap "and camera slung over his shoulder, waiting for Sue when she arrived at the newspaper office. He hopped off the desk when she walked into the newsroom. "Thank God you're here," he said. "I'm going to be covering the murders, and I need you to hold down the fort. You'll have o. to take over the normal news this week. Jim'll help you,

:

- I but probably not much. He's got another job, and sports

: - ...: is just about all he can handle."

"Murders?" Sue said. "There were more?" She felt

*" -- .+:,: weak, almost dizzy, and slightly sick to her stomach. She

' wondered if she looked as bad as she felt.

' ",:" .

Apparently not, because Rich looked straight at her and

- , " seemed to see nothing out of the ordinary. He nodded.

-- "o : " :..

"The groom at the Rocking DID was killed last night. So

::: :,i : .: were all of the ranch's horses."

=- : ..

Sue could not speak. Her mouth was dry, and she could

: ; - * :, only nod dumbly. There was a dark, empty feeling deep inside her. If she had only talked to Rich or his brother, told them what she knew, maybe this could've been

: avoided. Maybe the cup hugirngsi couldn't have

" I

But what did she know?

And why would anyone believe her?

And how could she have changed anything?

It didn't matter, she told herself. It was her responsibility to do what she could. If she hadn't wasted her week end, if she'd talked to her grandmother the way she'd intended to and found out more about the cup hugirngsi, if she'd told Rich and his brother, maybe the town could have been alerted, precautions taken.

But the restaurant had been busy, she hadn't really had a chance to talk to her grandmother. Now she had the horrible feeling that time was running out That if they did not do something, if they did not act no it would be too late.

"It's a vampire," she said. "

Rich stared at her. "What?"

"A vampire's killing all these people. We call it a cup hu #rngs in Cantonese." . "Not you too."

"My grandmother knows all about it."

"Hold it right there." Rich took a deep breath. "This is going to be a very hectic weel I know there's been a lot of talk about vampires, and that may turn out to be what's occurring here, but right now I need you to help me with the paper. If you can't do that, I'll tell you right now, you're not going to get any credits at the college, and I'll find someone else to do your work. I know this is harsh, and I don't want to sound unreasonable, but this is nearly an emergency situation.

I need to be able to count on you."

"You can count on me, but I think we should let people know what's happening."

"That's what we're doing. We're a newspaper. That's our job. But it's not our job to tell people there are vampires murdering people when we don't know if that's the case. Right now, another person has been killed. It is our responsibility to report that death and the circumstances surrounding it, and not to speculate further. At this point, we let people draw their own conclusions. When a cause is discovered, when the murderer is caught, we will report that also."

Sue stared at Rich. She had never seen him this serious before, and she was a little taken aback at his intensity.

He seemed to recognize this himself, because he slid demy smiled. His smile was not as relaxed as it usually was, nor as natural. "Sorry," he said. "Things are a little tense around here today." ....... i Sue nodded. "That's okay. I understand."

"You're going to be doing a lot of writing this week, and I'm going to need you here. Can your parents spare

"I'll work something out." ; .:

"Are you sure?" ;:

Rich's phone rang, and he started to reach for it, but then he motioned for Sue to pick up the line. "Go ahead. You've got to start sometime."

She hurried around his desk, stood behind his empty chair, and grabbed the receiver. "Hello, R/o Verde Gazette, this is Mr. Carter's desk."

"You're not my desk," Rich whispered. "And you're not my secretary.

Next time, say "Newsroom." "

She nodded at him, waved her hand, tried to concentrate on the call.

She listened for a few moments, then said, "Wait a minute. I'll ask my editor." She put her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. "It's a rancher who says his trees are dying. He wants us to do a story on it.

What should I do?"

"Tell him we'll do the article, and set up an appointment

Sue took her hand from the mouthpiece, told the man she would be happy to interview him for a story, and made an appointment for one o'clock.

She scrambled around for some scratch paper, Rich handed her a pen, and she wrote down the address and phone number.

"Good job," Rich said after she hung up.

"That didn't sound like a story to me. I thought maybe we should just refer him to the Forest Service or the Department of Agriculture or someone who could help

"This is one of the most important things you need to learn about the newspaper biz. In a town this size, you never turn down stories. No matter how dumb they might be. We have a tough enough time finding new things to write about each week. Sometimes we have to resort to rewriting press releases; sometimes even when we do find a legitimate story, the people involved won't talk. So when you get a guy offering you an interview, you jump on it." He pointed to a handwritten list on top of a pile of papers on the right side of his desk. "That's what you'll be responsible for this week. I'll still be doing all of the layout and most of the paste up I'll write most of the articles, but you'll have to take over the columns for me."

Sue licked her lips, wanting, needing to say something, but not knowing what. She felt flustered, thrust into some thing for which she was totally unprepared.

Rich smiled. "Relax. It's easy. The columns almost write themselves.

All you have to do is collect the information when the sources call."

He shifted the camera strap over his shoulder. "I'd better be going.

You can sit at my desk if you want, use my VDT, but be careful that you don't erase anything. Use your own diskette"

"Wait. Where are you going? When will you be back?" "The police station. I don't know when." "What about when I go to the interview?

What do I do about the office?"

"Carole will be here." He waved, walked around the partition, and out the front door.

Carole walked back into the newsroom a moment later. "Don't worry, dear." The secretary smiled warmly. "He lives for things like this, and despite what he says, he'll be in here more this week than he usually is. He'sjust hyper right now." .

"But I'm not sure what he wants me to do."

"Just do what you always do. If you have any questions, ask him when he comes back." She looked at her watch, and her smile widened. "By my calculations, that should be an hour or two."

"Are sure?" you

"Positive. Besides, what's he going to do? He'll go out to the scene, talk to some people, talk to his brother, come back and write."

"It sounded like he was going to be gone all week."

"If he is, I'll eat this carpet."

Sue met the old secretary's gaze, and started to laugh. Carole shook her head. "Don't take him too seriously." Sue suddenly felt much better. She glanced again at Rich's list, then put it back down on top of his pile of papers. From behind the front partition came the sound of the door opening, and, still smiling, Carole walked back out to her desk to see who it was. '.

Sue sat down in Rich's chair and picked up the phone to call her parents.

Lee Anne was seated behind the receptionist's desk when Rich walked into the police station. He pointed toward Robert's office, she nodded, and he stepped past her through the small gate in the front counter while she pretended to stare down at one of the typewritten pages on her desk.

Rich walked into Robert's office. His brother was on the phone, obviously talking to someone of whom he was not overly fond. He was scowling, trying to speak, but not able to get a word in edgewise.

Finally he said, "I'm still the police chief here," and slammed down the phone. "FBI?" Rich asked.

"That bastard's trying to freeze me out. Pretty soon I won't be able to scratch my own nuts without asking his permission."

"Talk to his superior."

Robert paced around the room. "I can't think of anyone who isn't superior to that fascist fuck wad

"I mean talk to his boss, his supervisor."

"I've tried. He's supposed to get back to me. When do you think that'll be? The next decade?"

Rich tapped his notebook-on his leg. "I'd like to sit here and chat, but it's getting late. Are you ready to cruise out to the ranch?"

Robert nodded. "Yeah, sure. The body's gone, thoughl I think the horses are gone, too."

"That's okay. I just want to get a few photos of the site and some quotes from you and a couple of employees. Hollis, if he's available."

"Okay. Just let me make one more phone call, and then we're out of here."

"I have to take a whiz. I'll meet you out front."

Robert picked up the phone receiver, gave the "OK" sign, and started dialing.

Rich walked down the hall, past the tiny locker room, and into the bathroom. He stepped up to the first urinal and, a second later, heard the door open behind him.

Steve Hinkley stepped up to the adjoining urinal. "Nice day," he said.

What was it about cops, Rich wondered, that made them want to talk to you while you were taking a leak? He never had any desire to chat while he was relieving himself, but it seemed that every time he'd been in here and a policeman had walked into the bathroom, the policeman had stepped up to the urinal, unzipped, whipped it out, and started a conversation.

I don't want to talk, he wanted to say, I'm taking a piss. But instead he nodded, smiled, and said nothing.

"You're a writer. Did you ever think about writing for TV or the movies?"

Rich shook his head as he flushed, zipped up, and walked over to the sink .... ::!

"I bet you could get a TV movie out of all this vampire shit. You'd make a fortune."

Rich smiled as he wiped his hands on a paper towel and walked out of the bathroom. "I'll keep it in mind."

I Robert was already waiting. He straightened up as Rich arrived, and the two of them headed out of the office.

I'll drive," Robert said.

Five minutes later, they were there.

The Rocking DID.

Has they drove by the entrance, Rich looked at the logo--the letter DID resting in the curve of a semi

ClrcleIt had been carved into the sign above? the road in

Udr a way that it appeared burned into the wood, like a ; brand. He shook his head. The idea of a dude ranch in

Rio Verde, or, more precisely, a dude resort, since, no ranch work was done at the Rocking DID, still seemed stupid

-and inappropriate to him, its artificial extravagance a mockery of the very real accomplishments of the town.

As teenagers, he and his friends had referred to. the place as the Walking Dick Ranch and to Hollis as the Walking Dick. ' It was a sobriquet still used by a lot of those friends as adults.

Robert bypassed the ranch's paved guest road and turned off on the dirt service trail. The cruiser bumped over ruts and chuckholes, and turned off on a side trail that led down to the stables. A brown state police vehicle was already parked in front of the long building, as was a Rio Verde car. Someone was taking photographs inside one of the horse stalls, the flashes, like baby lightning, brightening the interior shadows at irregular intervals.

Robert grimaced as he pulled to a stop. "There may be fireworks. The state ad the FBI are pissed that I authorized Woods to take the body before they'd had time to see it."

"You think that was such a good idea? Maybe---" "Whose side are you on? ...... Rich got out of the car, held up his hands. "I'm Staying out of it." He walked around the front of the cruiser and started toward the stall with the flashes.

A state policeman he hadn't seen emerged from behind an open stall door. "Stop right there. Where do you think you're going?" ......

Rich held up his camera. "Press."

"I'm sorry. This is a--"

"Let him through!" Robert yelled from behind. He pushed past Rich and stepped directly in front of the policeman. "I don't know how things work in Phoenix, but here in Rio Verde, we have a free press.

Understand?"

"I have orders--"

"Fuck your orders." .......o:

"It's okay," a voice said from inside the stall. "I meant civilians.

Keep out civilians."

"I just need a quick picture of the outside of the stables, then I'll get out of your way." Rich nudged his brother with an elbow as he walked past. "I'm on your side. All the way."

Mr. Overbeck was waiting for her on the porch steps in front of his house, and Sue recognized him from the restaurant as he stood up. She'd never known his name until today, but he'd come in quite often for lunch over the past year or so.

He smiled as she got out of the car, obviously recognizing her as well.

"I didn't know you worked for the Gazette." "I just started."

"Are you still working at the restaurant?"

"Yes. Both." "

"That's great. Your parents must be very proud of you." "Yes," she said.

"Well, come on in. You want something to drink? Coke? Water? "No, thank you, In fact, I'd like to see the trees first, if you don't mind.

So I can get an idea of what you're talking about and take a few photos."

"Okay. Let's walk around this way." Overbeck led the way around the side of the house.

Sue looked down at the worn path as she walked. The jagged cracks in the sidewalk looked like horizontal lightning in a gray cement sky. The walkway ended abruptly at the back of the house, and they continued over hard dirt toward a low metal-roofed barn.

"I'm mostly into livestock, but as I told you over, the phone, I got myself a little orchard back here. It's not much, I only got a few trees, but it keeps me in lemons, and I usually have some left over to sell. I've even sold some to your old man a couple times." They walked around the side of the barn, past an empty corral. "It's those ones there," he said, pointing toward a stand of citrus trees behind the building. "They just died over night.

Yesterday they was strong and healthy, one of 'em just starting to turn. Now look at 'em."

She saw what he meant. The trees, seven or eight of them, were dead, completely bare, although a circular hill of still-green leaves surrounded the base of each tree. As they moved closer, she could see that the trunks looked shriveled, the bark withered, dry, and peeling.

She felt a wave of cold wash over her, moving from her neck downward.

The trees dried up, her grandmother had said.

Sue took off the lens cap of the camera, raised the viewfinder to her eye, focused, and snapped a picture. She moved the camera to a vertical position and took another.

"Would you mind if I took a closer look?" she asked.

"Go right ahead."

"Do you have any idea what might have caused this?" Overbeck shook his head. "Disease is gradual, and even bugs can't do this much damage overnight. I did notice a weird kinda, notch on the side of one of the trees, though. I don't know if all of em have it. I haven't had time to look. I figure that might have something to do with it." Sue's heart was pounding. "Could you show me?" "Sure." He led the way over to the tree closest, to the barn. Up close, Sue could see that underneath the peeling bark, the wood was dull gray and as wrinkled as a dried apple. "It's right here." He pointed just above his head at a large nick on one of the two main brhe forking off from the trunk.

No, not a nick. a t. " "

She focused the camera, took a picture. Silently, walked over to the next tree. Looking up, she saw, at approximately the same spot, another bite. In the pile of.: leaves at the base of the tree lay two dehydrated lemons.

She cleared her throat, took a deep breath, looked at him. "I think," she said, "that a vampire killed your trees. When she returned to the paper, Rich was at his desk, furiously typing on his keyboard. She heard the rapid fire clicking of keys from behind the modula wall as she walked through the front door. Carole knowingly toward the partition, smiled at her. Good afternoon, sweetie."

"Afternoon"' Sue said, smiling back.

Rich looked up as she entered the newsroom. She'd been pretty shaken by the sight of the decimated orchard, but she'd stopped off at Circle K and made herself a Cherry Suicide--Orange Crush, Hires Root Beer, Dr.

Pep per, Sprite, and Cherry Coke--and had driven back slowly.

That had given her time to compose herself.

"How did it go?" he asked.

"Pretty good," she said. She wasn't sure what she should say to him right now, how much she should tell. She thought it would probably be best to let him read it in the story. She'd felt foolish trying to tell Overbeck that she thought a cup hugirngsi had killed his trees, but the rancher had been surprisingly receptive to what she had to say, and though he hadn't wanted to come right out and say so in print, he had agreed to refer to the notches on the trees as "bites" and to state that they had not been there before the trees' deaths.

She did not feel comfortable talking about vampires to Rich, though.

The editor stood. "I was thinking. I may be very busy the next week or so, so I want to show you how to develop film so you can do it yourself. It'll save me some time and help me out quite a bit. Did you take a roll of the trees?" Sue nodded. "Yes "

"Get the rancher with the trees?

She shook her head, feeling the hot flush of embarrassment rush up her cheeks. "No. I forgot. I'm sorry. Ira"

"No biggie. We may not use a photo with this one any way. But I will use your roll to show you how to develop film. You have fifteen minutes to spare?"

"Yes."

"Let's do it now then." He turned down the intensity knob on his terminal. "Carole?" he called. "I'm showing Sue how to develop.

We'll be in the darkroom. If Jim stops by, have him knock. Anyone else comes by, tell them to wait."

"Yes sir, bossI" :

He grinned. "Knock it off." "Yes sir"

"Carole "Okay, okay."

Rich stood, motioned toward the darkroom. "Shall we?"

Sue took the film out of the camera, put the camera-along with her notebook, purse, and pen---on her desk and followed Rich into the darkroom. He shut the door behind her, and for a brief second they were in complete darkness. He flipped on a red light. The illumination was bright compared to the jet-black of a moment before, and she found that she could actually see.

"When you first take the film out and roll it, you have to do it with no lights on at all, not even this safety bulb. This red light won't hurt prints, but it'll still expose film, so until the negatives are in the can, you have to do everything in total darkness. It'll be tough at first, because you have to do everything by touch, but you'll get used to it

"All right. This is what's wound up on your roll. In complete darkness, you pop open one side of the roll, feel for the end of the film, and clip it here like so." He placed the end of the film strip in the spool and clamped it with a delicate wire clasp. "Then you roll the film." He wound the strip around the inside of the spool. "You place the whole thing in this can here, and then you're set. You can turn the safety light on."

"Do you have film I can practice on before I use a real roll?"

"Of course." " He started explaining about the chemicals and demonstrated how they were poured into the canister through a light-right opening in the lid.

Sue glanced around the darkroom. Hanging by a clothespin from a wire strung over the sink, she saw negatives of a woman, a tall woman with dark curly hair. Sue was not close enough to make out facial features, but she assumed the woman was Rich's wife. She continued watching the editor demonstrate the sequence of development while sneaking peeks at the roll of negatives out of the corner of her eye. In the top frame, the woman was out side, in front of a flower garden, pointing at the camera, but in all the other pictures she was wearing sexy black lingerie, positioned in provocative poses on a bare bed. In the final frame, she was naked.

Sue looked quickly away. Too quickly, she thought. He had to have seen the movement. But, no, he was still concentrating on a plastic container of chemical solution. "Then," he said, "you take the negatives out, wash them in the sink, and, voila! they're done."

She nodded her understanding. He probably didn't realize that he'd left the negatives there. She felt guilty for invading his privacy and was thankful that her blush of embarrassment could not be seen in the red glow of the safety bulb.

But she also wished there were negatives of him strung up on the wire.

She realized for the first time how small the darkroom was. And how hot. There was no air movement in here. Even looking away from him, she could feel his closeness, and she was afraid to move for fear that she would accidentally touch him, that her breasts would accidentally rub his back, that her fingers would accidentally brush his buttocks.

What was she thinking about?

There was a knock on the darkroom door, and Rich " called out, "Don't open it!"

"Daddy?"

"Just a minute!" He smiled at-Sue. "Anna."

"Well, I think that's about all I can absorb for now anyway. Anything else would be overload. I'd probably forget what I just learned."

"Good enough then. You ready to try developing your new roll , .

"I may still have to ask questions."

"That's why I'm here."

"Daddy!

"Coming," Rich said. He quickly scanned the darkroom to make sure no light-sensitive film or photo paper was exposed, then opened the door.

Sue stepped out, blinking against the brightness, and saw Anna smiling up at her. "Hi, Sue."

"Hi there." She felt so guilty that she was unable to look into the little girl's face. Nothing had happened, she'd done nothing wrong, but she had the strange feeling that her sophomoric thoughts had somehow been readily apparent to Rich. She glanced back at him, but he was smiling at his daughter and not looking at her at all.

"Did you bring me any fortune cookies?" Anna asked. Sue looked down at the girl, and this time she could meet her eyes. "I forgot. But I'll bring some tomorrow."

"Okay," Anna said. She smiled up at Sue. "I like you better than Mr.

Fredricks."

"Anna!" Rich said.

Sue laughed. Feeling better, she walked across the newsroom to her desk. She sat down, opened her notebook, took out a blank piece of paper, and started working on. her article.

"There's a fax for you, Agent Rossiter."

"Thanks." Gregory Rossiter looked up from the computer screen and forced himself to smile at the intern, a skinny, goofy kid with too-big teeth and too-big ears who would never make agent no matter how hard he tried or how many extra hours he put in.

Some people just didn't have a clue.

He turned back to the information on his screen, moved the cursor to the file number of the next batch of unsolveds, and called up the first case. He scanned the MOD, didn't see what he was looking for, scrolled to the next case.

Three cases later, he found a match.

He pressed the Print key and a hard copy of the information on the screen rolled out of the laser printer attached to his terminal.

Five minutes later, the intern returned. "Agent Rossiter?" The kid shifted his weight uncomfortably from foot to foot.

"What is it now?

" " Chief Engles told me to tell you to pick up your fax."

The intern remained in place, unsure of what to do next.

"Leave," Rossiter ordered.

The kid beat a hasty retreat.

Rossiter scowled at his screen. Not only had he been banished to this sinus-sufferers' retirement community that they dared to call a state, but he'd been placed under the command of Frederick Engles, perhaps the most inept administrator he had ever met.

An FBI agent with the name of a Marxist.

That should have said something right there.

Rossiter leaned back in his chair, swiveled slightly to the left, and looked out of the tinted window at the skyline of Phoenix. Outside the federal building, the sky, as always, was blue, clear, and cloudless.

Even the weather got on his nerves he. He rolled across his cubicle and tore the long sheet of paper from his printer, folding the continuous form along the perforations into pages. He scanned the information again. Six unsolved murders in Roswell, New Mexico, in June, 1984. Cause of death: exsanguination with unusual circumstances.

Fifteen deaths in Denver, 1970. Exsanguination. Three murders in Broken Bow, Montana, 1969. Ten in Stewart, Wyoming, 1965. Eight in Cheyenne, 1953. Two in Reno, 1946. Waco, Plains, Mount Juliet; 1937,

1922, 1919.

The MOs and MODs were identical or nearly so in every case, and all were unsolved. The pattern was clear, obvious. Even a rookie could have spotted it. Rossiter looked up at his screen, at the details of the sixth Roswell murder. He shook his head slowly. This wasn't possible, was it? A connection between crimes that had not been noticed before? A pattern that had not been picked up by any computer program or agent-analyst? He stared at the amber display. Perhaps it had been noticed somewhere at some time by somebody, but the sheer amount of time involved had led them to discount any possible relationship.

He was not so willing to write off any such possibility, no matter how farfetched.

The question remained, was there a legitimate link between these murders, or were the similarities merely co incidental? It was highly unlikely that they had been committed by the same individual. Such a person, even if he had been a teenager at the time of the Mount Juliet killings, would have to be nearly a hundred years old now. Maybe the murders were the work of some sort of cult or coven that pased on its ritual practices from generation to generation.

Or the work of a vampire............ That was the thought in the back of his mind, and it was hard even for him to keep completely away from it. The appearance of the victims, the fact that the Bureau's experts still had not been able to determine how the physical draining of bodily fluids had been accomplished, the complete lack of witnesses or clues---all of this had the feel of some cartoonish movie or pulp novel, and it was difficult not to think about the case in those terms.

He didn't believe that there was anything supernatural here. But he did think that the Rio Verde murders and these other killings were connected.

Rossiter glanced around the edge of his cubicle at Engles's office. The regs said that he was supposed to in form his supervisor at this point, present his facts and ideas in both oral and written form.

But he was not sure he wanted to do that.

Engies was a top-of-the-line, grade-A, number one peckerhead, a softheaded, fat-assed bureaucrat who wouldn't know a crime if it came up and bit him in the crotch. He hadn't left his office for anything more urgent than a trip to McDonald's since J. Edgar Hoover had hung it up, and he certainly didn't have enough ambition to actively pursue a course of action on this. Serial killings or not, Engles's tendency would be to sit, wait everything out, let the locals figure out a solution.

Not him, though. Not Gregory Rossiter.

He had ambition to spare, and if he played his cards right, if he solved this case and successfully tied it to other unsolved cases in other states, this could be his ticket to D.C." his ticket out of Phoenix.

His ticket back to the real world. : The intern came back in, smiling nervously at Rossiter. "Chief Engles told me to tell you to pick up your fax nOW."

Rossiter grinned, but there was no humor in it. "Tell him to..." He trailed off, shook his head. "Never mind. I'm coming." He placed the printout in the top drawer of his desk and turned down the intensity light on his screen.

No, he wouldn't talk to Engles. :

Regs or no regs, this one he would keep to himself for a while.

Sue wanted to talk to her grandmother following dinaer, but immediately after eating the old woman silently left the table and disappeared into her bedroom.

"Is Grandmother feeling all right?" Sue asked.

John shrugged.

Neither of her parents answered. " Sue finished her rice. "

In the restaurant, both she and John cleared tables, cleaned, did dishes, but at home such chores were woman's work, and after dinner John followed his father out to the living room to watch TV while she stayed to help her mother. She would have objected to this sort of blatant sexism long ago, but this was really the only time she ever got a chance to talk to her mother one-on-one, and she acquiesced to this unfair division of labor for that reason alone. The truth was, she felt closer to her mother at these times than she did at any other. Doing dishes, working in the kitchen, they were no longer mother and daughter but coworkers, equals. Their roles here were clearly defined washer and dryer, alternating and they could talk more freely than they could otherwise, the animosity which sometimes marked their relationship in the presence of others absent.

It was Sue's turn to wash and she grabbed a dishrag from the wooden rack on the side of the cupboard and squeezed Dove into the sink before turning on the water.

Her mother seemed preoccupied, staring silently out the window at nothing, and Sue found herself wondering if her grandmother had said anything to her about the cup hugirngsi. She wanted to ask, and she started to say some thing, but then she looked at her mother and found her self unable to continue.

The sink filled up, soap suds billowing upward like bubble clouds, and Sue dumped the chopsticks and forks in before pushing the faucet over to the other half of the sink for her mothers's rinse water.

They worked in silence for a while.

Sue found herself thinking about her mother, about her father, and she coughed politely. Her mother looked over at her, and she almost backed down, but then she forced herself to go on, to ask the question that she had so often tried to ask before. "Do you love Father?"

Her mother's face registered no response, no surprise at the question.

She rinsed a dish and began to towel it dry. ""We have a very good marriage."

Sue gathered her courage, pressed on. "But do you love him?"

"Yes, I do." Another dish. Rinse. Dry.

Sue stopped washing, wiping her hands on her jeans, looking over at her mother. "Did you.." always love him? Did you know when you first met him that you loved him?"

Her mother was silent for a moment, her small hands continuing to towel a dish even though it was already dry.

"I grew to love him," she said finally.

"Do you--" "Wash," her mother said. "I am not in the mood to talk."

Sue nodded. Her mother looked old to her all of a sudden, and that frightened her. She could see her grand mother's face in the patterns of wrinkles beginning to form around her mother's mouth and eyes, and at the same time she could see the bone structure of her own face beneath those wrinkles. Sue realized, in a way she hadn't as the birthdays had come and gone, that her mother was pushing the outer envelope of middle age and that she herself was no longer young.

It was a depressing realization, and it left her feeling strange. She began washing the rice cooker, scraping the sticky rice off the metal side of the container with her fingernail. i Her mother picked up another plate, dried it, and there was something in the slow, deliberate nature of her movements that made her seem frail and vulnerable.

It hit Sue then.

The cup hugirngsi could kill her mother..

Or her father. Or John. Or even her grandmother. None of them were immune.

Sue looked again at her mother and, for the first time, she realized how much she loved her and cared about her. About both her parents.

Her whole family.

E If this were a scene in a movie or a TV show, this would be the point where she turned to her mother, said "I love you," and hugged, all problems solved, all past conflicts forgotten.

But hers was not one of those fictional families, and Sue handed the rice cooker to her mother without speaking and started scrubbing the chopsticks.

After the dishes were done, Sue sat for a few moments between her father and brother watching Entertainment Tonight, then excused herself and walked down the hallway to her grandmother's room.

She opened the door slowly. Her grandmother was lying on the bed, left arm over her face, covering her eyes. The curtains and shades were drawn so that not even a hint of the dying daylight could sneak in, and both lamps were turned off, the only illumination coming from behind Sue in the hallway. The room smelled even more strongly than usual of herbs and Chinese medicine..

"I am tired," her grandmother said, and the old woman's voice, quiet and weak, barely above a whisper, confirmed her words.

A bolt of fear flashed through Sue, a sudden irrational feeling that her grandmother was seriously ill and dying, but she pushed that feeling aside and stepped into the room. She swallowed. "Do you want me to close the door?"

Her grandmother shook her head, not taking the arm away from her face.

"It is all right."

"I need to know about the cup hugrngsi." l Now there was movement.

From underneath the arm, Sue saw white eyes looking at her. With a soft grunt of exertion, her grandmother sat up, swinging her thin wrinlded legs over the side of the bed. She closed her eyes hard, squeezing them shut, then opened them and looked at Sue. "I am glad you are finally ready."

Sue felt flustered. "I don't know what I'm supposed to be ready for. I don't know if I'm ready for anything. I just want to know about the cup hugirngsi. "'

"You believe." Her grandmother studied her.

She nodded. "I believe."

"I am tired. I have been thinking on this today, trying to gather my strength, testing myself?" She paused, blinked, and Sue noticed for the first time how her grandmother's eyes looked like her own, truly almond shaped, wider than John's or her father's or even her mother's.

"I am old, I am weak, and I do not know if I can right this tse m I think perhaps that we should leave."

Sue knelt down on the floor in front of her grandmother. "I thought you said it was our responsibility to stop it ..... Her grandmother did not respond.

"It is different this time, isn't it?" Sue's voice was a quiet as her grandmother's. She studied the old woman' face. "It is different than it was back in Cuangxun."

Her graadmother sighed, nodded. "The cup hugirn is no longer afraid.

People have forgotten it, people not believe, people do not know how to right it. The cu hugirngsi is wise or it is foolish or perhaps it is just vair but it is ready to make its presence known. After all thi

-time, after all these centuries, it has decided that it is tire, of hiding in the shadows and. living on the outskirts c human society, behaving like a scavenger. It wants to come out in the open." ' "What does that mean?" Sue asked. There was a colic, tigh mess in the pit of her stomach.

"It, no longer,ints to be fed. It wan

Verde.

I: Her grandmother..shtti?" Yes, she said, but Su could tell from her tone of voice that the old woman di not believe the monster's influence would stop at that. boundaries of the toma.

Sue licked her lips. "I saw trees today that had bee killed by the cup hugimgsi. ""

I Her grandmother sat up straighter. "The land? It is a ready' attacking the land?"

"I... I guess."

"Then it is strong already. We must move quickly."

The knot of fear tightened in Sue's stomach. "Shou I get Mother and Father? And John?"

"Your parents have asked me not to tell you and yo brother about this."

"Why?" i "They do not want to frighten you."

Sue nodded. That made sense. Her parents, her moth in particular, were always trying to protect her and her brother from the vicissitudes of life in the outside world

They did not seem to realize that she and John were more familiar with the outside world, more conversant in its ways, than they themselves were. At home, her father ruled uncontested. He was the boss, the master of the house, and whatever he said was law. But outside of the house and the restaurant, out in the real world, their roles were reversed. The man who was so sure and strong when dealing with his family was meek, polite, and overly solicitous to strangers, and it was she, and to a lesser extent John, who steered her parents through the rough waters of American society.

"What about John? Have you talked to John?" "John may have been .. . influenced." Influenced.

"We must watch him. We must protect him. But we cannot trust him. He cannot help us."

Sue switched positions, unbent her knee, and sat flat on the floor, stretching her legs out in front of her. "Can the cup hugirngsi be stopped?"

"I do not know."

"But there are ways to protect ourselves. The white jade .. ."

"Yes. The jade will protect you. The tse m0r cannot bite a person wearing the jade. But .. ." Her grandmother grew thoughtful. "But the creature exerts a larger influence than that. It kills its victims, but it also affects others who see it, who are near it, even those who are not directly attacked. It twists their minds. The cup hugirngsi is not alive, but it is not dead. It is worse than dead, and it is like a magnet, attracting some people, repelling others, warping both. The jade will protect you from that. But the jade will not protect you from those other people, those who are changed by the cup hugirngsi.

Sue understood. The monster could convince people to do its bidding, convert them. It was a defense mechanism for the cup hug/rngs/, a survival mechanism, a shield for its weak spot. "We can get people to wear white jade, then."

"White jade? Do you know how rare that is?"

"Is it the only jade that will work?"

Her grandmother shook her head slowly. "It is the strongest, it is the most effective, but even green jade will offer some protection."

"We'll make sure everyone wears some kind of jade, then."

I "Not everyone will want to wear jade. Not everyone will believe. And those people will be as lights to a moth for the cup hugirngsi.

Besides, I do not think that even in the jewelry stores there is much jade in this town."

"What else can we do? What else is good? In American movies, vampires are afraid of crosses and garlic."

"Willow," her grandmother said;

"Willow?"

The old woman nodded.

Sue suddenly understood. "Is that why Father planted those willows in front of the house? For protection?"

"Yes."

"You told him to plant them, didn't you?"

Her grandmother only smiled.

"Father used to tell me about fung shui. He said that fung shui was harmony between building and land, and I could never understand how he could think that our yard and house were in harmony with this desert.

"Tung shui means not only balance between buildings and nature but balance between the material and the spirit worlds. Bad lung shui can bring disaster." She shrugged. "Our home is not completely harmonious with the land, but it is harmonious in the most important way.

I have made sure that it is safe."

"What else?"

"Running water. The cup hugirngsi cannot cross running water." "

Sue was silent for a moment. "But those two teenagers were killed in the river. The cup hugirngsi killed them in running water."

They were both silent now. For the first time, Sue saw doubt on her grandmother's face, and she realized that all of this was academic to her grandmother too. She had learned of these things secondhand--she had never tried them out herself.

All of asudden, Sue felt much less confident.

Maybe this wasn't a cup hugirngsi. Maybe it was something else. Maybe it was something that none of them knew anything about, something that no one knew how to right.

"It is the cup hugirngsi," her grandmother said as if reading h.e'Lind"

Sue pulled her legs next aroind-h/lnes, and lobkel.

-She felt vulnerable, helpless and that something had to be done but not knowing what it was or how to go about it. "So what are we going to do?" Her grandmother did not answer.

"I write for the newspaper now. I can warn people. The editor's brother is the police chief. I'm sure he can help

US."

The old woman bent forward, reached down, and put her hand on Sue's.

The movement was difficult for her, painful, but when she spoke there was renewed strength in her voice. "What do you want to do? What does your heart tell you to do?"

Sue looked into those eyes that were so like her own. "You mean my D/Lo Ling Gum ? .... Her grandmother smiled, nodded. "Yes."

She felt none of the power within her, but she held her grandmother's gaze. "It tells me to hunt it down and destroy it.

"Then we will." The strength that had temporarily invigorated the old woman disappeared, seemed to visibly seep out of her face, and, grimacing, she leaned back on the bed and lay down again.

"But... what do we do? How do we start?"

"We wait. We can do nothing right now. I need to know more. For now, we wait."

"But .. ." Her voice trailed off. People were dying; trees and animals were being killed. A moment ago, her grandmother had admitted that the situation was urgent, had said that they had to act quickly.

Now she wanted to lie here and do nothing?

"We are not the architects of events," her grandmother said. "We are merely the construction workers."

What kind of KungFu crap was that? Sue wondered. "I have to warn people," she said. "Tell them about the cup hugirngsi."

"You can try." But the tone in her grandmother's voice made it clear that she did not think anyone would listen. She sighed. "I am tired.

I must rest."

Sue leave. "What does

Di Lo stood, preparing to your

Ling Gum say?"

The old woman shook her head, put her arm over her eyes, refusing to look at her granddaughter, refusing to answer. "I must rest," she repeated.

Sue left the the door behind silently, room closing her, feeling far more frightened than she had before she'd come.

The Indian summer came to an abrupt end. The temperature dropped sometime after midnight, shifting from summer to winter without even pausing at the intermediate stage of fall.

In the morning, it was cold, and when Robert awoke and walked out to the kitchen, the floorboards beneath his feet felt like frozen steel.

He dumped some grounds in his old drip pot, turned on the black-and-white television on the counter, and sat down at the table waiting. There had never before been an Indian summer in Rio Verde that had lasted this long, and that made him uncomfortable. The cold, too, seemed to be a bad omen, a portent of things to come, and he found himself wondering if anyone had died during the night.

He stared for a moment at the dull gray metal of the coffeepot, then forced himself to stand up and walk out to the living room. He dialed the station, asked Ted if everything was all right, was gratified to hear that it was. But he still felt uneasy.

He stopped by Rich's house on the way to work, dropping in unannounced.

Corrie was already gone, and Rich was in the bathroom shaving, but Anna opened the door and greeted him enthusiastically. "Uncle Robert!" she cried, throwing her arms around him.

Grinning, he picked her up and gave her a loud kiss on the forehead.

She giggled, wiping her forehead with one hand while using the other to check inside his shirt pocket. "Where's my present?" she asked.

He looked puzzled. "Present? What present?" Anna laughed, hitting his shoulder. "Come onI" "Hmmm. Let me think." He withdrew a stick of Juicy Fruit from his left front pants pocket, snaked his arm around her head, and pretended to pull the gum from behind her ear. "Why, here's a piece of gum!"

He put her down on the floor, and she ran back through the house toward her bedroom. "Thank you, Uncle Robert!"

He followed her into the hallway. "Rich! You home?" His brother stuck his head out of the bathroom, small flecks of white shaving cream around his neck. "Yeah. What is it?"

"You busy today?"

"Maybe. Why? "

"I thought I'd go out and-see Pee Wee. You want to come along?"

Rich off the with a towel. wiped excess shaving cream

"Are you going to be talking about the FBI or vampires?"

"Both."

"Vampires?" Anna yelled from her bedroom.

"Little pitchers," Rich said to his brother. "Get ready for school!" he called to Anna.

Rich turned back to his brother, nodded. "I'll go. But I have to take her to school first. And stop by the paper for a few minutes." i "That's okay." Robert grimaced. "I have some faxing to do."

"Have you talked to Pee Wee at all lately?"

"A little. Just about Rossiter..... "You haven't asked him what he thinks--"

"I was going to ask him today."

Rich nodded. "I'll come by the station, then. Give me an hour."

"You got it."

Pee Wee Nelson lived alone at the far end of Caballo Canyon in a house he'd built himself. He'd started the house in the early 1970s, at the peak of the environmental movement, and had worked on it in his spare time and during vacations un till his retirement over a decade later.

Made end rely from castoff and recycled materials, the house was known locally as Pee Wee's Pagoda, and that was exactly what the structure resembled. Disdainful of the geodesic domes and submerged earth dwellings popular during the period, he had decided instead to build upward, to showcase rather than hide his home.

The achievement was significant, and the home was still being improved upon long after many other ecologically oriented dwellings had been sold or abandoned. There'd even been an article on Pee Wee and his house in the Arizona Republic the week he had retired as police chief.

Of all other respects, Pee Wee was ultraconservative. An ardent NRA member and a Goldwater supporter from way back, he was a past president of the Rio Verde Republicans, and a very vocal right-wing activist.

Like many lifelong outdoors men however, he understood nature and valued it in a way that many limousine liberals did not seem capable of.

He was the only man Robert knew who had both NRA and Wilderness Society stickers on the bumper of his pickup truck.

Pee Wee was in his seventies now, but he looked, talked, and acted like a man in his early fifties. He might be a little more stoop-shouldered than he had been in his prime, but at six-foot-five he still towered over everybody else in town and still had the ability to intimidate even the toughest cowboys. He a/so commanded the respect of nearly everyone in Rio Verde, Rich and Robert included.

In recent years, he'd taken to making mirrors to supplement his retirement income, buying the glass wholesale and cutting it into various designs. The venture had proved lucrative, and he more than doubled his retirement earnings selling his "artwork" to tourists from the

Rocking DID.

Both Robert and Rich had one of Pee Wee's mirrors--gifts---hanging in their respective houses.

It was ten o'clock before they finally left the police station, Robert promising Steve that he would be back before noon, ordering the deputy to stall Rossiter if the FBI agent called.

Robert drove, pulling onto the highway without looking, swerving in front of a refrigerated semi that was al ready pushing the speed limiL

The truck braked, swung into the left lane. The semi's horn blared, but only for a second, the driver obviously realizing that he'd been cut off by a cop car.

"Aah," Robert said, grinning. "The trappings of power."

Rich checked his seat belt. "Yofi're going to get us killed one of these days."

"Pansy." "You always pull this macho shit when you go to see Pee Wee.

You'll probably start spitting when we get there, too. You always do."

They headed out of town, driving north. Robert honked as they passed Jud, hiding in his speed trap behind the bowling alley.

"Would you ever have an affair?" Robert asked. "Why would you even ask something like that?" Robert shrugged. "I don't know. It's just that you and Corrie seem .. . well, not exactly all fired up about each other."

"A relationship's not a straight line. There are hills and

"This is a valley?" :

"Maybe a canyon."

"To me, the best part of a relationship seems to be the beginning. You know, when you touch for the first time, kiss for the first time--"

"I don't want to hear where this is going." "It is, though. It's the best part. It's more exciting when you're first exploring, when her body's new to you--"

"Do we have to talk about this?"

"Just because you're stuck in a rut..."

"The longest relationship you've had been, what, a month?"

"Three years and you know it."

They were silent for a while. right, Rich said finally. Robert sighed. "You know, many time I wish we'd had kids, Julie and me." "You think that would're changed anything? You think that would've saved the marriage?"

"No. But at least I'd have something to show for it, yon know?"

"I'Ve got a news flash for you. Kids are not trophies. They're people. It might gratify your own vanity if you'd had a child, but think of how tough it would be for that kid, shuffling back and forth between you and Julie--"

Robert groaned. "Lighten up, for Christ's sake. Stop lecturing. I was just talking. You take everything so damn seriously. That's your main problem."

"You weren't just talking; you meant it."

"Give it up."

They were into the desert, the town behind them, and the shoulder at the side of the highway was littered with the discarded husks of blown-out truck tires, their black and twisted forms looking like the charred corpses of known animals. The gravel sparkled with the shards of broken beer bottles.

Robert turned down an unmarked dirt road that hit the highway just after the third cat de guard. The caI bumped down a low dip, then settled into a rut.

"You know what's depressing?" he said. "I think I'm the only person from my graduating class who's still here, Everyone else has moved out of town, moved onward and upwaro. "Yeah, and they're working

"Windowless offices I breathing smoggy air, driving in horrendous traffic, and living in crowded apartment complexes. You're lucky." knock off the back-to-nature crop."

"You are. I mean, you're well respected, important, in a position of authority. You live in a beautiful area--"

"It's a desert."

"It's a beautiful desert. Look at that sky. Look at those buttes.

This is the kind of scenery that photographer., make calendars out of. Raw beauty."

I "You're so full of shit."

Rich grinned. "You'd better be nice to me. You want me to start trying to talk some sense into Pee Wee again;

You want us to get into abortion? Busing? Affirmative Ac. fion? The ERA?"

I "Don't bait him. He's an old man."

"Answer me, then. Where else would you get to pi off truckers just for the hell of it? And ticket people yo don't like?"

Robert nodded. "This is true. i "See? You're not so bad off."

The road curved around a low cactus-covered hill, the headed straight for a narrow opening between two lightl' striated cliffs, the western entrance of Caballo Canyon Nothing was said between them, no words were spoken but the mood in the car grew palpably more somber as the car fell under the blue shadow of the buttes.

Robert glanced over at his brother. "You still don't think it's a vampire, do you?"

"Not this again."

"Tell me how a human being could suck every last drop of blood and piss and spit and everything else from four people, six horses, and God knows how many other animals through holes in their necks." He shook his head. "You know how you always said you hated horror movies because the people in them were so stupid? They'd hear screams at night and say their house was just settling, or they'd find a friend's body torn apart by a monster and then split up to see if they could find the creature? You always said you hated those movies because the people in them didn't act the way real people would act. Well, you're acting just like one of those people in a monster movie."

He'd expected an argument, had half hoped for an argument, wanting desperately to be wrong and to be proved wrong. But Rich nodded wearily. "You're right "I am?"

"I suppose your vampire theory's as good as any other. Probably better than most." The car bumped over a particularly big pothole, bottoming out, and he put a hand on the shaking dashboard to steady himself.

"Tell me this. Do you think Pee Wee's going to buy the vampire idea?"

"I have no idea. But I thought, at the very least, that he might be able to tell us something we don't know. Maybe this has happened before, and it was all covered up. Maybe the town was built on burial grounds or something."

Rich shook his head. "What don't we know about this town? We've lived here all our lives. I'm the editor of the paper; you're the police chief. You think there's some deep dark secret that's been hidden from us all these years?"

"I don't know. I'm just throwing out ideas." "Well, throw that one out for sure. It's stupid." "We'll see."

The bloom of summer was still visible on the low upward sloping floor of the canyon, the pink cactus flowers land tiny yellow blossoms of brittle bush not yet having gotten word that winter had arrived. The road hugged the southern butte as the canyon opened out, widening into a plain that flattened into desert a few miles eastward. From here they could already see the pointed triangular contours of Pee Wee's home and, next to it, his old metal windmill, silhouetted against the morning sun, tail pointed east, vanes, turning slowly in the nearly nonexistent desert wind.

Robert honked three times and gave a short whoop of the siren to let the old chief know they were coming, although he had no doubt seen the growing dust cloud kicked up by the car. The sound echoed off the rock walls, loud even with the windows up.

"What if he's not home?" Rich said.

"I called. Besides, he's always home."

There was a corral close by the house, a square patch of dry tramped dirt fenced in by four irregular posts and a single strip of barbed wire, and within the corral, a bony horse stood on the hard ground, staring southward.

Robert parked the car next to the west side of the corral, and the two of them got out simultaneously. Pee Wee was already walking toward them from the house, grinning hugely. "Glad to see you boys. It's been a while."

"glad to see you, too," Robert said, extending his hand.

Pee Wee shook the proffered palm. "Not a bad grip," he commented. "The job hasn't let you go too far to seed." He nodded to Rich. "Good thing your brother called first instead of just dropping by like he usually does. I was all set to go rabbit hunting this morning."

Robert spat in the dirt. "Out by Dry Beaver Creek?" "Yeah." Pee Wee chuckled, shook his head. "Dry Bea ver Creek. Whoever thought of that name? It had to be a joke."

"Maybe they were thinking of your sister."

"Or mama." your

Rich smiled politely, not joining in. He never had gone in for this sort of macho camaraderie, and he didn't know how to do it. Even witnessing it made him slightly uncomfortable.

"It's chilly out here this morning." Pee Wee nodded toward the house.

"Let's go inside, have some coffee, talk."

Robert grinned. "I hear you."

The two of them started walking, Rich following only a few steps behind.

Pee Wee spat. "So the feds're tryin' to horn in on your territory, huh?"

"Not only trying," Robert said. "Succeeding."

"Can't say that ever happened to me. Nothin' big enough ever occurred here in my day to interest the feds." "But if it had?"

"I woulda fought 'em tooth and nail."

"My approach exactly."

"I hate to bring reality into this," Rich said, catching up and drawing even. "But the important thing is that the murderer get caught, not who catches him. The way you're talking, I can just see you and Rossiter hoarding information, not sharing things with each other, trying to be the first to crack the case."

"Yeah, right," Robert said.

"He has a point," the ex-chief nodded gravely. "Your first duty is to your office, not your ego."

"I know that. But the two aren't mutually exclusive."

They walked into the house. The small narrow entryway opened onto a huge living room with a vaulted ceiling nearly two stories high. One whole wall of the room was an eastward-facing window that offered a truly spectacular view of the open desert past the canyon.

Pee Wee excused himself, went into the kitchen to get the coffee, and Rich and Robert walked silently around the big room, examining the new mirrors hanging on the wall opposite the window. The reflection of the desert in the angular hexagons and parallelograms gave the already oversize room an aura of true vastness, making the house seem as though it were suspended in air high above the sand.

A collection of hunting trophies adorned the stone fire place to the left of the mirrors, and when the old man returned, carrying mugs of black Yuban, Robert pointed up at the mounted head of a javelina. "Is that new?"

Pee Wee shook his head. "I ain't got nothing new for weeks now. The game source has pretty well dried up around here. I know there's been a drought for the past few years, but this is getting ridiculous. I haven't seen shit but lizards, vultures, and an occasional rabbit for the past month. Even the damn coyotes are playing possum."

Robert and Rich looked at each other.

I Robert sipped his coffee, preparing to speak, but before he could say anything Pee Wee cut him off. "All right, what is it? What's up? You two've been pussyfootin' around something ever since you got here.

Spill it."

"What would you say if I told you that there was a vampire in Rio Verde?"

"I'd say you were a fool-assed chump and two sandwiches shy of a picnic."

Robert sipped his coffee. Rich nodded. "A week ago I would've said that," Pee Wee said. "But that was before I saw the body of that wild filly out by the wash. Now I say tell me more." bert glanced up. "You believe it?" don't not believe it. That filly was nothing but a mummified corpse, and two days before she'd been eating my scrub."

"We've found other animals too. And the mechanic and the groom and those two kids were all killed the same way. Drained of blood, emptied."

"Exsanguinated," Pee Wee said.

"Yes."

"Seems to me this is where the feds or the staters'd be some help. What do they say about this?"

Robert shrugged. "I haven't discussed it with them. The

FBI agent is in charge of the investigation, but if he has some sort of overall strategy in mind, he's not sharing it.

As far as I can tell, he's working on one body at a time.

And looking for a human suspect."

"Have you talked to the coroner?"

"He's the one who sprung the vampire theory on me.

He's autopsied the bodies and said there's no known way that the blood, urine, and everything could've been sucked out those holes in the necks."

"Necks." Pee Wee nodded, impressed. "Who's coroner these days?

Woods?"

"Yeah."

"He knows his stuff." Pee Wee walked over to a wooden rocking chair, sat down. "This is getting interesting'

Robert sat on the overstuffed couch adjacent to the fireplace. "I'm buying it too.

"What about you?" Pee Wee asked, looking over at Rich. "You haven't said much through all this."

"I don't know what to think. I haven't made up my mind yet. But it's definitely open."

The ex-chief nodded. "Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that we are dealing with a real vampire." He looked from Rich to Robert. "How often does he have to feed?"

Robert sighed. "The killings seem to be about a week or two apart."

"So he needs a body every two weeks."

"Plus animals," Rich reminded him

"Let's just deal with the humans for now. Okay, a body every two weeks. No correspondence with lunar cycles or any of that crap. That's good."

"Why's that good?" Because! "

"The less mumbo jumbo we have to deal with, the better. If there are such things as vampires, and if we got one here, we have to figure out how to track him, catch him, and kill him. We have to treat him like an animal, observe his habits and use 'em to our advantage. And the first thing we have to do is separate the myts, from the true.

"The first have to do, Robert said, is find thing we out how we can protect people from him." him "Or her," Rich said.

"True enough." Robert nodded.

"Let's think about this logically." Pee Wee set his coffee cup down on the floor next to the couch. "If this guy's a vampire, he lives forever, right? He must be a hundred years old. Two hundred, maybe.

If that's so, why haven't we heard about him before? Why hasn't he wiped out whole towns? I'll tell you why--because he moves on. It's a big world, and a crowded one, and I bet a vampire could feed a little in one place and then keep moving and no one'd ever know."

"Hell," Robert said. "Maybe he hibernates. Like a bear. Comes out every century, drinks some blood, goes back to sleep."

"Maybe," Rich said doubtfully, and there was silence in the room after he spoke.

Robert picked up his coffee from the floor, drank it, and the three of them stared out of the living room --through the huge window into the endless desert beyond.

It was nearly noon when they arrived back in town. Robert radioed over to the station, learned that nothing had happened this morning, and said he would be in after lunch. He turned toward Rich. "You in a big hurry? Let's cruise over to Buford's, grab some chow."

"Okay."

The cruiser slowed for two teenagers crossing the high way in front of the liquor store.

"You know what?" Rich said. "All these years we've been going to Buford's, and I don't even know his last name."

"I thought Buford was his last name."

"I think it's his first."

"We'll check." Robert pulled into the parking lot of the hamburger stand, and they both got out. Robert ordered a half-pound Monstro Burger, large fries, and a large Dr. Pepper, and after only a second's deliberation, Rich ordered the same.

Robert grinned. "No willpower." He bent to peek through the order window as Buford pulled two huge hamburger patties from the refrigerator and slapped them on the grill. "I know this is a stupid question," he said to the cook, "but is Buford your first name or your last name?"

"Both."

"Both? Buford Buford?"

"That's what my daddy named me."

Robert glanced over at his brother. "Hear that? I guess we're both right." His smile faded as Rich, frowning, to a hand-lettered sign on the in pointed surreptitiously side of the glass next to the pickup window: "New Hours

11 A.M.-6 P.M."

Robert turned back toward Buford. "You're closing at six now?"

"Yeah." The cook did not elaborate.

"You're going to miss the dinner crowd."

"I changed the hours last week." He paused. "I don't want to work after dark anymore."

Rich and his brother exchanged glances, saying nothing.

The sizzling of the burgers grew louder. "Rumor has it," Buford said,

"that you caught your vampire." "What?"

"Mike Vigil. He went crazy and thought he was a vampire. "Mike's crazy all right, but he's no vampire. Besides, : he was in Florence under observation the other night when Clifford killed. '

"I didn't put no store by it." He flipped over the burgers, pulled a handful of sliced onions from the refrigerator, and dumped them on the grill. He worked the onions with his spatula for a moment. "I think I saw the vampire last week."

Robert tried to peer through the window to judge whether or not Buford was pulling his leg, but all he could see through the dirty rusted screen was the cook's white i aproned chest and clean-shaven bottom jaw.

"I wasn't sure whether I should tell you, but I promised myself that if you came in, I'd bring it up." He pointed his spatula toward Rich. "I don't want none of this in the paper, understand?"

Off the record," Rich agreed.

"I haven't even told my wife. Don't want to frighten her."

"What happened?"

"I was here late, all alone, and all of a sudden I got... kind of a weird feeling. I can't describe it, but it was like I knew something was out there, watching me, waiting for me to leave. Scared the living shit out of me. When I finally did leave and go out to my car, I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A white shape.

Big. Kind of fluttering. But then it was gone. I didn't stop to look for it. I just hopped in my car and hauled ass."

"It disappeared?"

"It disappeared into the arroyo," Buford said. "It went into the arroyo."

"The arroyo," Rich said. "It comes back to the arroyo."

Robert shook his head. "We searched it. We didn't find anything but dead bugs and animals. No tracks. NothingP "How far did you follow it?"

"Five miles. The damn thing stretches all the way to Rocky Gulch."

"Maybe he uses the washes and gullies and arroyos like trails or tunnels, uses them to get in and out of places. God knows there's a network of them across the desert."

"That's reassuring," Robert said. He sighed. "We'll check it out again. I don't have anything else to go on."

"You could stake this place out, wait and see if he comes back."

"Steak it out," Rich said with a wry grin. "I get it." Robert turned to his brother. "Maybe I'll talk to Rossiter about it. It's about time those guys pulled their weight around here."

"Yeah. I'm sure they're going to assign FBI agents to wait night after night at a hamburger stand for a vampire to show up."

"We have to do something. Do you have any ideas?" Rich shook his head. "Neither do I."

A blue Chevy Impala pulled into the burger stand's parking lot.

Sunlight glinted off the silver crucifix hanging from the car's rearview mirror.

Buford slid aside the screen on the pickup window and pushed through a tray. "Lunch is served."

Wheeler awoke feeling tired. He had not seen Jesus for over two weeks, and the strain was making him tense, nervous, jumpy. He knew he was doing the Lord's bidding, but he did not feel confident enough in the worthiness of his own thoughts and actions to make decisions without higher approval. What if he were doing something wrong? What if Jesus wanted shakes instead of shingles on the roof of His house? What if Jesus didn't approve of drywall and foam insulation?

There were so many things to consider.

He got out of bed, took a quick shower, and got dressed. The cat Covey had killed yesterday was still lying curled in the basting pan on top of the kitchen counter, its broken dripping eyes staring at nothing, and Wheeler touched a tentative finger to the congealed blood surrounding the animal's body. The blood was sticky, neither cold nor hot, and had the consistency of melted taffy.

The butterflies began flying in his stomach, but Wheeler ignored them and placed two pieces of bread in the toaster. He poured himself some orange juice, took a spoon and knife from the utensil drawer. When the toast was done, he spooned a generous helping of blood onto the bread, spreading it with the knife. It smeared almost as well as jelly.

As always, he gagged when he bit into the blood, but he forced himself to keep chewing, his brain ordering his rebellious tastebuds to ignore the information they were receiving firsthand and concentrate on the importance of getting used to the thick, unnatural flavor.

He was able to eat both slices of toast without spitting out a single bite.

After breakfast, he drove straight to the church. The five men of the morning shift were on top of the newest addition, working on the frame for the second floor, and before he even rounded the corner onto Arrow, he saw the parallel series of black beams they'd put up since yesterday protruding proudly upward from behind the other buildings on the block.

He parked on the south side of the original chapel and got out of the car, waving back to the workers when they waved at him.

The Church of the Living God was taking shape. The contours of the awesome structure placed into his mind by Christ and given material form in Covey's sketches could now be seen in the building itself. The nucleus of the completed church was clearly visible in the existing structure. If work went on at this pace, if construction continued unabated day and night, if they continued to recruit more volunteers, it was quite likely that the church would be completed within the next two weeks.

In time for the Second Coming.

He looked up at the building. The black looked good.

It lent the original chapel and its additions a pleasing uniformity.

He waved again to the workers, walked up the front steps, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.

The interior of the church had been transformed.

Wheeler stood for a moment in the vestibule, the door swinging slowly and silently shut behind him.

The pews were gone. The long benches had been disassembled, the wood used to cover all windows in the room and to make crude walkways over the three large holes which now took up most of the chapel's floor space. The cross still hung behind the altar, untouched, but the altar itself was now peopled with the mummified remains of three men, positioned in reclining poses, and a woman who held in her hands a plate on which sat the dehydrated head of a child.

The woman was obviously supposed to be Salome, holding the head of John the Baptist. It was beautiful.

Wheeler took a tentative step forward, but from within the blackness of the nearest hole there came a sound of wind, a sound of water. A single strong my of light burst upward from the opening and rising within that light was the Lord Jesus Christ.

Wheeler involuntarily stepped back. Jesus arose from the depths, grinned. His eyes were wide, the brows arched, and His teeth were red, smeared with blood, the divisions between them dark and unusually well defined. His beard was dirty, matted with brown and red, and in His arms was the unmoving body of a goat.

"Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat flesh and drink blood, you have no life in you." Jesus laughed, almost giggled. ""He who eats flesh and drinks blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For flesh is food indeed, and blood is drink indeed."

A slight chill caressed the back of Wheeler's neck. He recognized the verses from the Gospel according to John, but there were words missing, words that altered the meaning of the phrases. Somewhere, a small part of him was saying that Jesus was not supposed to act this way, but Christ looked upon him, held his eyes, and that tiny voice died.

Standing upon the walkway above the hole, Jesus raised the goat to His face. He bit into the animal's neck and placed His mouth over the bite before the blood began to gush. Wheeler watched as the goat's body deflated instantly shrinking, caving in on itself, the long hair twisting, withering, the skin conforming to the structure of the skeleton beneath.

Jesus dropped the used carcass into the hole.

And then it was over. He was the Savior again, the bloody beard and teeth gone, the. wild giggling visage replaced by a solemn expression of perfect contentment, and Wheeler fell to his knees, sobbing with joy, unbearably happy to be in the presence of this Lord, the Lord he knew and loved.

"This is my home," Jesus said, his melodious voice echoing in the pastor's head. "I live here now. And from this day forward, worship services will be conducted outside. They will no longer be held within the church." "Yes," Wheeler agreed, nodding.

"Sacrifices acceptable and pleasing to God will be left in each of the three openings in the earth."

"Yes," Wheeler agreed.

Jesus smiled. "We shall begin the punishment of the sinners.

Wheeler's pulse quickened, and the excited anticipation which coursed through every fiber of his being was unlike anything he had ever experienced. "Yes," he said. Christ's smile was beatific. "They will all die painfully." "Yes." Wheeler felt a strange stirring in his groin. Jesus reached out a hand, and the pastor walked across the small section of floor onto the pew walkway over the hole. Looking down, he could see that the hole was not really a hole at all, but a steeply sloping tunnel running under the south wall of the church. He took Jesus' hand, and the Savior's eyes twinkled. "I will show you my home. I will show you my wonders. I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

That sounded familiar, Wheeler thought. He had heard that before. Not in the Bible, but somewhere else. He tried to think, tried to focus, tried to remember, but the connection would not be made.

And then they had jumped from the walkway and were floating down.

"No." Rich shook his head. "I will not." "I'm not trying to censor you or anything," Hollis said. "I'm just saying play it down, don't sensationalize it, leave it alone for a while."

Rich looked the owner of the dude ranch squarely in the eye. "Play it down? You think I'm making too much of this, blowing it out of proportion? You think Clifford's going to come back to life?"

"That's not what I'm saying. Look, our businesses are interconnected here, and I just think we oughta look out for each other. It's not going to do anyone any good to start a panic. As you know, I'm the largest single employer in Rio Verde. I provide jobs for twenty-five people part time and another twenty full time. If guests get scared away, those people'll be out of jobs. I'll lose money; I won't be able to afford to advertise in your paper; everyone will get hurt."

Sue watched Rich from the side. Sloe saw his jaw clench, the muscles in his face tightening. "So you want me to pretend that Terry Clifford wasn't murdered, that he's still happily working at your stable and nothing out of the ordinary has occurred."

Hollis smiled. "You're twisting my words, son. All I'm saying is don't blow this out of proportion. Don't give people another excuse to criticize our town. I mean, hell, how do you think it makes your brother look if your paper makes it sound like a damn psycho's running around killing people?"

I "And draining their bodies of blood."

"There you go again, talking like a tabloid. All I'm doing is suggesting that you treat Terry's passage with some respect. Inform people that he died, just don't go into the, grisly details."

I didn't go into the grisly details." You did from where I stand."

I'm a reporter. It's my job to tell the truth. If it makes you feel any better, it's October and the tourist season is over and by next summer everyone will have forgotten all about this."

"Oh, no, they won't."

Rich ran an exasperated hand through his hair. "Who reads the paper except locals? They're not the ones coming to your ranch. Jesus, I don't know why I'm even arguing this point. I run a newspaper, crummy as it is, and when news happens I'm going to report it. Period."

Hollis's voice became a little less folksy, the tone hardening. "The First Amendment does not give you the right to damage my business."

"I'm not trying to damage your business. I'm simply reporting the facts. Look, I can get plenty of reliable sources willing to go on record saying that a vampire killed Clifford, Torres, and those two kids. You want me to do that?"

"Reliable sources? Like who? Your dipshit brother?"

Rich stiffened. "Get out of this office," he ordered. "Now."

Hollis started walking. "I'm pulling all of my advertising from this rag."

"Go right ahead." The editor stood unmoving, watching him leave. Sue tried to return to work on her article, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Rich remain standing in the middle of the newsroom. She looked up, cleared her throat in an effort to get his attention. He turned to face her. "Are you going to be able to keep going?" she asked. "Without his advertising, I mean?"

He waved his hand dismissively. "We'll survive. Hollis has always had an inflated sense of his own importance. The ranch does support a lot of businesses around here, but not us. If Basha's pulled out we'd be in big trouble, but the Rocking DID?" He snorted. "Hollis has always been a miser about advertising in The Gazette. We'll live without his fifty bucks a week."

"Good."

Rich walked back to his desk. ""It just depresses me that the man would even try to tell me what to print and what not to print." He shook his head. "Most people don't believe in freedom of the press.

Not really. They think they do, but they don't. People like to hear or read things that they agree with. They want their own views promoted as fact and don't want equal time given to their opposition.

They want only their side given. But the presentation of facts is never wrong. Remember that, if you remember nothing else. It is the journalist's responsibility to be oh jective. When you start printing only one side of a story, when you start limiting people's access to facts, telling them by your presentation and emphasis what to believe, what is truth, then you are not doing your job."

Sue smiled. "Was that going to be a lecture to your class?"

"No. But it should've been."

Their eyes met. It was now or never, she thought. She looked down at the scratch paper on which she'd written her lead. She was nervous, her heart beginning to pound, but the opportunity was here, had presented itself without her having to reach for it, and she forced herself to act. She looked up at him. "It is a vampire," she said.

Her voice was meek, barely audible.

"What? '

She licked her lips. She wasn't sure if he didn't believe her or hadn't heard what she said, but she pressed on. "There is a vampire.

We call it a cup hug/rngs/."

This time he had heard. "Cup hugrngs.

"It means 'vampire' in Cantonese." "And these vampires drink the sap of trees, too, I sup pose?"

Sue reddened. "You read my story." .

"Of course. I copy edited it."

"Then, yes," she said. "As a matter of fact, they do." The editor chewed his lip for a moment, looking at her, thinking. Then he put down his pen and sighed. He stood, walked over to Sue's desk, and pulled up a chair, sitting down next to her. "Okay," he said. "I admit it. I'm not the skeptic I used to be." He crossed his legs. "I guess it's about time I heard this. Tell me about the cup hugirngsi.

"" She looked at him. "This isn't a joke."

"I know." Sue nodded. "Thank you," she said quietly. And she began to talk..

When Sue arrived at the restaurant, both her parents and her grandmother were standing next to the front window, staring out toward the highway. The sight of their faces peering from between the taped signs advertising Egg Roll and Sweet and Sour Pork lunch specials filled her with a sinking feeling. There was none of the dread she associated with D/Lo Ling Gum, and she knew that if something truly important had happened, her father would have called her at the paper, but she could still tell that something was wrong, and instead of parking the station wagon in the back, she pulled up to the short side walk at the front of the restaurant.

She hurried inside, the bell above the door tinkling as she pushed the door open. She addressed her father: "What is it? What is wrong?"

']John is late. He was supposed to be here half an hour ago."

There were two diners in the restaurant, eating a late lunch or an early dinner at the far table, and they looked up, frowning, at the sound of the Chinese words ...... Her grandmother's voice betrayed no emotion, but her eyes were troubled. "It is not safe today. Not even in the daytime."

Sue looked from her grandmother to her mother and father. "I'll look for him."

"I will go," her father said.

"I want to go too."

Her mother shook her head, but her grandmother nodded. "All right," her father said.

Sue dropped her notebook on the nearest table. "I'm sure he's fine. He probably just stayed after school for something. I don't think anything's happened to him."

Neither her parents nor her grandmother responded. They pulled out of the parking lot a few minutes later, her father driving, and followed in reverse the path John usually took home from school. They cruised slowly through the parking lot of Basha's, Sue peeking down the trail that led through the vacant land between the shopping center and the restaurant. They even drove past Dairy Queen and the liquor store, in case he'd stopped off to get something to eat or drinL But there was no sign of John, no sign of any students.

Something had happened. They drove up Ocotillo toward the junior high.

The school was hosting an afternoon home game against Globe, and the sound of cheering from the football field carried clearly in the cool desert air. It surprised Sue that real life was still continuing for some people in town, that they knew or cared nothing about the cup hugirngsi, and though she knew that ignorance was not really bliss, that not being aware of the situation and failing to take proper precautions was more likely to lead to death than happiness, she could not help envying those people their innocence.

Her father pulled into the school parking lot. There were two dingy buses and some cars parked here, but by no means as many vehicles as usual. The cup hugirngsi had had an effect. Could John have gone to the game? She didn't think it likely. He didn't like sports, had never before been to any school activity at all, and if he wanted to go somewhere with friends after school he always called. Still, she mentioned it to her father, who promptly pulled into one of the parking slots. "We will look for him," he said. "Maybe he is here."

There was more wish than conviction in his voice, and that note of nearly desperate hope made everything slid demy hit home. Her brother might really be dead. Or kidnapped, taken to the cup hug/rngss lair.

She might never again see him alive.

She felt not angry, not scared, but drained, tired. "Sue."

The voice was a whisper, faint but audible. It had come from somewhere close, but if it had been spoken a moment sooner, while the football crowd was cheering, she would not have heard it.

Her father was already walking up the crooked concrete steps that led to the gym and football field. She wanted to call out to him but dared not, for fear of missing the voice if it spoke again. She stood next to the car, unmoving

"Sue!" The call came again, weak and whispery and somehow familiar.

Frowning, she turned toward the Dumpsters pushed against the low brick wall a few parking spaces away. She thought she saw movement in the shadows between the blue metal sides of the twin bins, and she started cautiously forward.

"Sue!"

It was John. She could see him now, leaning against the side of the closest Dumpster.

"Father!" she called. She did not wait to see if he'd heard her but rushed between the metal bins. John was sitting up but was curled into an almost fetal position, his head nearly touching his knees. His face was purple and red, the skin around his mouth and eyes bruised and swollen, his nose and hands bloody. There was drying blood on his ripped shirt, and his pants were open, the snap torn off. She knelt down next to him, filled with a gut-wrenching hurt that made her want to cry, made her want to hit someone, made her wish this had happened to her instead. She had never before seen any member of her family injured or in serious pain, and the experience made her feel sick inside. "What happened?" she asked.

John's voice was again a whisper, and she realized that he could barely move his puffy lips. "They beat me up. They said God told them to do it. They said God doesn't like... Chinese people."

Her father hurried around her, knelt next to John, -reached under his arms, and pulled him into a straighter sitting position. "Chink," her father said in English. "They say 'chink." " It was a statement not a question. John nodded.

Sue thought of Pastor Wheeler and she felt cold. "Who was it?" she asked.

""Ids from my P.E. class. Butch, J.D." Rick, and Maria."

He started to cry. "And Russ and Kim and Mr. Peters." ""Your teacher?"

He nodded, wiping his eyes, wincing from the pain as his fingers pressed against his bruises.

The shouts of the football crowd no longer seemed so normal, no longer so benign.

"Do your arms feel broken?" her father, asked in Cantonese. "Are your" legs okay? Can you walk?" uodded. Thirsty," he said. "I'm thirsty."

We'll take you home."

Maybe we should take him to the hospital," Sue suggested.

"Your grandmother can take care of him. I do not trust the hospital now."

Sue nodded. Her father's paranoid certainty frightened her. Despite all she'd said to her grandmother about wanting the family to open up, communicate, talk more, she found that she longed for the days when her father was an unflappable rock. It reassured her when her parents were calm islands in an otherwise stormy sea. It might not be honest for her parents to keep their knowledge, doubts, and fears from her, but it made her feel more confident when she knew she had solid support at home. i Now they were all adrift. And it scared her.

Her father gave her the keys, told her to drive, and she hurried over to the car, backing it up next to the Dumpsters. Her father helped John into the backseat, sat down next to him, and Sue pulled out of the parking lot.

"Are we going home or to the restaurant?" Sue asked.

"The restaurant," her father said. "We'll pick up your grandmother and then go home."

"I'm cold." John's voice was low, and she had to listen carefully to hear it.

"Roll up the windows," her father ordered.

Sue did so, pressing down on the armrest console that controlled the entire car. She slowed, signaled, pulled onto the highway. "Why did they beat you up?" she asked her brother. "Was there a reason?"

"I told you," he whispered. "They said God didn't like Chinese people."

"That's it? You didn't get into an argument or anything first?"

"Mr. Peters told me to stop wearing jade."

Sue looked at her brother in the rearview mirror. "You didn' tn

"They stole my ring."

Sue's mouth went dry. "We'll find more jade," her father said quickly, as if to reassure himself. "He'll be okay."

They drove the rest of the way in silence, the only sound in the car John's loud, ragged breathing.

There were no customers at the restaurant when they arrived, and both her mother and grandmother were waiting outside, in front of the building. Sue hopped out of the car and opened the door for her father who gently helped John out. "He was beaten up," he said. "They took his jade."

"Leave him there!" her grandmother ordered. "We must get him home.

Now. The influence is strong. We must find him jade and cover his window with willow branches for protection."

"He can have my jade," Sue said.

"I'm not wearing a necklace," John croaked.

"I have a piece of jade in my dresser," her grandmother said.

"I'll take an earring."

Sue found herself smiling in spite of the circumstances. ""No matter what happened to you, you're still a jerk."

"I'll close the restaurant and put up a sign," her father said.

Sue stared at him. The restaurant had never before closed on a day other than Monday. Not even illness had been able to alter its hours.

Her grandmother nodded. "Let's get him home." i Complaints against the church had reached a fever pitch in the past two days, ever since the three truckloads of new materials had arrived from Globe, and though he'd been dreading it, putting it off, Robert knew that he had to go out to the church this morning and have an other talk with Wheeler.

He stopped by the Donut Hut for breakfast, grabbing a glazed and a coffee before heading over to the station.

He pulled into the parking lot the same time as Father

Martinez. "Chief Carter! I need to speak to you!"

Robert slammed the door of the cruiser and swallowed his last bite of doughnut, washing it down with the dregs of the coffee as the Catholic priest hurried toward him across the dirt. He nodded at the clergyman.

"What can I do for you, Father?"

The priest was obviously agitated, his face red and sweating, and he had a difficult time catching his breath as he stood before Robert. He put one hand over his chest, held the other up in a wait-a-minute gesture, then bent over to breathe. He stood like that for a moment, then straightened.

"What is it, Father?"

The priest breathed deeply. "The black church."

Robert nodded noncommittally, carefully keeping his expression blank, neutral. He'd been wondering when this would come up. He'd expected the leaders of the traditional denominations to come forth sooner. He'd known that they would have problems with Wheeler's church--religious problems, not noise or nuisance problems---and when he'd seen that black paint being slopped on, he'd expected an outcry.

He was surprised that it was Father Martinez, though, who was standing before him. The Catholic priest was one of the more liberal and tolerant clergymen in town, and he would have thought that the Baptist or Pentecostal preachers would be the ones to object most strongly and be first with their vocal opposition.

Father Martinez looked into his eyes. "This is the work of the devil."

Robert shifted uncomfortably. "Come on, Father. I know this isn't your cup of tea. It's not mine either, for that matter. But Wheeler's got a right to his own beliefs."

"It's not just his beliefs," the priest said. His gaze was unwavering.

"I saw him talking to one of the minions of Satan."

"Now, Father .. ."

"I'm not just speaking figuratively or metaphorically. I saw him addressing a demon. Literally. Standing there speaking to one of Satan's brethren." His voice dropped. "And calling it the name of the Lord."

The hair on Robert's arms and the back of his neck bristled, propelled by a rash of goose bumps that were not caused by the chill morning air.

"That black church is a blasphemy," the priest said. "I won't deny it.

But I recognize its right to exist. I also understand that Mr. Wheeler has been claiming to have spoken with Jesus Christ; some members of my congregation have even gone over to his church because of this claim.

It offends me and angers me, but, again, that is his right. I will not be the one to pass judgment on his deeds.

"But a tolerance of the beliefs of others, no matter how warped or obscene they may be, does not mean that I can sit passively by while the will of Satan is carried out in front of me. It is my duty as a priest, as a Catholic, and as a human being to combat evil."

"What do you think you saw?"

"It is not what I think I saw, it is what I know I saw. I was walking to St. Mary's this morning, before dawn, as I always do, and when I passed by the black church I heard voices. Two of them; Mr. Wheeler's and a strange, whiny voice. The whiny voice said something I couldn't make out, then Mr. Wheeler said, "You are the way and the light."

"I couldn't ignore that. I was near the point where the new part of the church comes close to the sidewalk, and I saw a crack of green light escaping from between two sections of wall. I walked over and peeked in.

"The demon was the source of the light. It was bathed in a greenish glow, and Wheeler was kneeling before it, praying to it. He was addressing the demon as "Jesus," and there was rapture on his face, but the demon was not even looking at him. It was staring at me, through the crack in the wall, from across the room." Father Martinez shuddered. "And it smiled at me." "What did it look like?"

"It was greasy. It was short, dwarfish, and horribly deformed. It looked .. . It reminded me of something I used to dream about as a child, a monster from a movie." He shook his head. "I ran all the way to the churchmmy church, St. Mary's---and locked myself in. I prayed for strength and guidance. I prayed for three straight hours. Then I came here to see you."

Robert nodded understandingly, though he had no idea what he was supposed to be thinking or feeling. He did not believe Father Martinez was lying, but the priest's story did not seem real to him. He felt disassociated from what he had been told, as though he had been listening to someone recount the. plot of a book or a movie, and he had to force himself to pretend to take the priest seriously "Look," he said, "I'm going over to talk to Wheeler this morning. You're welcome to come along and ask him about this." demon."

"Oh, no. I couldn't go back there." '

"Well, what do you want me to do then?"

"Kill him."

Robert blinked. "What?

"Kill Mr. Wheeler. Waste the fucker. Then cut off his head."

Robert stared at Father Martinez, completely at a loss for words. He would have thought he'd imagined what he just heard were it not for the unwavering eyes and the earnest and deadly serious look on the priest's face.

"You can bring his head to me on a plate."

Robert stiffened. "If this is a joke--" "The minions of Satan are no joke." He didn't know what to say, how to reply.

"You can shoot him if you have to. But the most important thing is to cut off his head. You have to cut off his head." o

Robert stared at the priest. "Father, I'm afraid this conversation is over. I don't know whether or not you're serious about this, but if you are, you need help. And not the kind of help the police can give you."

"You're with him" the priest yelled, and his voice was a shocked accusation. "You're part of it! You're consorting with the devil!"

Robert had started to turn toward the station, but he suddenly whirled around. "If you don't leave now, I will be forced to place you under arrest. Do you understand me? I am going to talk to Pastor Wheeler this morning. I will ask about your demon if you want. But if no laws have been broken, there will be no action taken. And there will certainly be no killing." He glared at Father

Martinez until the priest turned away, then turned and continued across the dirt to the station door.. The Medusa Syndrome.

He would have to call Jacobson, see if the psychiatrist had discovered what Mike Vigil had seen.

And he would have to re-ask Woods's question about the vampire.

Two hours later, Robert pulled up in front of Wheeler's church.

He got out of the car and, hitching up his belt, sauntered over to where permits for the renovation were displayed on a bracketed black post. He scanned the carbon sheets of official paper, shaking his head. Everything appeared to be in order, but he could not figure out how approval from the county planning commission had been granted so quickly. Hell, he'd had a request in for an expansion of the old jail building for two months, and even though the police department was a government agency and its requests were supposedly expedited, the matter had still not come up before the commission. "God's will."

Robert jerked his head up to see the Pastor Wheeler staring down at him from the church steps. The words, so closely paralleling an answer to his thoughts, made it almost seem as if the preacher were reading his mind. Wheeler smiled.

That smile made Robert uncomfortable. He had always found the preacher smugly self-satisfied and annoyingly condescending, but there was something else in that smile now. A cruel hardness, a hint of willful malevolence. It was as if Wheeler felt he no longer had to worry about the laws and mores of the material world, as if he was not only convinced that he possessed The Truth but had received concrete assurance that God was acting as his personal bodyguard.

Robert wondered if the preacher really thought he'd spoken to Jesus Christ.

Yes, he thought, looking into Wheeler's face, he did.

Robert glanced down the sidewalk, trying to see where the new addition came closest to the edge of the property line--the spot where Martinez claimed to have peeked inside the church and seen the demon.

"May I help you, Chief Carter?"

Robert turned again to face the preacher. Once more, he shifted his belt, reassured by its weight, by the presence of the holster. He nodded a greeting as he walked across the dirty sidewalk to the steps. "As a matter of fact, you can. I've had a few complaints lately from some of your neighbors. As I'm sure you know, some of them don't take kindly to construction going on all hours of the day and night."

Wheeler's smile did not falter. "Go on."

"Well, I just thought you could stop the pounding and sawing after six or seven in the evening as sort of a good will gesture. There are some hardworking Christians around here who need their sleep."

"Good Christians? If they were good Christians, they would understand the importance of the Church of the

Living Christ. If they were good Christians, they would be volunteering to help with the construction of this glory to God's greatness instead of trying to place obstacles in its path."

That tack had backfired, but Robert kept his voice calm and friendly, maintaining his easy smile. "That may be true, Reverend, but I think it's a fair request--"

"Is it fair to try to stop the will of the Lord?"

"I'm sure your volunteers need rest too."

"They don't like the color either, do they? Those people who complain?

They don't like the color the Lord Jesus Christ has chosen to make His church?"

Robert glanced down at the sidewalk. "I wouldn't know about that."

"Black is Christ's favorite color. In Heaven, His rooms are the color of jet. There is a glorious mansion of blackness to house the Lord of hosts."

Robert shook his head. "Look, I'm asking you kindly, as an act of charity so to speak, to cut down on the noise. Your people can still paint, can still do quiet work. Just cut out the sawing and hammering and loud stuff between, say, eight at night and six in the morning."

"No. I am afraid construction of the Lord's home cannot be postponed for the convenience of unbelievers."

"I don't want to right with you, Reverend."

"Then don't."

"I could charge you with disturbing the peace, you know--if I wanted to get nasty. I hope it doesn't come to that. But the people who live in this neighborhood have rights too. What we need to do here is reach some kind of compromise, find a way to satisfy both sides."

"There is only one side. And if you try to halt construction on this church for even a minute, I will slap you, the police department, and the town with a harassment suit."

Robert started up the steps. "I don't know who you think--"

"You are trespassing on my land," Wheeler said. "Get off my property.

You have no warrant."

Robert stared at him in disbelief. "This is a church." "It is my church. It is not public property." "Jesus Christ."

The pastor's face turned a deep cranberry red. He turned and walked into the building without speaking, closing the door loudly and firmly shut behind him. Robert waited for a few moments at the bottom of the steps, on the public sidewalk, not on church property, but when it became clear that Wheeler was not going to come out again, he headed back to the cruiser.

If that son of a bitch wanted to play hardball, then hardball it would be.

He did not look back at the church as he peeled out and sped down the street.

Rich came by after four. He'd brought Anna with him, and he left her out in the lobby where Lee Anne and Jud could keep her occupied at the front desk, and walked back to Robert's office alone.

Robert was scanning the index of The Vampire: His Kith and Kin when his brother knocked on the door and stepped into the office. He looked up, smiled tiredly, and closed the book. "How's the news biz?"

"Still on a winning streak." Rich nodded toward the pile on his brother's desk as he leaned against the window. "What's with the books?"

"I've been reading up on vampires." Robert smiled wryly, picked up the top volume. "I thought I could learn something, but most of it's a load of crap. I've gotten some history, but mostly it's a lot of English professors talking about the 'metaphor of the vampire," explaining how sex lies at the root of the vampire's appeal. The reason people have been interested in vampires over the centuries is because they're supposed to be sexy. The vampire represents repressed sexuality, you know."

Rich smiled halfheartedly.

Robert shook his head. "Real vampires aren't sexy, though, are they?

The word 'suck' sounds erotic when you read it, but when you come across the body of someone who's been completely drained of all fluids, it's not erotic, just scary as hell." He dropped the book on his desk.

"English professors. Literary critics. Who are these people and why don't they just use a little common sense?

Bloodsucking is sexy these men get boners when they cut themselves shaving? Do these women get all hot and wet when they slice their fingers chopping vegetables? Jesus, what happens when they participate in the blood drive? There must be orgasms galorel" He snorted. "Who perpetuates this shill"

Rich smiled. "They're talking about vampires in literature Not real life. They don't know there are vampires in real life."

"Well, there are That's not a metaphor runnin around loose out there and draining people of blood." He pushed the pile of books away from him and stood. "We need to kill this fucker, not interpret his meaning. I got more information about vampires from horror flicks than I did from most of these books."

"They're right about one thing," Rich said. "There is an appeal to vampires. But it's not sex. It has nothing to do with eroticism or repressed desire or forbidden love or any of that." He pointed out the window toward the black church, visible over a low row of houses. "It's the same appeal as that, as religion. It's a chance to live for ever.

A guarantee that your consciousness will survive death."

"What can we do about that place?" Robert walked over to the window to join his brother. "I can't get a search warrant because I have no probable cause. Judge Simons says that the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and that a preacher can build whatever kind of church he wants. He looked me straight in the eye and told me that a preacher should be able to do that without fear of police harassment."

"He's right."

"I know he is. But it pisses me off." Robert shook his head. "Maybe we should just burn the fucking place down."

Rich smiled. "Do you ever wonder what people would think if our conversations were bugged? I mean, here we are, the police chief and the editor of the paper, talking about setting fire to a church."

"I wasn't serious. "I know. But it's still a strange thing for people in our positions to discuss."

"We were brothers before we got our jobs. We were speaking as brothers, not cop and reporter."

"Forget it," Rich said. "It was just an observation. Damn, you're testy today."

"A vampire's out there killing people. What do you expect?"

"You know, I was thinking this afternoon about that old ghost town off the Globe Highway."

Robert frowned. "What ghost town? Those four old shacks by the side of the road?"

""Yeah. I mean, that place has no name. No one knows who used to live there or why they left."

"So there are a lot of little ghost towns like that all across the Southwest. Little places that no one knew about and that just disappeared. I was thinking maybe there's a trail of them. A trail of them across the country, lading all the way back to, I don't know, Roanoke." "Now you're stretching."

"Am I? We've got a vampire here that's who-knowshowmany-centuries old.

He's had to feed off something all those hundreds of years. You don't think it's reasonable to assume that he's been traveling around? You think he's been in Rio Verde all this time?"

"All those years." Robert sighed. "Intimidating, isn't it?"

"No kidding." "Maybe he's not that old. Maybe he was only made recently."

"Then where's the vampire who made him?" Rich stared out the window.

"Either wgy, there's an old one out there."

"So you think it's a vampire now, too?"

Rich shrugged. "I guess I do. You know, I was talking to Sue Wing, and she told me about Chinese vampires. Cup hugirngsis, they call them."

"Cup-who-girng-sees? How do you spell that?"

"I don't know. But, according to the Chinese, vampires aren't afraid of garlic, they're afraid of willow. You keep them away with jade, not crosses."

"I was thinking of having my men wear crogses, just in case."

"Maybe you should have them wear jade, too. It can't hurt."

"How many different vampire legends are there?" "Who knows? I told Sue to write a feature about vampires, tell people how they can protect themselves according to the English, the Chinese, whatever other U!tU(gS she can dig up."

"A vampire story in the paper?"

"It's a feature. It'll be presented like an interesting discussion of foreign customs and beliefs--but I bet there are a lot of people out there who'll be grateful for the information from a practical standpoint. People are worded."

Robert leaned against his desk. "Tell me about it." Rich paused.

"The reason I stopped by is because I think we should bring this up at the town council meeting next Thursday. This is getting too big. I think we need to develop some sort of... civil defense plan. I think we need to organize. We're not getting anywhere just waiting around for the vampire to strike again. We need to act, not react. We have to try to do something before someone else is killed."

Robert nodded. "You're right. I've thought that too. Woods told me that over a week ago, but I've been so busy bagging bodies and following up on all the crackpot calls I've been getting, that I haven't even had time to think. I've probably slept a total of ten hours for the past two weeks." He looked at his brother. "You want to put together a presentation?"

"Sure."

"We'll deliver it together. It'll give it more weighL" He cleared his throat. "Do you have a cross?"

Rich shook his head. "No. I'm sure Corrie does, though."

Robert walked around the desk, opened the top middle drawer, and drew out a thin gold chain with a crucifix dangling from the end, He threw it to his brother. "Here.

Take this. I'll get another one."

"I'm sure Corrie---"

"This one's for you. Get one for Corrie and Anna if they don't have them. Buy some jade while you're at it. Go to Fritz's Jewelry Store.

Charge it to me if you can't afford it. Fritz owes me a favor."

Rich stared at his brother, then slowly nodded. "Thanks," he said.

Robert closed the drawer, not meeting Rich's gaze. "Just do it."

What in God's name was she doing here?

Shelly stared out the windshield of the van at Sue's home. There was a small square of light from the bathroom window on the side of the house, but other than that the place was dark. Sue, and the rest of her family, were dead asleep. Dead. Asleep.

Shelly shivered.

"What time you got?" Mr. Hillman asked.

There was the sound of shuffling in the back. "one-thirty," Mr.

Grimes said.

Shelly turned around, looked at the two men, at the silhouetted forms of the others inside the van. There was an almost palpable sense of excitement within the vehicle, and though she felt it too, though her blood was racing, and she could hardly wait to get outside and get to work, she sensed that they were all a little too excited, a little too pumped up, that things tonight might go too far. That scared her.

That scared her a lot.

It had started out innocently enough. She'd gone last Sunday to the Church of the Holy Trinity. She'd heard the rumors, she'd heard the gossip, and she was curious. The service had been held outside, in the vacant lot behind the church, and there had been over a hundred people there, sitting on benches, on folding chairs, on blankets, on boulders.

It had been several years since she'd been to any religious service at all, and she was not sure what prompted her to attend this one. She remembered church as being dry and somewhat boring, like a documentary--something you knew was good for you but didn't enjoy.

But she had enjoyed Wheeler's sermon.

Oh, yes, she had enjoyed it immensely.

The preacher told it like it was. His topics were not parables from the past, Bible stories from two thousand years ago. He talked about the present.

And the future. It was his talk of the world to come that had really held her spellbound; her and all of the other people sitting enthralled in the cold desert air. Pastor Wheeler did not talk in generalities, did not make vague promises about some faraway future. He spoke in specifics, explained how Jesus would wipe the slate clean, would crush the Catholics bury the Baptists, maul the Methodists. Jesus liked blood, the preacher said, and the taste of human flesh. Christ would feast on the diseased and corrupted bodies of the unrighteous and cleanse the earth. Their discarded bones would line Highway 370, the border of the path of righteousness that would lead through this barren waste land to the Church of the Living Christ.

The people around her had really gotten into the sermon, shouting

"Hallelujah" and "Praise Jesus!" and she had gotten into it, too. It was as if her eyes had been opened, as if she had merely been existing for the past twenty-two years of her life and had now been invited to live. The loose ends of her world, the unconnected bits and pieces that she had learned and absorbed over the years had suddenly fallen into place, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and she suddenly knew why she had been born, why she was here.

To serve the Lord Jesus Christ

And Jesus would walk among them next week.

After the sermon, she had hung around, not knowing anyone but wanting to meet everyone. She'd spied Mr. and Mrs. Grimes, whom she recognized from the Ranch

Market, and walked over to them. They were talking with a group of five or six other men and women, and all of them had turned toward her when she'd walked up.

"Jesus hates Chinks," Mrs. Grimes said. "The pastor said last week that He hated those slant-eyed heathens."

"Yes," Shelly said, nodding. She did not know why she was agreeing; she only knew that it felt right.

"Do you want to help us smoke 'em out?" another man asked. He grinned, and there was something infectious in his grin, and she found herself smiling back at him. He looked vaguely familiar, and she knew that she'd seen him around town.

Mr. Grimes nodded his approval. "You're in, then."

Shelly had looked around the lot, noticing that most of the congregation had broken into small groups of ten or eleven. All of them seemed to be huddling closer together becoming more intense, more insular in their discussions. I Were they making similar plans?

It was possible. The Lord worked in mysterious ways.

A short, bald man with a curly gray beard scratched his weathered cheek. "I can get the gasoline," he said. "But what about the kindling?"

"No problem," Mr. Grimes said.

And now they were here.

Once more, Shelly looked out the windshield at Sue's darkened house.

She still felt good about what they were going to do. It still felt right to her. She had no second thoughts, no feelings of guilt or pangs of conscience. This might frighten Sue into seeing the error of her ways, into going to church, into realizing, before next week, before it was too late, that Jesus was the truth and the light. And if it did go too far, if something happened and someone got hurt, well, then it was God's will.

But she and Sue had been friends forever. Since second grade, when they'd met in Mrs. Michaels's class. They'd gone through an awful lot together. Grammar school and junior high and high school. Phases and stages: dolls and music and boys. Sue was her best friend in the world.

But Jesus was more than a friend.

And if she expected to be one of The Chosen, one of

The Forty, she had to prove herself.

"I think they leave the bathroom light on all night," she said. "I don't think anyone's up.

"I think you're right," Mrs. Grimes said. She opened her door, got out on the driver's side, and walked to the back of the van, opening it. "Be quiet," she said. "And let's do it quickly."

Shelly got out on the passenger side. Her adrenaline was pumping, and she felt ready for anything.

"Jesus wants us to take out those trees," Mr. Hillman said. "The pastor said that's the most important thing."

There were whispers of agreement from the other men and women getting out of the van.

Shelly grabbed one of the Hefty bags filled with the dried leaves they were going to use as fuel for the fire. It felt full and weighty in her grasp, satisfyingly full. Next to her, Hal Newman, the old man with the beard, grabbed his cans of gasoline. "Let's fry us up some chink," he said.

Shelly grinned at him. "Let's do it." " gasoline

Sue was awakened by the smell of smoke and

Her first coherent thought was that the house was burning down. She tried to leap out of bed, but with the partial coordination of the half-awake, she got tangled up in her sheets and fell to the floor, landing loudly on her side.

She didn't know whether it was her fall or the smoke smell that had awakened her parents, but she heard them talking loudly and excitedly in their bedroom, and she caught the muffled words "fire" and "trees?"

She stood up, untangling herself from the sheets, and saw a thin wisp of smoke drifting through her open window from between the curtains.

She hurried out of her bedroom, down the hall to her parents' bedroom, and through their window she saw an orange-yellow glow in the front yard..

The willows were on fire.

Her father was already dressed and hurrying out of the room, yelling for her to call the fire department, but she stared out the window, transfixed. There were two fires, one at the foot of each tree, and though the blazes were large and growing larger, they had not yet engulfed the trees. They seemed to be burning built-up piles of garbage and debris at the foot of the willows. Across the street, lights were on in the Malverns' and Chapmans' houses, and, silhouetted figures were standing at the windows. There was no sound of sirens, not even from across town, and Sue realized that none of their neighbors had bothered to call the fire department.

"Call!" her father ordered as he ran down the hallway, and she hurried to obey. Her mother was crying, gathering up photos and mementoes, shoving them into her oversize jewelry box.

Sue sped out of the bedroom, down the hall, into the kitchen. She found the list of emergency numbers next to the phone and quickly dialed the Rio Verde Volunteer Fire Department. Chief Simmons answered, "Fire station," he said sleepily.

"There's a fire on our front lawn!" She was practically shouting into the phone, her words all running together. She forced herself to slow down. Behind her, she heard bare feet running across open floor. Her mother, brother, and grandmother. "There's a big fire on our front lawn. My name's Sue Wing. I'm at ten-oh-one East Shadowbluff." : :,

"East Shadowbluff?" The captain was Instantly wide awake .....

"Yes."

"We'll be right there."

By the time she ran outside, where her mother, her grandmother, and John were standing on the stoop---her mother desperately clutching the overstuffed jewelry box--she could already hear the sirens. Her father had turned on the hose and was attempting to spray the fire at the foot of the smaller tree, but the water seemed to be having no effect. They had not gotten to the blaze in time. It was spreading, burning out of control.

Sue caught her grandmother's eye. The old woman was tightly holding on to John's hand. He was staring at the fire, the colors of the flames reflected on his face, and he was smiling.

Influenced.

Her grandmother nodded once at Sue, turned her attention back toward the blaze. She understood. The fire had been deliberately set. The cup hugirngsi wanted to destroy the willow trees.

Sue ran back into the house to grab some pots and pitchers they could fill with water.

The fire truck arrived a few moments later. The flames, by this time, were a high as a man and had blackened the first six feet or so of each trunk. Individual branches had also caught on fire and looked like drooping sparklers, the thin willow leaves igniting quickly and in sequence. The fire lit up a full half of the block, and in its glow Sue could see their neighbors standing in front of their own houses, watching, waiting--not volunteering to help.

There was no hydrant nearby, Sue realized as two fire men jumped off the back of the truck, pulling a large canvas hose.

"Stand backt" one of the men ordered. She and her father moved back onto the porch with the rest of the family. Another man ran around the side of the truck, flipped some levers, pushed some buttons, and a powerful jet of water shot out of the hose held by the other two men, drenching the tree on the left and almost instantly dousing the fire.

Three minutes later, both fires were completely out, and the hose was shut off.

A man walked toward them across the scorched grass, and she recognized Mr. Buford from the burger stand. She and her father met him halfway.

"Thank you!" her father said, taking the fireman's hand and pumping it" Thank you very much for putting out fire!"

Mr. Buford smiled, embarrassed. "That's what we're here for."

"Thank you!" :

"Thank you. This is the first time we've gotten a chance to try this new pump outside of practice." He looked from her father to the rest of the family. "Are you all okay? "We're free," Sue said.

"Thanks."

Chief Simmons walked over. Sue was suddenly embarrassed to be outside and in her pajamas. Neighbors were coming out now, coming by to survey the damage. She saw curiosity on the faces, interest. But no sympathy.

The chief took off his hat, wiped his forehead. "Do you have any idea who might have done this?"

Sue shook her head.

"This was arson, you know."

She nodded. "I know."

"But you don't know who did it? You can't think of anyone who would want to do something like this?"

The cup hugirngsi, she wanted to say, but she sensed that this was neither the time nor place to bring that up. One look toward her grandmother confirmed the rightness of her decision. "I don't know," she said.

"We'll come back in the morning, go over everything, see what we can discover. We're only volunteer, but we're not bad at investigating arson, and we may be able to come up with something. So don't walk out here or touch anything until we go over it first, okay?"

She nodded.

"That goes for your neighbors too."

"No one will touch anything."

"We'll fill out a full report in the morning, too, Your father will have to sign it."

"Then tell him, not me."

The chief looked embarrassed. "I just thought--" "I understand English," her father said, offended. "I'm sorry," Chief Simmons said.

"That okay," her father said.

Sue nodded to the chief, to Mr. Buford, left them talking to her father, and walked back toward the porch. Her mother was still clutching the jewelry box, as though she had not yet realized the fire was out and the danger was over, and her grandmother was still holding tightly on to John's hand John was staring dejectedly toward where the fire had been. She realized that he had not spoken, had not uttered a single word, since he had come outside. Sue moved to her grandmother.

"That was close," she said.

Her grandmother nodded, did not look at her. "Yes," she said. Her voice was flat, completely devoid of emotion. "Yes, it was."

Huell Hinkley had never liked working the lot at night. It wasn't because business was slow at that time, though it was. It wasn't because he would rather be home with Ellie, though he would.

It was because he could never be certain that someone wasn't hiding behind one of the cars.

It was a weird phobia, and not one that should have affected a grown man, but there it was. Although he would never admit it to a living soul, not even to Ellie, that was why he asked Steve to stop by on the nights he worked late. He pretended it was for the company, claiming that he got lonely working at night by himself with no one to talk to, but the truth was that he was scared.

In the daytime, there was no problem. He was king of the car lot. He could be working alone, the whole street could be empty, the whole damn town could be abandoned, and he wouldn't give a rat's ass. But at night it was a different story. At night, he remained a prisoner on the steps of the office, looking over the shiny metal roofs and hoods, peeking through the windshields and windows trying to detect signs of movemenL He would come down from the steps if a browser came by, using the o1> porumity to look behind whatever vehicles had seemed suspicious to him that evening, and he would do the same thing if Steve stopped by, but otherwise he would remain in the office or on the steps, waiting, worrying.

Hinkley stood on the steps now, wondering if someone had crept between the Nova and the Impala on the north east corner of the lot while he'd been on the phone a few minutes ago. He stared at the two cars, at the two cars immediately in front of them, but saw nothing, no shadows no movement.

Did a vampire even have a shadow?

That was what he was worried about. A vampire. The vague fears he'd previously held had coalesced into concrete form within the past week, and had made these past couple of nights a living hell. Once again, he cursed Tanner for making him work evenings.

He glanced to his left, toward the desert. Past the buildings, the sand was purple with dusk, and those sections of hill and butte which had been so clear and so clearly defined only moments before were now little more than hulking amorphous shapes against the darkening sky.

The vampire could be anywhere, He realized. In one of the canyons, in the arroyo, by the river. Behind one of the cars. There was a honk from the street, and he jumped, nearly slipping off the step.

"Popl"

He looked up to see Steve sticking his head out of a police cruiser parked in the middle of the street. "You scared the shit out of me!" he yelled.

"Sorry!" Steve grinned. "I just came by to tell you that I can't stop in tonight! Too many things going on! I'll try to swing by again, though, a little later!"

Hinkley nodded, smiled, and waved, his stomach sinking as his son drove off. His heart was still pounding, and he tried to catch his breath as he scanned the car lot. He had a bad feeling about tonight.

Turning, he walked up the last two steps into the office and closed the door. He switched on the portable black and-white TV on the desk, and sat there, one eye on the

TV, one on the lot, nervously twisting the jade ring on his right pinkie .... Immediately after stepping outside onto Miss Atwood's porch, Emily knew that it had been a mistake to walk rather than drive.

The night air was freezing, more like December than October, but it was not the cold that convinced her she had made a mistake--it was something else, a feeling in the air, a sense that this night was different from others. She had never believed in ESP or pre monitions or any of that psychic stuff, but this was not like a vision. It was something she knew, something she felt deep in her gut, and it frightened her.

She buttoned her jacket against the cold and took her daughter's hand.

"Come on," she said, "it's freezing. We'd better get home."

Pam turned around and waved to Miss Atwood through the window. The piano teacher waved back.

They lived only three blocks from Miss Atwood, but tonight those three blocks seemed like three miles to Emily. She hurried her daughter along the cracked side walk toward home. l ""Miss Atwood said that I'm good enough to start in the advanced book next week," Pam said. Emily, smiled, tried to appear interested.

"That's great." Something was definitely the matter. The night was cold, but it was not windy. She could hear wind, however, and water, and the sounds seemed to come from all around them, not from any particular direction. There was something threatening and unnatural about the combined noises, and she wanted to run down the sidewalk, across the street, and around the block all the way home, locking the door behind her and pulling all the curtains. It was only her own high heels and Pam's presence that kept her from doing so.

Pam continued to chatter on about her piano lesson, going aver mistakes she'd made, difficulties she'd mastered, things her teacher had said, but Emily paid attention to none of it. Her eyes were on the night around them, on the houses that looked abandoned, on the saguaros that looked like people, on the bushes that looked like animals. Nothing seemed right tonight, nothing seemed normal. Her perceptions had been altered, heightened, and everywhere she glanced there was danger. The sounds of wind and water increased in intensity. Then she saw it.

At the end of the block, standing unmoving beneath a weak streetlight, was a large overweight man.

She stopped walking, holding tightly to her daughter's hand. Pam gasped at the force with which her mother held on to her and stopped as well. She'd been talking about how she was looking forward to the advanced piano book because it had more popular songs, but she stopped talking, as she followed her mother's gaze.

"Mom?" she said, her voice frightened.

Emily motioned for her daughter to be quiet. She took a tentative step forward, waiting to see if the figure moved, but the overweight man remained still. She'd been hoping he would step more fully into the light, that she would be able to reassure herself that nothing out of the ordinary was happening here, but her own chills and Pam's voice told her that was not the case. She stared at the unmoving silhouette at the end of the block. Something about the form was familiar but she found that despite the familiarity she was frightened.

"It's Elvis," Pare said softly. What?"

: It's Elvis."

So it was. Emily's heart leaped in her chest. She recognized the figure now. Elvis. Elvis Aaron Presley. The King. The King of Rock and Roll.

They stood stock-still, Emily holding tightly to her daughter's hand.

Between here and the corner, the side walk was a chiaroscuro mosaic, the square sections of cement divided into what looked like huge black-and-white tiles, lightened by porch lights and street lamps, darkened by shadows and night.

She had dreamed of meeting Elvis for most of her life, had faithfully bought every Enquirer and Star that proclaimed Elvis alive, praying it was true, that he had gone into hiding, become part of the federal witness protection program, that he really had been spotted eating at Burger King.

But she knew now, with that same gut certainty that had earlier told her this night was dangerous, that Elvis was dead and had been since

1977."

And that he was standing at the end of the block.

The figure turned, faced them, and now she could see the white suit, the black hair, the sideburns.

"Morn," Pare said, and there was terror in her voice. "Let's get out of here."

Elvis started toward them, moving through the shadows and light, a labored lumber that would have been comical were it not so frighteningly odd.

"Mom!"

The King lurched toward them, grinning at Pam.

"No!" Emily screamed, jerking her daughter by the hand.

And then Elvis was upon them.

Angelina worked slowly but with purpose. There was no hurry. Her sons, David and Neal, were safely within the padlocked storage shed and there was no way they were going to get out.

She used the wire cutters to snip the strands of clothes line that stretched across the small backyard. Mr. Wheeler was right. If she was ever to get into heaven and save her soul from the eternal torment of hell, she had to abide by the word of God.

And, according to the Bible, if her sons disobeyed her, they were to be put to death. The Lord did not tolerate disrespect to parents.

She heard David crying within the shed, heard Neal yelling, pounding on the door in a desperate effort to get out. She smiled to herself as she snipped the last strand of clothesline and let it fall to the dirt.

She'd called Wheeler this afternoon and told him of her decision to put her sons to death for their transgressions, for David's refusal to brush his teeth after dinner and Neal's unwillingness to make his bed, but the pastor had suggested that she offer her children to the Savior as a sacrifice and let Him decide on their punishment. Her heart had swelled when she'd heard those words. The idea that the Lord Jesus Christ would deign to visit her humble trailer filled her with jubilation, and after she'd locked her sons in the storage shed, she'd set about cleaning the inside of the trailer and sprucing up the surrounding yard.

She threw away everything that belonged to her children, and that made the cleaning much easier.

Now it was night, and she knew that it was time to pre pare her sacrifice to the Lord.

She went back inside, took a knife from the drawer in the kitchen, brought along the twine she'd purchased earlier in the day, and walked out to the storage shed. Care fully, not speaking, she unlocked the storage shed door and opened it a crack. As she'd expected, Neal tried to make a run for it, tried to push the door open and flee, but she shoved the knife through the crack, catching him in the cheek. He fell down, screaming, holding his face.

She grabbed David's arm, pulled him out and shut the door, locking it again.

David tried to twist his arm, pull out of her grasp, but she sliced off a chunk of his thigh, the knife easily shaving off a thin piece of skin and muscle, and he went limp in her arms. The blood was flowing, fairly pouring from the wound, but she ignored it and dragged her son across the small backyard.

She tied him to the cross pole of the clothesline, leaving his naked, bleeding body in a reverent position of crucifixion. For good measure, she wrapped some twine around his testicles and tied it. She did the same to Neal on the other clothesline pole. She went back inside, took a shower, put on her pajamas, and crawled into bed to watch an old rerun of The Bob Newhart Show.

Outside, David was silent, but Neal continued to howl well into the night.

She turned off the TV and fell asleep to the music of his screams.

She dreamed of Jesus, and in the morning both of her boys were gone.