His wife.

Paul couldn't stop his gaze from lifting to the arched doorway and the high foyer and the flight of stairs beyond it and the small patch of balcony that could barely be glimpsed from his angle. He knew the vampire had seen his gaze shift, so he said, "My wife's upstairs. She's sleeping. I'll get your water for you."

He asked Tabitha Drake if she wanted anything. Her head lolled in a slow, uninterested shake.

Paul had to keep from running to the kitchen, desperate as he was to keep the vampire from exploring his home, even if just with his eyes. He splashed the water so hard into the drinking glass that most of it sprayed back out. The couple ice cubes he added as an afterthought floated dismally to the surface, lonely as two small islands in a deep sea.

The Drakes, it would seem, hadn't moved. Tabitha sat in a brooding ball, her hands fisted in her lap, blank eyes focused on a wall where a large painting would go whenever they got around to finding and hanging it.

The vampire's delicate sip barely disturbed the ice islands. He chunked the glass down on the glass table and said, "I suppose I must tell you what happened to Amanda."

Chapter Thirty-One.

"As I've mentioned," Drake began, his voice strained as though his chest was heaving forth words that didn't want release, "Amanda wished to become one of us. But it was impossible. Frederick and I were in total agreement: Ours was no life for her.

"We witnessed the changes coming over her in those first years. It was as if she became ravaged by a disease that left its mark in small increments of destruction, but it was just normal aging-a process most people never notice in others because they're going through it at the same steady rate. In our case, Frederick's and mine..." Drake waved off the rest as obvious.

"In 1878, Amanda was a girl of nineteen, but by 1893, she was thirty-four. The changes that occurred to her over those fifteen years were subtle, but she and we noticed them with utmost dread. We held, if not the cure, at least the strongest treatment known. Held it in our saliva and could have easily injected it into her bloodstream.

"But tell me, Paul," he said, "what would you have done?"

Paul fervently hoped the question was rhetorical and the vampire would get on with his terrible tale. But as the silence lengthened to the point where he could again hear his home creak and settle, could imagine the tail-dragging rodents sniffing and scratching outside, he knew that Miles Drake awaited a response.

His thoughts went to Tuck, his blue-eyed boy who lay peacefully asleep under a thin blanket some two dozen paces from the murderous creature his father had invited into their home.

"I think," Paul said. And that was it, for there were too many conflicting images in slippery black and white and gray for one sharply defined response to rise above. Everything and nothing came immediately to mind. Just: I think.

The vampire chuckled. "Exactly."

And then Amanda Drake was visited by another affliction. She'd taken ill, or that's what Miles and Frederick believed, until one of the women in their caravan took the men aside to explain what should have been obvious: Miles Drake's thirty-four-year-old daughter was pregnant.

Why was it so surprising? She and her perpetually youthful Frederick had lived together as husband and wife for fifteen years, and yet Drake had almost forgotten to think of his two dearest friends with bodies pressed and limbs intertwined in that earthly manner. It was true that other human and vampire couplings had resulted in births, but Frederick, with his odd mix of flighty fears and blood courage had seemed neither masculine nor feminine, but sexless.

Obviously, he'd not given the young vampire enough credit.

The condition was diagnosed in Springfield, Illinois. When they hit the outskirts of Keokuk, Iowa in her seventh month, complications arose.

"So much blood," Miles Drake murmured in a fluttery voice nearly lost to the high ceiling of the Highsmith home.

Tabitha jiggled one leg as if to circulate the blood.

Blood. Seemingly the theme of the evening.

A table clock, a metallic geometric contraption of Darby's, signified the official arrival of midnight with twelve flat electronic and anticlimactic beeps.

The vampire cleared his throat of accumulated emotion. His face settled like mottled marble. "Frederick and I were not aware of the situation as it unfolded. It was daylight and we and others of our kind had stashed ourselves away in a weather-rotted barn. At nightfall the women came to us with word that there had been complications and the baby hadn't survived. Amanda, they told us, was fighting. Their faces as they brought us this news...they were as white as our own."

Drake paused for a sip from his drinking glass. Paul could see through the bottom of the tilted glass all the way up and into the pink mouth, the yellow teeth parted to channel the water.

The old vampire gasped like a child who'd drank too fast, and wiped the chin dribble with his necktie. "They kept slipping into her tent with fresh rags which they'd then try to smuggle past us so we couldn't see their condition." He gave a wan smile. "As if they could hide the fresh scent of blood from Frederick and me."

After a brief silence, the vampire casually added, "She was dying."

He'd had well over a century to deal with it.

"Frederick was beside himself, much more distraught than I'd ever seen him-though not as much as I ever would." Drake's dry chuckle after those words chilled Paul. It alluded to yet another story he was afraid he was going to hear.

"This scene had been played out before, vampires and daylighters waiting anxiously outside a tent, listening to screams of pain while harried women scuttled about with hot water and blankets. But this time it was different. I could tell by the faces of those scuttling women under the low moon. Much later that night, one of them told Frederick and me that we should visit my daughter. This woman, she had the tired but relaxed manner of one who has graciously accepted defeat. Her urgency was gone."

Amanda lay still, her blood scent hanging wet and heavy in the air. Drake could hear Frederick sobbing softly behind him in the gloomy tent as the panic welled like a malignancy in his own chest.

"She lay chilled by her own cooling blood on the sheets and tick mattress," the vampire reported. "She was still conscious though, her eyes so alive they were difficult to look into."

"Take me," the woman demanded of her father and lover. "Hurry," she said in a dying whisper. "Be too late...soon."

It seemed impossible to be dying with eyes so bright and shiny and expectant. When one of the midwives reentered the tent with a lantern, Drake saw sympathy and regret etched on the woman's face, but also something more uplifting. Yes, your daughter is dying, the expression said, but it was a condition her father and lover could-and obviously would-correct.

Miles Drake felt dizzy, befuddled, nearly drunk under the weight of Amanda's bloodscent. It at once enticed and repelled him. His senses reeled. It was as though he were dying himself, but much worse than slipping from existence in his own darkened bedroom with Frederick's sharp teeth and fetid breath so near.

As the battle of enticement and repugnance raged within him, he heard another choked sob. Frederick looked even less composed than usual, his jaw throbbing, nostrils flaring, his eyes brightening and dimming in the flickering kerosene light. The young vampire studied the older man's face for an answer. Finding nothing, he bent to the dying Amanda and took one limp hand.

"Frederick...now," she croaked. She tried to say more, but her jaws tightened in pain.

Drake imagined he could see a fresh black pool emerging from between her legs as her bloodscent drew stronger. He placed a hand on his friend's shoulder and tried to convince himself that this was virtually the same as holding his daughter, for he could not trust himself to come closer to the dying woman.

"Don't," he said softly so that his daughter couldn't hear, but of course she did.

Her pale, sweat-stained face met his. "Why?" she asked him, her voice little more than a breath.

She gave a strangled cry, grasping her lover with both hands. "Frederick, I'll die," she said.

Drake's bedside view was mercifully blocked at that moment by the kneeling Frederick, but he heard her calling his name. That couldn't be avoided.

"Father, you can't..." Her voice stunned.

"But I could," said the vampire in Paul's living room, salty pools forming in each eye. He rubbed swiftly, angrily at the gathering moisture. The creature's lips drew tight over his rotted teeth in a mask that turned grief to rage. "You wanted to know so much, Paul," he growled. "So now you must hear all."

His longstanding refusal to allow Amanda to join them in the most primal sense had never before been questioned by Frederick, who was all but paralyzed with self-revulsion. The last thing he'd ever wanted was for the woman he loved to truly become one with him.

"And yet, as she lay dying," Drake murmured, "my thoughts turned to the scene of fifteen years before, when a young and healthy girl had saved her father's life with the gift of her lover's kiss. It had been the ultimate act of love, and now I had the opportunity to do the same, and all I could do was stand my ground with nostrils flaring in blood anticipation. With that one short directive-Don't-I'd condemned my daughter to death."

Drake sat rigid, his body concave in the plush sofa. "Sentenced her to mortal death, but perhaps saved her mortal soul." His shoulders rolled. "Who knows? Who knows?"

Paul wished he'd brought himself a glass of water from the kitchen. Or something stronger. His lips parted with an audible dry-mouth smack. "I'm sorry. I didn't know..."

"Didn't know what?" Drake snarled. "That vampires have feelings? But you haven't heard the whole story, Paul. Not by any means. Hear me to the end, and see how much pity you feel for me then."

Somewhere outside the door, the night was broken by whipcracks of sound dulled by distance. A burst of crackling in the night. Something came over the old man's face, but it was soon replaced by his usual mottled rigidity.

Firecrackers, Paul told himself. Let it be firecrackers.

Chapter Thirty-Two.

Frederick Darrow changed from the moment the light faded in Amanda's eyes. He became more withdrawn, less timid. They traveled faster and more frequently as the emboldened young vampire exposed the growing clan to ever-greater risks.

"There was a problem in Chicago," Drake said. "Suffice to say that we fled the slum tenements we'd temporarily called home. This was in 1895, and the arm of the law had lengthened considerably since my conversion. The telegraph wire had become the telephone line. The automobile and trains and the Pinkertons had shrunk our world, made it more difficult to elude trouble. In St. Louis, for instance, I'd read an article in the Missouri Gazette about a marauding caravan that seemed to precede missing persons reports across the nation.

"They were writing about us, Paul. The first time I'd ever heard of that happening. We fled to the rural South. It was like another country back then, the sticky air, the dusty roads that the best maps couldn't find. Our destination was New Orleans with its French and Spanish and Negro influences so unlike the rest of the nation. No one spoke the same language-some tongues appeared to be made up on the spot-so how organized could they be in our persecution? Besides, we imagined that the blood would run richer, hotter, darker, spicier in this exotic land."

Drake fluttered his hand. "I don't know what we were expecting," he said impatiently. "And it doesn't matter now because we weren't to discover the properties of New Orleans blood."

The vampires were under strict orders to be on their best behavior as their humid trek took them deeper into the swamp country. Although they passed sharecropper shacks housing barefoot blacks and mulattoes in rags, and knew that these people would never be missed, the clan ignored them. They made do with the lifeblood of the occasional stolen goat-a very poor and temporary substitute at best-but Chicago was too near in their memories. And so were their pursuers.

Such self-constraint came at a terrible price. The vampires, numbering some thirty in all, and cared for by a roughly equal number of daylighters, lay inert in the blaze of day, their sweltering forms covered by horse blankets and hidden under the floorboards of wagons. They awoke with teeth chattering, bathed in sweat and racked with unquenchable thirsts that left them feverish with rage and desire and eying their caregivers in ways that made some slip out before the next nightfall.

Outside of Memphis, a young vampire slipped from the caravan upon the discovery of a farmer's dry husk. A female of the species was put down near the Louisiana border when, in a frenzy, she attacked and killed her human mate. Drake, who partook of the execution along with his partner, was horrified to find that vampire blood sated his needs as readily as his usual prey. He uneasily watched Frederick's slow smile as his friend licked the last of the flow from his lips.

The daylighters who witnessed the mercy killing of the renegade must have whispered their misgivings to the others, for seven more were missing by the next sunset.

Three vampires, two men and a woman, retaliated for the betrayal by killing four clan daylighters and disappearing before Drake and Darrow could intervene.

"We were falling apart even before Chitimacha Bend, but that proved to be very nearly the end of us," Drake said. He let out a sigh. "The James Gang had their Northfield and the Daltons had Coffeeville. What we had was Chitimacha Bend, Lousiana."

The dwindling clan crossed the Mississippi River at Natchez. They drew dark, suspicious glances as they passed squalid settlements of Houma and Coctaw Indians, chain gangs clearing sugar cane and skeletal sharecroppers working tobacco fields and watermelon patches. They cut through forests of ash, pine, elm and red gum, following the rich, sluggish Atchafalaya ever southward. The air became hotter and wetter until the vampires gnashed their teeth in heated fury even in their sleep, dreaming red dreams and awakening with sore mouths and bloody gums.

"It was the relatively cool swamp of cypress and tupelos that stopped us outside of the town," said Drake. "Olan Buck was a daylighter back then and it was his decision. A good one, for under the thick canopies of Spanish moss we hid from both the sun and our pursuers, whose dogs we'd occasionally hear in the distance. It was still hot, unbearably so, and the mosquitoes took more blood than we ever did, but we were able to evade the hounds under the land's strong scents of mud, muskrat, raccoon, red pepper and wild hog. There were no more killings and no one deserted the clan for the next several days."

They'd found safe quarters for three days and nearly three nights before running into trouble. It was about the middle of that third night when a quivery young vampire burst into the clearing where Drake was inadequately feasting with some of the others on the rats within constant reach. They'd long ago found that animal blood dulled their cravings like a pacifier calms a baby anxious for mother's milk. It doesn't feed the hunger, but temporarily dims the need.

"This young vampire-his name was Tolliver; yes, the same-positively shook in his boots as he reported to me. The story we eventually got from him was that he and his young wife had accompanied Frederick on a forbidden foray into town. And yes, they'd found a lone child, and yes, Frederick brought it down while the others watched, and yes, Frederick was seen. He'd grown incautious with thirst, but that's no excuse.

"At least Frederick had the decency to draw the enraged townspeople away from our camp so that when he was caught, hours later, he was miles away."

"He traveled by day?"

The vampire smiled. Even the old man's daughter showed appreciation for the comment, or maybe it was just a play of shadows in the wee hours. "Thank you for your concern, Paul," Drake said. "But it was still an hour or so before dawn when our small scouting party saw the brave hunters drag Frederick back in chains, their hounds baying in triumph. We watched them from a copse of water oaks high on a hill overlooking the shabby town's mosquito-infested standing water and its tarpaper shacks. Underfed chickens squawked at the men's ankles as they struggled through the red mud. Truly a dreadful place. Chitimacha Bend had no jail, the nearest being in St. Martinville, the parish seat, so the townspeople decided on the earthen cellar of the general store."

Tolliver and his wife convinced Drake that they'd gone unseen-perhaps the only reason they were allowed to live. And, being certain that Frederick wouldn't turn the clan in, the master vampire retired for the day.

"Naturally," he said, "I checked in with him."

Paul stirred in a seat that had seemed comfortable when the endless evening had begun. "What do you mean, you checked in with him? You went back?"

Drake gave his host a sharp, penetrating stare. "I won't tell you all of our secrets, but we have ways of knowing things that you wouldn't even begin to understand."

"We have ways of knowing..."

Paul's eyes once more flitted to the second-story balcony beyond the doorway where one might listen in comparative secrecy.

However the feat was accomplished, Drake "saw" his old friend the following day.

"If there hadn't been so many men, so many dogs, he'd not have been taken. But fortune hadn't been with him and they now had him chained like an animal to a long stake pounded deep into the mud cellar floor. He'd been beaten and the hounds had taken a taste. That I'd seen earlier, but by this time I saw nearly flawless flesh as he lay there in the dirt, his clothing all but torn from his body. I could imagine the whispered rumors that would make the rounds of pig farms and chicken-wire shacks when Frederick's self-styled jailers viewed that smooth, unbruised face.

"His eyes were closed as I floated above him, but I knew he was watching my prostrate form as carefully as I watched his. Then my attention was diverted by the angry crowd gathering outside the makeshift prison, and I knew where events were leading."

Drake took a deep breath. Released it. And continued.

"The constable-I believe that was the term used for their part-time lawman-was more courageous and level-headed than I'd expected. I overheard him telling the crowd that he'd telegraphed the parish sheriff and had been promised a detail in the morning to pick up the prisoner. But as events progressed, it looked as though they'd arrive too late. I prayed to whichever gods consider the prayers of vampires that what was to happen would wait till sundown."

A single beep sounded, an electronic trill. Darby's confounded timepiece. Digital numbers in a soft shade of lavender indicated the time as, not twelve-thirty as he'd suspected, but one o'clock. He'd missed the half-hour trill and it had been a full hour since last he'd considered the time of night. His world-his very concept of physics and reality-had been upended in the space of an hour.

"Maybe our particular god was listening after all," Drake said, flippantly. "At any rate, I awoke at sundown figuring the issue was probably decided and my best friend most likely dead. But the daylighters who'd watched from the water oaks told me otherwise. I joined them under the moonlight to see that the crowd had tripled in size from the previous day as word had gotten out to the outlying farmers and travelers. They carried torches, lanterns and guns. They threw rocks and issued threats to the constable who'd refused to turn Frederick over to them, and I silently egged them on."

"What's that?" Paul said as a crack in the story brought in a little light from the outside world. "I guess I missed your last comment."

The vampire smiled. "No you didn't. You heard better than you give yourself credit. I egged them on. Keep listening and you'll understand.

"I said that the constable appeared to be a good and courageous man, and that's true to the extent that he held out all of that day and half the night before losing control of my chained friend."

"Couldn't you have...done something?" Paul asked.

"Could we have marshaled our forces and gone to war against these swamp creatures? Yes, perhaps. But our numbers had been so depleted that the outcome against fists, clubs, shotguns and dogs would have been very much in doubt. But it mattered little at that point. Listen on.

"We watched and laughed softly among ourselves as we watched Frederick being dragged from his prison, pushed and shoved ahead of the crowd. His face had been freshly bruised and battered, all marks that would have cleared up in little time, but his expression of blind panic was sincere. Frederick had always been like that, a scurrying chipmunk of a man with an eye open for danger at all times, though less so after Amanda's death. That he could take the risks he took attested more to his lack of self-control than to confidence or courage.

"The swamp creatures pulled and prodded and shoved and dragged him onto the back of a horse and sallied forth like a midnight parade, heading straight toward us. At the last minute, we realized that they meant to use that very copse for their purposes, and we quickly slipped away to what we hoped was a safer patch of trees."

Drake paused. "You've probably seen lynchings dramatized in film or on television. But in real life it's much more barbarous. When the actors do it, they play the scene for outrage, for brutal, selfish justice. Real-life lynchings, on the other hand, provide the common man with an electric thrill unlike anything they've ever hoped to witness. They enjoy themselves immensely.

"Let me explain, Paul. The act of dragging Frederick out of the cellar and onto the back of a horse had stripped him of most of his clothing, giving the boys and even a handful of bold women accompanying the mob a thin and battered body to snicker and jeer at. They spilled him repeatedly from the horse, the children threw rocks and the men stomped him and dribbled foamy spit upon him.

"We were no longer smiling as we watched in hiding. This was too much. He'd survive, but it would take his body quite some time to heal from this outrage.