Werm moved on to greet other patrons and I finished off my beer. I couldn't much relate to the crazy music they were playing.

Give me cla.s.sic country anytime. Merle Haggard is my troubadour of choice. Marty Robbins was a close second, G.o.d rest his soul. I tapped Souxi on the shoulder as she moved past us with a tray of c.o.c.ktails. I put a ten spot on her tray and whispered in her ear, "Ask the disc jockey to play something you can slow dance to. Something old and sappy. " She gave me a wink and disappeared.

I set my empty beer bottle on the bar to the opening notes of Elvis's "Fools Rush In." "May I have this dance?"

Connie favored me with a flirtatious smile. "I'd love to," she said.

I took her hand, led her onto the floor, and pulled her close as Mr. Presley cautioned about fools rushing in. At least that's what all the wise men said. I'd been called a lot of things in my time, but wise wasn't one of them.

Maybe Melaphia was right about this being a special place. With Connie in my arms I could feel the pull of something elemental, something greater than the two of us. When she laid her head on my shoulder, I forgot all my troubles and just for a minute all was right with the world and rivers were flowing gently to the sea.

I held my woman's warm, vibrant, living body next to mine and something very much like happiness coursed through my undead being. No less an authority than Elvis Aaron Presley crooned that some things were meant to be. Take my hand, he said.

Take my whole life, too.

When Connie tilted her face up to mine, I couldn't help falling in love with her. Forgetting myself, I gathered her closer and bent to kiss her. Just before our lips met, a force arced between us that drove our faces apart again. A thin blue flame sparked in the air in front of us for a split second and then was gone.

A few of the dancers nearby noticed, but they must have thought it was a bar trick, because they turned right back to their partners. Over Connie's shoulder I happened to make eye contact with Seth, who was standing at the bar sipping a beer and wearing a poker face. He'd seen it, too.

The music changed to something with a primitive beat like drums in the jungle, and Connie and I walked back to the bar trying to pretend we weren't shaken by what had just happened.

"What are you drinking?" Seth said casually. "Beer," Connie said.

"I just love a woman of refinement and good taste," Seth said and held up three fingers for Ginger. He pa.s.sed us our bottles and kept one for himself. "Who's that with Jerry?" Seth asked. Any new werewolf in town was always of interest to him.

"It's the woman I've been looking for." Connie lowered her voice and narrowed her eyes at him meaningfully.

"The one you told me about the other night at the swamp?" Seth asked.

"That's the one."

"Has she been with Jerry the whole time?"

"Yep," Connie said.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned."

"Uh-oh," Connie said. "Look who just came in."

That would be Nate Thrasher-with Sally on his arm. "That kid just doesn't have a dab of sense," I said. "I told her he was dangerous."

The music stopped and Werm jumped up on the tiny stage. "Welcome to The Portal. I hope everybody's having a good time!"

The crowd cheered its approval and Werm waited for the noise to die down before he continued his introduction. "For our opening night, we have somebody really special to entertain us. Please give it up for the Lady Chianti!" The crowd cheered again and Werm hopped down from the stage.

"The Lady Chianti?" Seth asked skeptically.

"They say she's a poor man's Lady Chablis," Connie explained.

Speaking of poor men, I saw Otis and Rufus on the edge of their bar stools, clapping like a couple of lunatics. Otis put his thumb and index finger to his mouth and whistled. I'd bet the garage that their bar tab would wrap around the building twice.

"Where did Werm find her?" Rennie joined us again and set a plate of wings down on the bar.

"Double-d.a.m.ned if I know," I said.

"He looks so familiar," Connie said. "Oh, I know where I know him from. I busted him one time."

"For what?" I asked.

"Solicitation," Connie said, glancing at the barmaids meaningfully.

"Ouch," Seth said.

"Well, maybe he-she...whoever, has decided to go straight," I suggested.

The three of them rolled their eyes at me. "Or not," I said.

The lady, dripping with emerald green sequins and spangles, began by belting out some obscure Johnny Mercer tune that I doubt the twenty-somethings in the crowd had ever heard. Still they gravitated forward to get a better look at the performer, who was strutting from one end of the stage to the other, pausing now and then to fling the ends of her fluttering feather boa behind her. It was right about that time that Nate got a gander of Wanda with Jerry, and Jerry got a good look at Nate looking at him and Wanda. What Sally was lacking in judgment she made up for in eyesight, and she spied all three of them. Poor Huey 's googly eyes went every which way.

Seth and Connie and I just looked at one another.

"Oh, s.h.i.t," we said as one.

Twelve.

William "What did that helpless girl ever do to you?" I demanded.

The demon before me looked nonplussed. "Why, whatever do you mean, dear boy?"

"You didn't merely feed. You dismembered her." I peered into his eyes. I desperately wanted to understand the depths of his evil. This creature was one of my own kind. Was he the aberration or was I?

"I did it because I could," he said. "And because it amused me." He smiled broadly, showing a pair of stiletto-like fangs so long I realized he must be the most ancient blood drinker I'd ever encountered. I now realized why I'd seen a hint of his fangs in the public house. He wasn't just being careless. They were hard to disguise because they were large-and he was very, very old.

"Yes, I am," he answered my unspoken question. "Very old indeed. I walked these streets as a Roman centurion, boy. You do not wish to make me angry."

Did he dare to speak to me of anger, that which fueled me, drove me, sustained me? If he had never seen me, he had never seen anger. I seized him by the shoulders and hurled him backward once again. This time he struck the brick wall hard enough to crack the masonry.

He looked at me in shock. "What the devil?" he said. "Why are you so strong? You can't have been a blood drinker more than a few centuries."

I saw no need to enlighten him about my special gift and where it had come from. Though this most ancient vampire possessed the strength of ten blood drinkers due to his years, my voodoo blood, powered by my anger, made no worthy adversaries. He might kill me anyway. But since I cared little for my life, I might as well die fighting the kind of inhumanity I despised.

I pummeled him with my fists until his face dripped with blood. Still he caught me by the throat in one viselike hand and shook me like a cat shakes a mouse. "This grows tiresome," he said, and flung me out onto the street. He dusted himself off, his wounds already healing. He ran an index finger across a gash in his chin right before it closed, put his finger into his mouth, and sucked as an urchin would suck a stick of penny candy.

"You never answered me," he said in the tone of a schoolmaster. "Why are you so strong?"

I scrambled to my feet and launched myself at him. I hit him in the midsection and sent him sprawling back into the alley. I continued forward and leapt on him. My palm struck something hard and I felt the outline of a weapon inside his coat. He made to grab my wrists, but I was too fast for him. I had the blade in my hand before he could stop me.

"Is this what you used on her?" I asked.

He drew back his hand to strike me, but I blocked the blow and brought the blade down on his neck. Blood spurted from his carotid artery and he clutched at it with both hands as if he could staunch the flow.

As soon as I'd cut him, a searing pain doubled me over. I was swept up in confusion. He hadn 't punched or kicked me.

Luckily he was in no shape to take advantage of my distress.

I knew that his knife wound would heal as well, though not as quickly as the superficial cuts I 'd inflicted on him. I was determined to sever this madman's head.

I drew back for the killing blow but he flung me away from him. His head lolled to the side like that of a ghastly doll. Before his body collapsed back into the dirt, I could see that his head dangled from just a small sc.r.a.p of sinew. As I advanced on him again I felt another thunderbolt of pain. Then I heard behind me the cry of "Murder!"

I sprang to my feet and raced down the alley as best I could despite my agony. I did not look behind me. I could hear footsteps, but knew that no mortal could catch me even in my weakened state. When I reached the head-high wooden fence at the end of the alley, I vaulted it. Cries of "G.o.d save us!" echoed behind me as I continued running through the winding pa.s.sages between the tenements until I was far away.

Now my thoughts were brought back to the present by a cry of pain from Diana. It was evident to me why I had been struck by sickness all those years ago outside that Whitechapel tenement. Ulrich, the demon known then as Jack the Ripper, was my grandsire. If I had succeeded in killing him, I would most likely have died. Had he been my sire, my death would have been certain. With one generation removed, I might have survived killing him, but I doubt if I ever would have fully recovered.

Diana screamed again. The s.a.d.i.s.tic monster she was having congress with was hurting her. In that moment I knew that the love for her that I'd carried with me for centuries had died a slow and agonizing death.

When I thought of her innocence on our wedding night, her eagerness to learn how to please me with her body, I was sickened.

There was no way to reconcile the woman she was in life with the blood drinker she 'd become. And why should there be?

Weren't we all demons in the end?

I thought of myself when I was living. I 'd had a kind of innocence as well. As a young man, my vision of evil was the antique, hand-ill.u.s.trated picture of a serpent in the family Bible, inked by one of the monks at the local monastery. Later, when I met Reedrek, I came face-to-face with evil incarnate. But Reedrek himself was like an altar boy compared to his own sire. Ulrich was a Satan unto himself.

I wondered about we who are loath to hurt anyone beyond the temporary sting it takes to drink a human's blood, and those vampires who relish the kill enough to veritably bathe in blood. Clearly, the vampire Diana and I were not the same kind of blood drinker, and any dream I'd had of our reconciliation in undeath was pointless. Forging an alliance with Ulrich put her solidly in the camp of evil.

What troubled me now was not knowing with certainty on which side my son, Will, resided. He 'd committed unthinkable savagery, and yet he'd shown tenderness for a small, defenseless human. I must watch him carefully.

As for Jack, my other "son," I knew without a doubt that he would retain his love for humankind even as a blood drinker. In the hundred and fifty years, give or take, since the night I first saw him, he had never disappointed me in that regard.

More screams brought my thoughts back to Diana. Where was Hugo, the vampire who had protected her for five hundred years? When they were in Savannah, they had been so inseparable that it had been difficult to get her alone to talk to her privately, but lately she'd appeared to abandon him in favor of her new benefactor. It seemed that my lady wh.o.r.e would open her legs for whichever male could help her to build her power and advance her ambitions.

When his grunts of release indicated their foul coupling was over, I peered back through the darkness. If I had any doubt this was the same blood drinker I'd nearly killed in the late nineteenth century, they vanished when I saw the deep scar along his throat.

"There," Ulrich said, zipping up his trousers. "That should give you an extra boost in power for the second part of your proposal to the Council. You should be able to 'knock them dead,' as the humans say."

"Thank you, master," Diana said, reclothing herself. "Your every touch is much appreciated. Do you really think the Council is amenable to my plan?"

"Yes, Diana. I think that as a vampire Renee's voodoo blood will benefit the Council immensely. Think of the power I-I mean they-will be able to control. And more power is of vital importance since the discovery of the prophecy."

My first instinct was to vault the distance between Diana and me to rip her apart with my bare hands and fangs. That she had birthed the brainchild of sacrificing Renee to the Council drove me instantly toward madness. The horror of it nearly brought me to my knees. But I had to bide my time. I was able to overpower this monster Ulrich once, but I 'd seen Diana display her own strength in Savannah, and even with the voodoo blood, I might not succeed in taking on both of them.

"The prophecy." Diana rubbed her arms and looked troubled by something. "When is this abomination supposed to appear in our midst?"

"The dark lords do not seem to know for sure. For all we know, the Slayer may already be among us."

Jack Nate stomped over to where Wanda had fastened herself to Jerry on the dance floor. "Where in the h.e.l.l have you been, woman?" he yelled. "And what are you doing with this sonofab.i.t.c.h?"

"I've been with Jerry. He knows how to treat a woman," declared Wanda. "He ain't always slapping me around like you done."

"And where do you get off calling my mama a b.i.t.c.h?" Jerry demanded. "She was one of your own people, and you treated her like dirt."

"I'll treat whoever I want however I want, and that goes double for my wife!"

"Not no more, it don't," Wanda said, standing tall. "I'm through with you."

Nate stepped forward, grabbed Wanda by the arm, and hauled her toward him. Behind him, Sally said, "Hey! Do you want to be with me or her?"

"Shut up, you cheap little hooker," Nate said.

Jerry started to go after Nate, but before he could take a step, Huey the bodyguard got between them, opened his mouth as wide as he could, and bit down on the biceps of the arm Nate held Wanda with.

Looking at Nate, I couldn't help but think: cheap hooker, fifty dollars; drinks at a goth club, fifteen dollars; getting bitten for the very first time by someone who wasn't a fellow werewolf? Priceless.

The look on Nate's face, sure enough, was something to behold. It was one thing to be bitten by a fellow wolf you were having a regular wolf fight with. But having a more or less ordinary-looking human put the bite on you with a set of normal h.o.m.o sapiens choppers had to be a new experience.

Nate shook him off, and Huey went flying backward, taking a big chunk of Nate's biceps with him. Nate roared in pain and Huey wound up knocking three or four clubgoers in different directions like so many bowling pins. That got the people they knocked over all riled up, and before you know it, people all over the room were pushing, shoving, and punching.

Seth, Connie, and I started forward, pulling folks off of other folks and trying to calm people down. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sally pull Wanda's hair about the same time that Jerry landed a punch on Nate's jaw. On the other end of the room, I saw Rufus and Otis going toward the stage to rescue the lovely Lady Chianti from the unpleasantness.

About this time, I thought about the night I averted a ma.s.sive fight at the swamp bar, and I wondered if the same thing would work here. But as I a.n.a.lyzed the situation I realized two things. One, in the swamp bar, I was afraid I was going to have to be a partic.i.p.ant. And two, here in Werm's bar, I was just having too much fun as an observer. Besides, the main combatants were werewolves, and my glamour probably wouldn't work on them with all these people around anyway. Otis and Rufus crawled up onto the stage. The lady reached down to give them each a hand, but Rufus, in his inebriated state, missed her proffered hand-as large and as strong as it was-and instead got a hank of her long, flowing hair.

To say that the lady flipped her wig over Rufus would not be an understatement. He came away holding up the hair of his lady fair like a knight showing off the favor he had been given by a n.o.ble maiden after winning a tournament. A drinking tournament maybe. As drunk as he was, it look him a couple of beats to figure out why he had a handful of hair. Perhaps in the melee he figured the lady had been scalped by a roaming band of wild Indians. Otis worked it out a little faster since he was on his feet on the stage by then and had gotten a closer look at the lady's face-and probably her five o'clock shadow-in the footlights.

Otis wisely excused himself and jumped down from the stage. The last I saw of him, he was staggering out the door, leaving the lady-as well as the bar tab-to the better man.

Chianti, whose real name I found out later was Eric, hauled Rufus to his feet, slapped her wig back on her head, and like the trouper she was, continued the show. By the time she started in on the high -leg kicks, Rufus had figured things out and was looking for a graceful exit. The younger patrons, who had crowded the stage earlier, were totally ignoring the fight behind them.

Instead they attempted to form themselves into a mosh pit and regaled Rufus with shouts of "Dive! Dive!"

He dove. Right about that time the moshers decided to renege on their implied support, and poor Rufus went sprawling.

Fortunately for him, he was so pickled I doubt if he felt a thing.

About that time, Werm materialized at my elbow. "Jack, do something!" he said.

"What?"

"You know. That glamour thing. Put the whammy on 'em. They're busting up the bar stools. We're losing money here. Your money."

That got my attention and made it worth a try. "Oh, okay." I thought about having people dance again, but I wanted to try something new, so I concentrated on a different command.

Don't worry. Be happy.