Shari. Jack's first attempt at making a vampiress.

She looked very different from the last time I'd seen her. Her honey blond hair had turned silvery white; her warm amber eyes, a glimmering gray. Fey as the fabled Sidhe. Her burial clothes were torn at the sleeve and shredded at the hem; her bare feet were b.l.o.o.d.y.

"William," she said again, as though she couldn't believe her sight. "You've come to save me?" she breathed, awestruck.

I couldn't bring myself to tell her otherwise. "I'll do my best, girl."

Then her gaze shifted from me to Eleanor. She moved forward and put out her hand as though we'd just arrived at a party and needed introductions. "I'm Shari," she said.

Without releasing her contact with me, Eleanor made an effort to take Shari's insubstantial hand. "I'm Eleanor."

Then they both looked at me for what should come next. Where was Jack when I truly needed him? "Are you all right?" I asked, ridiculous as it might seem.

Shari seemed to shrink inside her pale glow, then nervously glanced around the circle of hideous onlookers. "They don't bother me much, now that I have protection. The lady-Melaphia told me what to do when they try to scare me."

"And what is that?"

Obediently, Shari bowed her head and began a low chant.

Jack I had to go to William's office at the harbor warehouse to help his foreman, Tarney Graham, work out a schedule of men to watch the harbor and waterfront for anything suspicious-like, say, a shipment of coffins and old dirt-that could indicate a vampire invasion.

As I left the building I felt a presence in the shadows: someone watching me. I acted as if I heard nothing, continuing down the boardwalk a ways. Someone behind me matched his steps to mine, thinking that the clatter of my cowboy boot heels would mask the noise of his own footsteps. I wheeled and with one blow caught my stalker in the chest, knocking him to the ground.

"I thought I told you never to try to sneak up on me," I said, extending my fangs for show.

Lamar Nathan Von Werm, or just plain old Werm, as William and I referred to him, got to his feet and dusted himself off. "I was just practicing my vampire...sneaking skills, that's all."

A short time ago, Werm was nothing but a vampire wannabe. He was unique among the goth crowd he ran with in that he 'd been clever enough to figure out that vampires really do exist. Werm had actually researched vampires and he made me for one fair and square when he witnessed my lack of reflection in a downtown shop window. He'd stalked me for a while until I caught him in the act. After that, he begged me to make him a vampire, which I of course refused to do.

It was only through sheer dumb luck, if that's what you want to call it, that he happened to be in the wrong place at the right time and finally got his wish. Reedrek had forced William to make Werm a blood drinker. Werm hadn't quite gotten over his romantic notions of vampirism or "the brotherhood of the blood," as he liked to call it. He had a lot to learn, and, unfortunately, William had made it my job to teach him. Somebody had to. Anybody who would willingly choose this existence was too dumb to come in out of the sun.

"Vampire sneaking skills?" I hissed. "Listen here, junior, vampires don't have to sneak."

"How else do you surprise your victims so they don't run away before you get a chance to bite their neck and suck their blood?"

He shrugged his narrow shoulders. He'd been pale even before he vamped out. Now, with his white blond hair and punk outfit, he looked like some scaled-down version of Johnny Winter without the guitar.

I stared at him, disgusted. "If I ever catch you preying on an innocent human being, I 'm going to drain you and leave your dry husk out in the sun to vaporize, you understand me? Where have you been getting your blood?" "At the butcher shop, like you taught me," Werm whined. "But no matter how much pig's blood I drink, it's almost like I'm...

still hungry."

"You'll get used to it. Just remember, not killing humans without cause is what separates us from the old lords, the evil ones."

He shivered. "Like Reedrek. I know. But can't I bite an evildoer, some really nasty criminal?"

Werm knew that William and I dealt out vigilante justice from time to time. When there was a particularly evil human on a murder or rape spree in Savannah, we would not suffer that person to live. My sire and I didn 't have to concern ourselves with such niceties as due process, and there was no potential for mistaken ident.i.ty because we could literally smell out evil. We served as judge, jury, and executioner.

"You don't have the chops yet to make sure you've got the right bad guy. You might go hurting some good ol' boy by mistake.

Leave the justice-bringing to me and William." I winced, realizing I sounded more like William every day-keeping Werm on a need-to-know basis.

"Then what do I have the chops to do?" Werm wailed. "I'm a vampire, for Pete's sake. I want to do something...vampirey."

Werm held out his leather-clad arms and let them fall to his sides. "William promised to teach you more about being a vampire.

Have you learned anything juicy?"

His face fell when I explained that William hadn 't really had a chance to start teaching me, what with making Eleanor and working on vampire politics. "I did learn one thing that's pretty interesting, though," I said.

"What?" Werm asked eagerly.

"Whatever traditional powers vampires usually have, we have 'em in spades and more besides." I pa.s.sed on William's theory about how the voodoo blood made me, Werm, William, and Eleanor special. I skipped the part about how Werm probably got shorted in the skills department because he was such a weak specimen to begin with. There's nothing more pitiful than a vampire with low self-esteem.

"So it's just a matter of figuring out what your special talent is," I continued.

"Cool. Maybe I've got X-ray vision." Werm brightened at the thought.

I didn't need X-ray vision to see the cogs of his little mind turning. He'd be at the beach bars on Tybee tomorrow night as soon as the sun went down, hoping to see through some wet T-shirts. Girl T-shirts, I hoped. At least that would keep him busy and out of my hair. "Yeah. Maybe so," I told him.

"Hey, did you think to ask William if vampires can fly, like in Anne Rice novels?"

I rolled my eyes. "Don't get hung up on those fictional vampires. Cool or not, those are just fairy tales."

"Some of what shows up in her books and other movies is true, though," Werm countered.

He had a point. Bram Stoker had picked up on the fact that a vampire had to travel with the soil of his homeland. Almost no literary vamps cast a reflection. I think some of the vampire writers through the years had some good and not-so-human sources to draw on. "So why don't you climb up on the boathouse roof and see if you can catch an updraft, " I suggested. Our walk had pulled us even with William's yacht launch. "If you don't take off, you'll land in the water and you won't feel a thing."

"And ruin this?" Werm ran his palms down the front of his black leather jacket.

"Hey, you don't know until you try."

"I guess you're right," he said, eyeing the roof. He left his jacket with me and let me give him a boost onto the lowest edge of the roof. Then he gingerly made his way up the side as best he could in those sissified boots he wore. He crossed over to the side facing the water and teetered on the edge.

"Go ahead. Jump!" I shouted. "Concentrate!" d.a.m.ned if the little devil didn't flap his arms like a chicken when he jumped. It didn't help. He landed in the river with a surprised yelp. I crossed over to give him a hand out of the drink. "It looks like you're earthbound, my friend," I observed. My young protege looked like a drowned wharf rat.

"Your turn," he sputtered.

"Oh, yeah. Right."

"Hey. At least I had the guts to try." Werm, still dripping river water, started flapping his elbows and clucking.

I had to laugh. "All right. You win. I'll try it."

I pulled off my boots and climbed onto the roof, feeling like a complete fool. As I made my way to the edge closest to the water, I hoped William wouldn't come along and see me, 'cause I'd never live it down. But still, what if I could fly? William once got so mad at me-over a jacket of all things-that he grabbed me by the collar and levitated us both off the ground. If he could do that...

I stood on the edge, looking out toward the mouth of the river, and took a deep breath. I smelled the life all around me. The river creatures, the lush vegetation in the marshes, the sea itself. I thought about my place in the world and my overlong undead existence among the living. I was an unnatural being and still somehow I belonged here in this old port city, same as everything and everyone else. I closed my eyes, stepped into s.p.a.ce, and waited for the water to come to me.

But it didn't.

I opened my eyes again. I was hovering three feet over the water.

"d.a.m.n! Look at you!" Werm whooped.

I looked back at him, sending my concentration all to h.e.l.l, and then I landed in the river feetfirst with a splash. I swam between the moored boats and Werm gave me a hand up onto the boardwalk. He laughed and did a little dance. "What was it like?" he asked, clearly awestruck.

"I don't know. It only lasted a second." I shook myself like a spaniel and sat down to put my boots back on. "It was weird. It was unreal." I felt kind of stunned. I mean, how are you supposed to feel when you first realize you can defy gravity? Had I been able to do this all along? A guy just doesn't go around jumping off things to see if he can fly. If it hadn't been for William's remarks about what the power of the voodoo blood might mean for us, I would never even have thought of trying it.

"You've got to practice," Werm said firmly.

"Practice?"

"You know, learn to control it. Learn to use it."

I leaned my head over to get the last of the water out of my ear. "I guess it could come in handy in a fight," I said. "Or to get somewhere really fast, if I got good at it. But I'd have to be careful where and how I used it. I mean, I can't very well have humans see me jetting through the air like the freakin' Flying Nun."

"Who?" Werm said.

"Never mind," I said with a wave. "Before your time."

Werm thought about this for a second. "I guess you're right. What else did William teach you about us and the things we can do?"

I got to my feet and started walking back to where my 'Vette was parked. It was kind of embarra.s.sing to think that William still had kept me in the dark about everything except the bare minimum I needed to know to survive. I decided that I was going to be straight with Werm from the beginning-tell him everything that I knew. Only problem was, I still didn't know much.

I searched my mind for something I could tell Werm to help keep him out of trouble, because I had the sinking feeling that keeping Werm out of trouble was going to be a tall order. At the very least, I could tell him something interesting. I thought for a second and settled on a very important subject. And I sure could have used some guidance on the subject from William myself.

"I can tell you what I discovered on my own not long ago," I told Werm. "Something very important."

"What?" he asked eagerly.

I put one arm around his scrawny shoulder as we ambled down the walkway. "My boy, let me tell you about the birds and the bees-and the vampires."

Two.

Jack By the time I got through telling Werm the ins and outs-if you'll pardon the expression-of vampire s.e.x, we were in the car and on the way to Werm's house. Basically, Werm had just about decided never to have s.e.x again. The again part was debatable, in my opinion, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Since I 'd only met one female vamp in my hundred-and-fifty-year tour of duty as a bloodsucker, the Werminator had a pretty good chance of remaining a vamp-virgin forever.

Some boys just can't catch a break.

Werm had set up housekeeping in his parents' wine cellar after his father had boarded up the place when his mother went into rehab. The society ladies who lunch in Savannah rarely do so without half a dozen mimosas, or whatever the h.e.l.l those type of women drink, and it seemed Matron Von Werm was regularly pickled by the time hubby got home of an evening.

Anyway, Werm had moved a coffin in there and was safe and secure in the bowels of the family homestead. He'd told them he was rooming with a friend in a section of town so bad that he knew his folks would never be caught dead there, so he didn't have to worry about them dropping in and discovering the lie. All the while, Werm could have been caught undead right under their very noses. Or more precisely, under their kitchen.

If they ever did decide to return to the wine cellar, they'd have two unpleasant surprises: their son white as a sheet in an ebony coffin and their most priceless bottles of vino gone, since Werm was in the process of selling them on eBay for pocket money.

Werm remarked that he didn't know which his parents would find more upsetting.

After dropping him off to do whatever it was that he did alone in the cellar, I headed for William 's house to see how the vampirizing process was going with Eleanor. Not that I could help worth a d.a.m.n. My one run at making a female vamp was a disaster. If William lost Eleanor, he'd be devastated. Way past needing any help from me.

Winding my way through Orleans Square, I found myself in pitch-black darkness-like I'd been struck blind. That doesn't work too well when you're driving. I slammed on my brakes in the middle of the street. What the h.e.l.l? A chill shrouded me and a p.r.i.c.kle of fear touched my spine at the nape of my neck. Now, when a vampire feels fear, it 's a big deal. I mean, we're the ones with the big, sharp teeth. We're the ones who deal out the gooseb.u.mps. So whenever something spooks me, it gets my attention. I sat still, trying to think what to do, and just as suddenly as it had come, the darkness disappeared, followed by a jolt of evil I could almost taste. And for some stupid reason, I thought of Shari, my failure at making a female vamp. I put the car back in gear and sped to William's mansion.

I stepped into the kitchen and greeted Melaphia, William's housekeeper and for all intents and purposes adoptive daughter.

She's five generations removed from the voodoo priestess Lalee. Melaphia usually doesn 't come on duty until she's seen her daughter, Renee, off to school, but as William had told me at Eleanor 's, Mel had come over early today-or stayed late, depending on your point of view-in case William needed her. What was left unsaid, I knew, was that Melaphia wanted to be there for William, because if Eleanor died, he would need Melaphia 's strong, calm, and capable shoulder to lean on. Not to mention her voodoo chants and potions to help Eleanor's lost soul the way she'd helped Shari's.

"How are things going downstairs?" I asked apprehensively. Mel was sitting at the kitchen table, surfing the Web on a notebook computer.

"So far, so good," she said. "All we can do is wait."

I heaved a sigh and Mel looked up from the screen. "What's wrong with you? You look whiter than usual."

"I had a weird feeling coming over here. Are you sure everything's all right?"

She paused only an instant before closing the computer with a snap. "Let's go downstairs and check."

The pa.s.sage to William's underground lair was lined with little recessed altars flickering with colored candles. Each color and each candle had its own meaning in Melaphia's ancient religion, a religion that I didn't understand but whose power I respected. A tuft of blond hair-Shari's hair-was tucked into one of the recesses, reminding me that there were older and meaner things than me out in the wide world. And that some mistakes can last forever. That really gave me the creeps, but not as much as what I saw next.

When Mel and I reached the chamber, William was lying on the floor, in front of Eleanor's coffin, sightless eyes staring upward.

Mel went to her knees on one side of William and I went to the other. She slapped his cheek sharply.

"William! Come back!" she commanded. "Something has gone wrong."

William As she finished her chant, Shari's gaze took on a feral gleam and the light around her flickered. "Don't look!" she said under her breath.

I turned away, taking Eleanor along with me. The murmuring heightened to a dull roar of protest, as if the beasts around us knew what was about to occur. Suddenly, a crack like the breaking of gla.s.s echoed through the place and then a brilliant flash of light- brighter than my own glowing self-turned the darkness to blinding white. The light ricocheted from wall to wall to cause small landslides that rushed downward on anyone standing below. Those unfortunate enough to be standing close to Shari were bowled backward into scorched, whimpering groups on the cold hard ground. The rest, rubbing their eyes, rushed away to the safety of the returning dark.

When I looked back, Shari had fallen to her knees. Whatever power she had used was depleted for the moment.

"That'll keep them away for a while," she said in answer to my unspoken question. "But they always come back...Now-" she yawned "-I have to rest." She sank to the ground and closed her eyes. Eleanor sat down next to her.

"I remember her," Eleanor said. "She was one of your swans. You tried to make her a vampire?" she asked.

"Not me. Jack. Reedrek killed her and we thought to save her. But there was a problem..." I couldn't go into the rest of it just then. Leave it to my brilliant Eleanor to divine my thoughts.

"So this is where I'll stay if I don't survive the process?"

It was impossible to lie. "Yes. Your body will die. Your soul will be immortal but d.a.m.ned."

Eleanor stared down at Shari, and a surprising look of tenderness came on her face. "Well, at least I won't be alone." She yawned as though watching Shari's slumber had drugged her. She who must be obeyed stretched out next to my forever lost swan and closed her eyes.

With nothing else to do but guard them, I sat down, leaning my back against the closest lump of rock. I don't know how long I sat, watching the dark. Time was out of reckoning in this place so far removed from the sunrise and sunset in the real world. The human world. Hours could be pa.s.sing, or years. I had no way to judge, no signal to know if, in the world we 'd left behind, Eleanor's body had finished its transition or given up. "Captain! Wake up!" Melaphia's voice invaded my head, tugged my attention back from the dark. The world I 'd left behind was suddenly calling me back. In the same instant Shari stirred, sleepily sitting up to stare at me.

"Melaphia said to wake you. She says you must come back."