"d.a.m.n you!" Hissing like a cobra, Diana tore the poker free again and began to hit Hugo in the face. Once, twice, until blood dripped from his beard. She couldn't kill him with such a weapon but she could damage him...severely. But, if she somehow did manage to kill him, it would be the end of her, since he was her sire.

We were all spattered with his blood by this time. I couldn't stand to watch. Even though I had absolutely no love for Hugo, I loved Diana. I suppose I held a secret hope that somewhere inside she remained my lovely girl. If I never had her for my own again, I didn't want to remember her like this. My feet left the floor as I rose into the air, putting myself between Diana and her prey.

She brought down the poker for the next blow. I waited for the strike to fall, for the pain, but no more than half an inch from my cheekbone, the b.l.o.o.d.y poker stopped. Diana's gaze never left Hugo, her terrible intent filled the distance between them. But she'd interrupted the delivery, I hoped for my sake, although she stared past me as one ignores a stranger.

"Stop." The only word I could utter at that moment. Then: "Please." I couldn't articulate my thoughts, my horror at this killing monster whom I loved.

Hugo moaned behind me, then pushed a few words through his broken mouth. "Let her be, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

I had asked Hugo if he loved Diana. What kind of love allowed its object to take his very life? Without complaint or explanation.

Without fighting back. The answer came to me in his own word: ownership. If she killed him, he would still have her at his side in h.e.l.l. I turned on him then. No one would stop me from killing him if I chose, least of all Diana. "What of a cure? If you made it, you must have a way to stop it."

He wagged his b.l.o.o.d.y head back and forth, his spit bubbling red as he spoke. "Reedrek. He had it made."

"By whom and for what purpose?"

Hugo shook his head again, then sputtered, baring b.l.o.o.d.y broken teeth. "To bind you, or kill you all."

The hate-charged air shifted beneath my feet and I crashed to the floor. Even as I marveled at Diana 's power, she used that power to fling Hugo away from her to the farthest corner of the room, then tossed the bent and dripping poker after him.

She took a moment to blot Hugo's blood from her face and regain her composure. A second later she was facing me. "Can you save our son?"

I looked at Gerard. He pushed to his feet with one dubious glance in Hugo 's direction before shrugging. "I don't know. We were working on a vaccine, but the process will take time." Then his attention settled on me. "Is Jack involved in this?"

I knew what he meant. Had Jack been contaminated along with Will when Sullivan was killed? Even as furious as I was with Jack, the thought sent a jagged slice of fear through me. Not Jack.

Not Jack, what? came the answer from Jack himself.

Sullivan was infected. Will is rotting.

c.r.a.p.

Jack Sleep was out of the question. I made my way through the tunnels to William's. I had to know what was going on. Was Gerard making any progress figuring out how to cure the virus? Was Connie going to die because I'd introduced her to a friend of a friend? I wouldn't let my mind go there. Just because you're a vampire doesn't mean you can't go insane.

When I entered William's vault I saw a form covered by a sheet and stretched out on a recycled wooden door. That would be Sullivan. I started to cross myself before I remembered that wasn't such a hot idea. Or maybe too hot. I was raised Catholic; old habits-even really old habits-are hard to break. I climbed the stairs and went through the kitchen. Deylaud was cooking and Reyha was fussing over two trays. Strange. It was almost daylight. They should be preparing to make the change into their four - footed forms. I'd always wondered how they looked when they did it. Was it like in the werewolf movies?

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Jack, I'm glad you're here," Deylaud said.

His twin walked toward me and put her head against my chest, linking her arms around my waist. "Me too. I haven't seen you in so long," Reyha said.

"Get back to work, sister, we don't have much time," Deylaud said sharply. It sounded almost like a bark. That was freaky.

"Oh, yes." She hurried to the refrigerator and started moving things around, looking for something.

"We're making breakfast for Melaphia and Renee. They're both asleep in the guest room."

I got a bad feeling. "Why aren't they in their own beds?"

Deylaud sprinkled cheese into an omelette pan and looked over at me. "Oh, that's right. I guess you don't know."

"Know what?"

"Melaphia let Iban feed from her," Reyha blurted, pouring juice into gla.s.ses. "How nasty is that?"

I swallowed against a wave of nausea. Poor Mel. That must have been what the tense conversation between her and William at the garage had been about. As much as I liked Iban, I hated the thought of my Mel having to let the thing he 'd become feed from her flesh. And I hated the thought of William having to ask her to do it. "Did it work?"

"Yes. That's the good part. He's much better. He was even well enough to leave here with Wi-with my master and Gerard a little while ago." Deylaud divided the huge omelette, stuffed with diced ham and cheese, onto two plates, each of which already held toast and b.u.t.tered cheese grits. The smell made me wish I could eat human food again.

"Where'd they go?" I knew from the mind message William had sent that they'd gone to see Will, but I didn't know where.

"The plantation, I think," Deylaud said, and licked his fingers. That's when I noticed the bruises on his neck.

"What happened to you?"

Reyha stifled a little inhuman whine but didn't say anything.

Deylaud blinked back rising tears and shook his head. "It will heal. Would you take this tray to Melaphia and Renee? Mel needs to build up her strength. She was pretty weak when William brought her in."

"Sure." Whatever had gone down, the manimal wasn't in the mood to share. Or maybe, he just didn't have the time.

"Hurry," he managed. I could feel more than see the first rays of the sun coming in through the tiny slits in the closed blinds of the east-facing windows. "Here comes the sun."

Deylaud's head gave a jerk forward as he fumbled for the b.u.t.tons of his shirt. On the other side of the table, Reyha shimmied out of her simple shift. She wore no underwear, the peaks of her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s stiffening in the cool air. "I like this dress," she managed to say before her body contorted and she bent forward, putting her palms on the floor.

Deylaud had managed to get out of his clothes by that time, too, and the show began. The bones popping was the worst part.

Well, that and the humanoid heads reforming themselves into the slender snouts of sighthounds. Talk about a hair -raising sight, if you'll pardon the expression. Fingers and toes became paws with claws. Tails sprouted from their backsides, necks elongated, shoulders and hips narrowed with awful crunching sounds. The whole thing defied the laws of physics and nature. But h.e.l.l, what else was new? Welcome to the jungle.

The transformation was pretty gruesome. I didn't want to look but I couldn't turn away. And to think they went through this every twelve hours in their service to William. I made a mental note to buy some dog treats. Expensive ones.

When it was done, Reyha stretched, trotted over to me with a doggie smile on her face and nudged my hand with her silky head.

I scratched her between the ears and murmured, "Good girl." I gave her a piece of ham from the cutting board and she gobbled it up with an enthusiastic tail wag. She then trotted back over to her abandoned dress, picked it up in her mouth by the hem, and dragged it away toward her room.

Deylaud appeared on my other side. He refused the ham but allowed me to rub his sore neck. I guess a little comfort was better than nothing. After I'd obliged him, he went to the door that separated the kitchen from the hallway to the stairs and looked back at me.

"I'm coming," I said. The tray was crowded with the plates of food, two gla.s.ses of orange juice, one of milk, and a mug of black coffee. I followed Deylaud into the hallway. Light streamed in through the windows on either side of the front door, but Deylaud trotted over and worried the curtain tiebacks with his teeth until they were undone and the draperies fell across the windows, blocking the sun. He sat solemnly and watched me start up the stairs with the tray.

When I got to the landing Eleanor came out of the master bedroom, looking almost as wild as the night she was made. She should've been downstairs all snug in her coffin like a good vampire. Instead she looked a couple cans short of a six-pack.

"What do you know about her?"

Oh, s.h.i.t.

"Who?"

"Don't play games with me. You know d.a.m.n well who."

I set the tray down on the antique hall table. What could I tell her? What should I tell her? Sorry, babe, the love of your life just had his wife come back to him after five hundred years. I hate it for ya, but haven't you heard? Death's a b.i.t.c.h.

"What did William tell you?" I asked cautiously.

"He's acting crazy. He came in earlier with Melaphia and wouldn't speak. Then he nearly killed Deylaud. When I begged him to tell me what was wrong, he said his wife still exists and she's here in Savannah.

"Where does that leave me, Jack? What am I supposed to do? I gave up my soul for him!" Her eyes searched mine for an answer, her anguish so real you could feel it radiate off her skin.

"I don't know what to tell you, El. Honest, I don't."

She bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling. I sensed it was as much from rage as from sorrow. "Is she beautiful?"

"Yes. But not as beautiful as you."

She tried to smile but it fizzled. "If he's not back here at sunset, I'm going to find him." "I'll go with you. For now, why don't you go down to the vault and get some sleep. I 'll join you in a few minutes. There's nothing I can do until sunset either."

Eleanor started down the stairs. At the bottom, Deylaud waited, wagging his tail.

"I do know one thing," I thought to add. Eleanor turned and looked back at me. "She's not the same woman he knew," I said.

"Not the same woman he loved." I don't exactly know how I could be so sure, but I was.

She lifted her chin and smiled, then continued down the stairs.

I turned to get the tray and almost ran into Renee. "h.e.l.lo, sugar. What are you doing out of bed?"

"I heard you and Miss Eleanor talking," she said. "And I smelled breakfast."

"How's your mom? Is she ready to eat, too?"

She shrugged her small shoulders. "No. She only woke up long enough to say she didn't feel like eating and wanted to go back to sleep."

"Okay, then. Let's take this in the library and let your mom rest."

Renee followed me into the library at the end of the hall. She had her own small collection of books on a child -high bookshelf William had set up for her. A cherrywood library table was strewn with some of the aged books and maps William was always poring over looking for G.o.d knew what. There was also a child's table and chairs-antique, of course-in the corner of the room.

I set the tray on the low table and turned on a floor lamp since the heavy drapes blocked any daylight. I sat down in the child-size chair opposite Renee, my knees drawn up to my chest. When she was younger, she 'd had tea parties here. I have to admit I attended more than one of those.

She nibbled at the food and drank most of the orange juice but didn't seem very enthusiastic about the fare.

"You not hungry?" I nudged the gla.s.s of milk a little closer to her.

She shook her head. "I guess I'm a little out of sorts."

I hated for any ugliness to intrude on Renee's peace of mind. Her little-girl world should be all about frilly dresses, pink hair bows, candy canes, and giggles. Instead she was in the middle of a vampire war. It made me unspeakably sad. Add that to what I'd just gone through with Connie and what I had to look forward to when I evened the score with Will whether William liked it or not, and I couldn't remember ever being so hopeless.

"You look like you're out of sorts, too, Uncle Jack," Renee said, and took a sip of the milk. "What's wrong?"

"Remember the lady in the white-and-gold dress you met at the party?"

"The lady police? You like her a lot, don't you?"

"That's the one, and, yes, I do. But she found out I'm a vampire tonight, and I'm afraid she doesn't like me anymore. She says I'm not real."

"Not real?" Renee set down the gla.s.s and looked as if she couldn't believe her ears.

"That's what she said," I confirmed. This had to be the lowest I'd sunk in my lonely life-discussing my love life with a child.

Renee got up from the table and went to her bookshelf. As meticulous as her mentor, William, she went right to the book she wanted. I'm sure they were sorted by author and t.i.tle. She slid the book off the shelf, walked over to me, and took me by the hand.

She led me to the rocking chair on the other side of the room, and when I sat, she crawled into my lap. It had been a long time since she'd sat in my lap. She was getting to be a big girl now, and I had supposed sadly that she thought she was too old for such things.

"The Velveteen Rabbit," I said, looking at the book's tattered cover. "That's a good one."

"This is a special book," she said. "I want to read you this one very important page."

"I'm all ears." I cuddled her in my arms as she carefully turned the pages. The top of her head fit just under my chin. Her hair was as soft as cotton candy.

"Here it is," she said. "It's the part where the Velveteen Rabbit asks the Skin Horse what it means to be real." She began to read.

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Renee shut the book and twisted around to look up at me. "I love you, Uncle Jack," she said. "So that makes you real."

"Thank you, baby," I said. "I love you, too." I took the book from her and laid it gently on the floor. Then I rocked the little girl who made me real until she went back to sleep.

Fifteen.

William It took both Diana and me-she on one side, I on the other-to drag Hugo downstairs to a sleeping coffin. Gerard had gone back to my house in town with the intention of working through the day on the plague vaccine. Diana had surprised me with her concern for someone she'd so recently done her best to kill. As we stood over Hugo's damaged but healing body I put my wonder into words. "It's almost dawn. We could have just as easily dragged him outside to greet the sun and finish what you started."

Hugo grunted, looking up at us with an unreadable expression on his ruined face. Diana reached in to smooth his hair away from one particularly angry gash over his cheekbone.

She spoke to me first. "No quick death for him. If Will dies from this treachery, Hugo and I will have many more things to discuss before I pour this so-called plague down his throat. No cure, indeed." Then to Hugo she said, "We'll have a fine time, won't we, dear heart?"

I might've been jealous of the endearment if it hadn't been so laden with venom. She glanced at me as though to reinforce my position as bystander, then, without waiting for an answer, closed the coffin on her lover.

On the way back upstairs to Will's sickroom, I took her arm, the familiarity as natural as breathing. This crossroads of memory and present was enough to boggle the mind of a sane man, and mine had been teetering on the brink for several hundred years.

How was I to tell the real from the imagined...or worse, the remembered?

Will had fallen into a fitful sleep. He'd not yet begun to rot as noticeably as Iban had, but I knew it was only a matter of time. At this point, his handsome face was doughy with a greenish cast. I watched my wife fuss with the bed covers over my son, both lost to me for so many lifetimes, and my tongue could not stay still.