I took the papers from him and began to scan them. "Have you looked in the mirror? Maybe it's the ear bobs."

"Why do your buddies smell funny? And why did my fangs tingle when I got within smelling range?"

"They're shapeshifters," I said. "Two of them, anyway. I don't know about the other one. That's one of the things I've got to teach you-how to recognize other nonhumans. Remind me later." I glanced at the papers before folding them and sticking them into my back pocket.

"Shapeshifters?" Werm asked. "You're s.h.i.tting me, right? I mean, like, werewolves?"

"Yeah. Like werewolves."

Werm stared at the irregulars with alarm. "Oh, man. How many other kinds of-of nonhumans are there out there?"

"Lots. Listen, you chose this existence, remember? Your nice little sheltered human life is over. You 're a creature of the night now, and you've only traded one set of guys who can kick your a.s.s for a whole different set of guys who can kick your a.s.s. Only this time, they're not going to have baseball bats. They're going to have long, pointy teeth, and you're going to have to learn to deal or die. Welcome to the dark side, pal."

Werm let this sink in, nodded, and drew himself up. Despite his appearance, the kid had heart. I was even beginning to think he had brains. If he kept his nose clean, I thought he actually had a chance to survive. For a while at least.

Changing the subject, Werm asked, "Why did you want to know about the Maya?"

"Never you mind." I'd asked Werm to run an Internet search on the loa Legba who Mel had directed me to pray to, and a separate one for anything Werm could find out about Mayan G.o.ddesses. Right now I needed the voodoo lowdown to come up with my own spirit ceremony. The stuff on Connie I'd go over later in private.

"You run along and pray to that herb G.o.d or whatever it is that Melaphia told you about."

He brightened a little. "The G.o.d of really secret herbs and spices. I've got some pretty good weed I can burn as an offering, maybe even get a good contact high. But first let me see how you do your ritual. Then I'll know more how to do my own."

I started to tell him to shove off, but I already felt guilty for not having the time to teach him any more vampire stuff than I had.

He'd just gotten a rude introduction to shapeshifters because I hadn't thought to prepare him for other creatures that went b.u.mp in the night.

"Follow me." I swept the items on the table into the grill, replaced the cover, and rolled the whole thing right past the fast -food argument and out the back door of the garage. I settled the grill onto a nice flat spot.

"First things first," I said. I screwed the already loosened top off the bottle of rum and threw it aside. "Here's to the loa Legba,"

I announced, taking a long pull. After swallowing I glanced at the label. This didn't taste like the rum I was used to, but then it had been a while since I'd seriously a.s.saulted a bottle. My poison of preference was JD bourbon without the rocks. I pa.s.sed the bottle to Werm.

He sniffed it in a prissy fashion and said, "Don't you want me to get us some c.o.ke to drink this with?"

"Son, that would be the ruination of two good drinks. You're a vampire now, a tough guy. Drink like one."

Werm glanced at me doubtfully and took a sip. He busted into a prolonged coughing fit and handed the bottle back to me, glad to get rid of it.

Werm opened the package of candles and lit one while I bit the end off the cigar Jerry had brought and spat it into the dirt. I lit it off the candle and drew on it until I got it going real good. Then, while Werm was lighting the rest of the candles, I tried to remember Melaphia's instructions. But the first thing that came back to me when I thought back to the meeting was the look on William's face when he'd kissed Eleanor's hand.

h.e.l.lfire and d.a.m.nation. I took another long swig of the rum, feeling the odd burn all the way down into my guts. I had completely chickened out of telling William about Olivia's discovery of Diana's survival. But how could I tell him? In the days since Eleanor's making, he'd been a different man-er, vampire. His mood was more upbeat than I'd ever seen it. He'd even been patient with Werm at the meeting; if that didn't signal a sea change in William's att.i.tude toward the universe I didn't know what did.

He was...happy.

I marveled at the thought. William and happy didn't belong in the same sentence, but it was right there in his eyes. How could I tell him something that was going to make his world fall apart? I had to do it to save myself. What was the rush, though? Like Olivia said, Diana and William had been separated for hundreds of years. What would another few days' difference make? If I thought about it long enough, a solution would surely come to me. I took another long draw on the bottle, as if the answer to my problem was at the bottom.

I drew the papers out of my pocket and handed them to Werm, who began to read about the loa Legba by the light of the candles. "It says here that he is the great phallic deity."

"I'll drink to that," I said. "That's what the gals down at Eleanor's used to call me, not in so many words, you understand." I raised the bottle high in salute and took still another drink. "To loa Legba! My man! He can throw it over his shoulder like a continental soldier." In my rapidly inebriated state, the words shoulder and soldier turned into a mouthful of slurred mush, making Werm giggle.

"Have you fed tonight?" Werm asked, taking the bottle from me.

"Nope. You?"

Werm screwed up his face, took a drink, and screwed up his face again. "No." Werm swayed a little as he handed the bottle back to me and peered at the papers again. "The words are trying to swim away from my eyeb.a.l.l.s. Hey, I didn't know vampires could get drunk."

"You bet your a.s.s we can." I took another drink. "Over the fangs and through the gums."

Werm looked up at me in wonder. "Coooool," he slurred. He stared at the words as if he was trying to interpret hieroglyphics.

"It says that the loa Legba appears as an old man with a cane and a sack, and that he's the guardian of the gateway."

"What gateway is that?"

"The gateway from one world to another. That's all it says. My inkjet cartridge ran out." He shrugged. "Sorry."

"That's okay. I've got the prayer Melaphia wrote down for me right here." I took the list out of my shirt pocket and turned it over to the back. Melaphia's neat handwriting looked like gibberish. Some of the words were foreign, and even though she 'd spelled them out phonetically, I still could only make sense of a few of them here and there. I was going to have to wing it. What could go wrong?

"Okay, Gramps. This one's from the heart," I said. I handed the bottle to Werm, who took another drink, nodded approvingly, and handed it back. I raised the bottle and sprinkled a healthy shot or so over the altar.

"Uh, I salute you. I honor you. And I ask you to-" I stared at the paper again. "Open the gateway. Yeah, that's right, and I guess I'm supposed to ask you to make my natural vampire powers even stronger."

"I think that's the key," Werm said sagely. "That's what w.i.l.l.yum and Mela-Melaph-Mel said."

"Yeah," I said. I set the bottle down and made a sweeping gesture toward the other items on the grill. "All this stuff here is for you. The candles, the cedar, the incense, the chicken. So open that old gateway of yours and let the sun shine in. " I snickered.

Maman Lalee help me, but I did.

"We didn't know if you liked Original Recipe or Extra Crispy," Werm said, and busted into a giggling fit.

I let the papers fall and grabbed onto Werm's shoulder for support, but we both collapsed, braying with laughter like a couple of jacka.s.ses. "Hey," Werm said. "Maybe you should see if you can fly now."

"Fly, h.e.l.l, I can barely stand up." I snorted with laughter again and Werm shrieked with it. "What's in this stuff, anyway?"

Werm gulped in some air and confessed, "I dis-distillated some of my best weed into it." He extended his arms. "That's me, keeper of the ga-ga-ganja."

"Remind me to kill you when I s...o...b..r up."

We were laughing so hard we didn't feel the change in the atmosphere until the candles began to flicker. The wind had shifted but there was something more. Something unnatural was in the air. Something unwholesome and thick with decay. I 've said it before and I'll say it again: When a vampire gets creeped out, well, let's just say it's seriously messed up.

Werm felt it, too. We stopped laughing at the same instant. We had both been doubled over, and at that level our vision had been clouded by the smoke from the burning incense and flickering candles. We straightened up slowly, and when we did, we had a clear view of the relatively fresh earth a few feet away from us, and it was shifting. My super -sensitive hearing picked up a scrabbling noise underground.

We were both silent for a moment, and then Werm said, "Jack, what's that? It's coming from that bare patch of dirt over there."

My boozy/trippin' brain was trying to clear itself. "You mean that patch of dirt about the size of a Chevy Corsica?"

Werm just looked at me, not understanding. I didn't want to understand either, but I was beginning to all the same.

Oh no.

"Werm, help me think. What did we just ask that voodoo spirit for? What did we ask him for exactly?"

"We-we asked him to make your vampire powers even stronger. And to open the gateway to the spirit world. Why? What was wrong with that?"

"Oh, s.h.i.t."

Werm was still staring at me, so he didn't see the mottled hand burst out of the ground, grasping at the chill night air in the Savannah moonlight.

A little while back, my evil grandsire, Reedrek, made a big show of murdering my friend and employee Huey. The poor little simpleminded fellow had the misfortune of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, and, long story short, kind of got gutted like a trout. Since we didn't want to get the police involved and since Huey didn't have any family, we decided to bury him behind the wheel of his beloved Chevy with a beer in his hand.

Now as I've explained before, I have what you'd call an affinity for the dead, even beyond the fact that I are one, as the old joke goes. In short, ghosts love me. In fact, Huey had visited me once after he died, here in the garage, just to let me know that he was doing well in the afterworld. Then he went about his business. That was fine and dandy.

This wasn't.

What stood before Werm and me was not a ghost. It was a zombie. It was a full -bore Night of the Living Dead walking corpse. It was Huey in the flesh, you might say. The mottled, rotting, putrid flesh. Werm walked stiffly to a clump of bushes and retched quietly.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what had happened. My powers where the dead were concerned-those that were previously limited mostly to communication-had blossomed into full-fledged corpse-raising reanimation. Yes, indeed. Thanks to a well-hung voodoo deity, I was now the proud owner of a bouncing baby zombie. Ask and ye shall receive.

Huey raised his hand, the hand that had just clawed his way out of the earth. "Hey, Jack."

"Hey, Huey."

Werm appeared at my side. "That's Huey?"

"That's him. Huey, this is Werm."

"Hey, Werm."

"Hey, Huey," Werm said wanly. "Jack, I think I know what must've-"

"Yeah, me too."

Werm and I walked back into the garage, Huey shuffling along behind us. The irregulars were playing cards now, like they did most nights. Jerry, who'd brought the cigars for the ritual, had evidently come with enough for everybody, because there they sat, puffing away and sipping their beers as pretty as you please. Because Werm and I had come in ahead of him, they didn 't notice Huey until he sat down at his regular place at the table.

What little action there was at the table froze solid, as if, ironically, the living men had gone into suspended animation and only the dead man showed any signs of life. The only movement the irregulars displayed was the downward trajectory of their cigars as they hung limply from the corners of their mouths.

For a moment I was reminded of that famous old painting of the dogs playing poker. That 's how still they were, as still as the dogs in the painting, until Huey grinned, showing a mouthful of greenish teeth and rotting gums.

"Deal me in, boys," he said.

Five.

William Eleanor and I took the new Mercedes for the drive to where her house on River Street used to stand. I 'd retired the Jag. Too many smells and memories attached: Reedrek, Shari, even the hapless Huey. And then there was Olivia. I'd closed that chapter of my life in favor of this new one with she who must be obeyed.

"Oh William, I can't wait to have my wonderful house rebuilt. Just think of all the fun we'll have." Eleanor's voice had lowered to almost a whisper. "I miss our games. Do you remember the dungeon?"

Parts of me remembered very well and twitched in interest. "Yes, love, I do." The memory of watching Olivia feed on, then f.u.c.k, her lovely swan blossomed into a full -color image in my mind. Then the memory of Eleanor 's mouth, Olivia's mouth, both sucking...sucking. I could almost smell the blood, feel the tug of tongues on hot skin.

Eleanor's hand slid up my thigh. "The new dungeon will be bigger." She rubbed her palm along my c.o.c.k. "More dangerous."

I covered her hand with my own and pressed it tighter against my hardening flesh. I 'd intended to answer her, but when she tightened her grip, sinking her fingernails into the fabric over my sensitive foreskin, I drew in a deep, whistling breath between my teeth. Eleanor was so attuned to my fantasies that, if I wasn't very careful, she'd be leading me around by my c.o.c.k.

And I wouldn't care.

Reluctantly, I pushed her hand back down to my thigh and readjusted my trousers. "Let me drive or I'll have to pull over and do several things that would utterly shock the neighbors."

Eleanor smiled her secretive, Mona Lisa smile. "I've been shocking them for years. Now I have eternity to live up to my reputation."

The house on River Street was progressing nicely. The foundation had been poured. There was a bas.e.m.e.nt larger than any others in the area, complete with a metal door that, at this point, opened to solid dirt. The builder had been puzzled by the plan, but I'd a.s.sured him that it was necessary and reminded him I was paying him an inordinate amount of money to do as I asked. What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. The fewer humans who knew about the extent of the underground tunnels beneath their homes, churches, streets, and buildings, the better.

Eleanor and I gathered the materials we'd collected for her altar and picked our way through the construction site. They'd be putting in the beams for the main floor within the week, so the altar would eventually have to be moved. But this was Eleanor 's place of power-she was in total control of anyone working in or patronizing her establishment. This is where her coffin would be moved...eventually.

She chose the southeast corner of the bas.e.m.e.nt, not far from the door. While I waited, she spread her silk j.a.panese-style robe on the new concrete floor. Then she placed three white floating candles in a large crystal bowl that she'd filled with ocean water.

"Would you bring me the dirt?" she asked. I moved over to the metal door and pried it open. I dug out two double-handfuls of Savannah's sandy soil. Soil that had been enriched with the blood and bones of its inhabitants for hundreds of years. Eleanor held out one of my silver serving trays to receive it. Then she placed the tray on the altar. I dusted off my hands and watched as she p.r.i.c.ked her finger with a fang and dropped a few drops of her own blood on the soil.

With the final additions of a dozen white camellias from Melaphia's garden, two perfect cuts of raw filet mignon, and a magnum of Cristal champagne, she completed Melaphia's list.

With the grace of the snake tatooed on her skin, she rose and came to stand before me.

"You have to leave me now."

Everything in me rebelled. We'd been together constantly since I'd gone to retrieve her from immortal h.e.l.l. I wasn't prepared to let her out of my sight just yet.

"What could it matter if I stay-"

She pressed her fingers to my lips. "Melaphia says you'll distract me."

I felt as if I'd been reprimanded. Who was Melaphia to judge me? Taking Eleanor's wrist, I lowered her hand. "I'm capable of being still and silent."

She shook her head. "She's right. I feel you"-she rubbed her arm, then her chest from heart to neck-"everywhere inside. I'll know you're here. I'll always know."

I had no argument for that. We were connected, not only by blood but by power. Each time we made love it knit the connection tighter and stronger.

A rush of something like my old temper raced through me. I 'd been the maker of my own rules for so long...and yet I knew Melaphia was teaching us as I'd asked her. I simply hadn't antic.i.p.ated that feeling like a schoolboy being sent away would be part of the bargain.

"All right, I'll go. But I'll send Deylaud to watch over you."

Eleanor's laugh was sweet and lighthearted. "You've made me strong enough to take care of myself. Why do I need protection?"

I knew she was right, but I'd always taken care of my possessions and of the people around me. Eleanor was mine in so many ways. "Not protection," I said. "Courtesy."