"Wait! There's more I want to ask you," Connie said.

"Perhaps we will have the chance to talk at another time," Travis said, "if the G.o.ds will it, and if you don't kill me first. I must leave here."

"Where are you going?" Connie asked.

"I am going back to old Mexico to learn what became of your mother."

"Let me go with you!"

"You cannot." Travis inclined his head toward Seth. "I feel that this young man loves you. Let him take you to safety. Besides, even though you don't think you will now, in time you will wish to kill me. And Jack, and every other blood drinker you can find."

"Why do the two of you keep saying that? Am I going to lose my judgment? My ability to think and reason?"

"At first, you very well may," Travis said. "If you survive long enough to mature in your destiny, you will develop a measure of restraint. But initially, you will wish to strike out at all vampires. For the sake of Jack, William, and Werm, see that you go far away from here as quickly as you can. Perhaps your young man here can keep in touch with Jack, and through him I will send to you any word that I can find of your mother's fate."

That stopped Connie cold. I could see that her mind was reeling with the implications of her staying in Savannah. What stopped me cold was the a.s.sumption that Connie and Seth were already a couple. It was what I had wanted, what I'd engineered. But it didn't hurt any less.

Travis stood. Awkwardly, he raised his hands and touched Connie's face. A flash of fire like an electrical arc jumped from her to his hands and he drew his palms away from Connie's cheeks. "It's happening," he said. "The Slayer in you is ripening. You must leave quickly for everyone's sake, mostly yours. I hope I see you again, my daughter. In the fullness of time, perhaps we can coexist."

His weathered face had become unreadable again, but I could tell he didn't really think that was going to happen. He headed for the door, and the three of us just stared after him. He turned back as he was leaving and said, "A word with you, Jack?" Dumbly, I followed him. We were out on the street before he spoke again.

"Give her up, Jack," he said. "I have. Didn't you see? She's with Seth now," I said bitterly.

He put his palm flat against my chest. "You have not given her up in here."

"I don't think I'll ever be able to do that."

Travis sighed and stared into the cold darkness.

"Then you have not begun to know sorrow."

Seventeen.

William Damien and Eleanor did not know the tunnels as I did. I was familiar with each and every nook and cranny that could be used as a hiding place, and I employed that knowledge along with my best cloaking glamour to follow them without their noticing me. It soon became clear that they were on their way to where Reedrek was entombed, and a deep sense of dread filled me.

When they had reached him, I hung back, peering around an abandoned piece of milling machinery. What in the world could the three of them be about?

"It's time! It's time!" sang Reedrek. "Time for me to rise and shine!"

"Whatever, dude," Damien said.

"We have to hold hands," Eleanor said.

"Yes, dearest," Damien said.

"I want to feel the earth move," Reedrek said.

"We already did." Eleanor giggled.

Damien reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a timepiece such as I had never seen before. He examined it and asked the others, "Are you ready?"

"Yes," Eleanor and Reedrek said in unison.

"Then let's begin."

The three of them began to chant in a foreign tongue. Its sounds were a mishmash of ancient and some extinct Celtic languages- c.u.mbric, Gaulish, Cornish, Breton. I understood only a phrase or two here and there, but it made no sense.

Though I didn't know exactly what they were trying to accomplish, I sensed it involved more than simply freeing Reedrek, though that would have been bad enough. Was this ritual the trigger for the cataclysmic event that the shape shifters and the Sidhe had warned about?

Then I remembered something Olivia had said while I was in London: According to one of Alger's more recent contacts, the Council was learning to use their combined power to harness elemental forces. Do you remember when the last rogue country claimed to have tested those nuclear bombs underground? Those were earthquakes, not nukes. The Council caused them.

Of course. Their scheme to cause an earthquake had been right in front of me all along. It explained some of the gibberish that Reedrek, Damien, and Eleanor had been talking. And it was clear that the information Reedrek spouted the last time I'd talked to him-the news he by rights had no way of having-had come from Damien and Eleanor. All three of them had been working together. Only their combined power could release such a cataclysm.

I looked around me for some sort of weapon. All I saw was my life's blood seeping out of the wound in my abdomen and pooling on the floor of the tunnel.

Still, I had to try to break up that wicked ritual. I knew in what blood of mine remained that my family's survival depended on it.

I stepped out from my hiding place and dove toward the linked arms of the two vampires standing in front of the slab of granite, behind which lay my evil sire.

Jack I hadn't even had a chance to say good-bye.

After Travis had left, I'd followed Connie and Seth without their knowing it. They'd driven to a little airstrip right outside of town, and I'd sneaked into the hangar nearest the little prop-driven four-seater that was idling on the tarmac. A man who looked old enough to have flown with Eddie Rickenbacker had taxied the plane into place.

Seth loaded Connie's bags from his pickup into the plane, leaving her standing on the runway, rubbing her arms in the cold. I cloaked myself from her recognition, and had to hold myself back from running to her and telling her everything I wanted her to know. That I never would have tried to end her life if it hadn't been for the fear that she would lose her chance at eternity with her son. That I would have plunged a wooden stake into my own heart in exchange for a way out.

But I couldn't tell her that. I couldn't create more conflict for her after everything she'd been through the past few days and with everything she had to face in the future.

A future without me.

Watching her and Seth on the runway, I thought about the last scene in Casablanca. I felt like Rick after Ilsa had told Rick he should do the thinking for both of them. There was no way in h.e.l.l Connie would ever have told me to do the thinking for her. But I felt that I'd been doing it anyway, and my head hurt from the strain. I just hoped I was doing all the right things.

The old man had hobbled back into the office while Seth was loading up and now came back out with some papers on a clipboard. Seth shut the baggage compartment and came closer to the hangar to sign the papers, probably a flight plan or something.

When the old man turned to go, I said, "Pssst!"

"Eh?" The old man said, turning back to Seth.

You didn't hear anything, I projected. The old man continued his trek to the office.

Seth came over to where I was standing, still out of Connie's line of sight.

He handed me the truck keys. "I knew you'd be around here somewhere. Take care of my truck, will you? Throw my stuff in the bed and I'll send for it when we're settled."

"I'll treat it like it was my own."

"d.a.m.n. Give me the keys back, then."

"Wisea.s.s. Hey, are you sure you know how to fly that thing?" "h.e.l.l, yes. Don't worry about a thing." Seth's expression grew serious. "I'll take good care of her, Jack. You're doing the right thing. If you ever doubted it, I think Travis put the nail in that coffin, if you'll pardon the expression."

I couldn't decide if I wanted to give my old friend a man hug or hit him on the jaw. I decided to do nothing. "See that you do take good care of her. If you don't I'll hunt you down and bite you, you old fleabag."

"You could try, you dead b.a.s.t.a.r.d." Seth tried to grin and couldn't quite pull it off. Our usual repartee didn't quite feel the same.

"You should get going," I said.

He nodded, then said, "Listen, take care of yourself and all William's people. You know that feeling the shape shifters have been sensing?"

"Yeah?" I asked apprehensively.

"Well, tonight I've got it in spades. It's like an itch I can't scratch. I feel like I'm about to jump out of my skin."

I sighed. "Just as long as you don't jump out of that airplane," I said. "We'll take care of one another down here. Don't worry.

Keep in touch, like Travis said. I'll let you know if he finds out anything about Connie's mother."

"Will do. Take it easy, man."

"You too."

I watched Connie waiting by the plane as Seth walked back to her, and I tried to remember Rick's last words to Ilsa on the tarmac in the movie. Something about the problems of two little people not amounting to a hill of beans in this old world. So for everyone's good she gets on the plane with Victor Laszlo.

Connie's profile was lovely as the wind blew her long silken hair around her shoulders. I tried to imagine her as she would look in a few months, her womanly figure swelling with my child.

Here's looking at you, kid.

I had to stop thinking of Connie's child as mine. It was Seth's now, and always would be. I felt my eyes sting as Connie stood there, waiting for her new man.

We'll always have Savannah.

Eighteen William Damien flew in one direction and Eleanor in the other, their physical connection broken, their chanting interrupted.

But it was too late.

The earthquake had begun.

They scrambled up and came toward me at the same time, but none of us could keep on our feet because of the violent shaking.

"Let's get out of here," Eleanor shouted to her friend. She knew the tunnels better than Damien, so she led the way around the bend and out of sight, presumably to the nearest opening to street level.Soil began to rain down from above, causing my mind to flash back to a scene not long ago in which I thought Renee and I were buried in a cave-in underneath London. That had been the work of the Council, too. My every instinct told me to run, get to the surface as quickly as possible, as the other two had done, but I forced myself to stay to see if I could keep Reedrek from escaping.

The rumbling of the earth made an unG.o.dly noise, as if the underworld were attempting to belch up the contents of h.e.l.l. Each time I tried to stand I wound up on my knees again amidst the growing pile of rubble that was showering down.

After what seemed like an eternity but was probably only a few seconds, came a higher-pitched noise of breaking stone. To my horror, I saw fissures spread out from the middle of the granite slab to each of its corners and through the center, the cracks becoming wider as the seconds ticked by.

With grim fascination, I watched the spiderweb of crevices grow, all the while knowing that there was nothing I could do to prevent the rupture that was about to happen. If I could only stay on my feet, perhaps I might manage to keep Reedrek in his coffin. But just then, a chunk of earth weighted down with asphalt from the street above came crashing down on me, pinning my legs beneath me.

I struggled, trying to wriggle out from under the ton of earth and pavement that had trapped me. I was right in front of Reedrek's granite cornerstone, but I could not move an inch. Mercifully, the ground had stopped shaking for now. I could hear shouting and sirens above me, as well as other sounds I couldn't identify. Geysers of water from burst pipes? Automobiles running into creva.s.ses in the pavement? Chunks of mortar falling from buildings?

I thought of the patients in the hospital above. But most of all I worried about Melaphia and Renee. I reminded myself how smart and resourceful they both were, and that eased my mind, if only slightly.

I flashed back to the great Charleston earthquake of 1886 and remembered how the strong tremors could be felt in Savannah.

How could one who "lived" through it ever forget? Not even one hundred years later, I had noted with disbelief the selection of the Savannah River for a site where the government would process tritium and plutonium for nuclear weapons during the cold war. The site stood near several faults, including Pen Branch, the one that had caused the great Charleston quake. Was there no end to humans' folly?

My reverie was interrupted by a more ominous noise. Just when I thought I'd been saved by some miracle of fate, the granite slab gave way, splitting into a million shards. I covered my head with my arms and managed not to be pierced by the razor-sharp splinters of rocks; they flew at me as if from Travis's stories of the merciless Maya and their obsidian knives.

When the landslide was over, I uncovered my face and realized that the shift in the earth had barely missed burying me. I would have felt fortunate had I not been fairly certain that my blood loss was getting worse. With my diminished strength, I just couldn't heal fast enough.

I twisted my body as best I could to look upward at the mound of rock, dirt, and debris in front of me. Reedrek's coffin, complete with the chains Jack and I had bound it in, lay teetering on top of the pile.

I watched the coffin rock this way and that. From within, I sensed Reedrek's song.

Rock-a-bye Reedrek on the treetop When the bough breaks the coffin will rock...

And then the aftershock began.

Jack At first I thought some huge plane had gotten the little airstrip confused with the international airport. But the trouble wasn't from above but from below.

An earthquake? Well, just-d.a.m.n! What else could go wrong?

I'll bet this never happened to Humphrey Bogart.

I fell on my behind, and as I was scrambling to my feet, I saw to my horror that Connie and Seth hadn't taken off yet. In fact, Connie had gotten out of the plane and had whipped out her cell phone.

The h.e.l.l with secrecy. I stalked toward the plane, ready to physically put her back on board if necessary. She flipped the phone closed. "I've got to go back to town," she announced to Seth, who had gotten out of the pilot's seat and reached her side.

"Get back in the plane," he told her.

"No way. This is an earthquake. I've got to go to work! People are hurt, trapped all over the city. They need me!"

"You're leaving now!" I said, charging out of the shadows toward her.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded.

"I'm here to make sure you fly out of here like you're supposed to."

"I'll handle it, Jack," Seth said menacingly.