"Like Switzerland."

"Is this cool or what!" Werm said. He seemed really flattered. "William, did you know there was a watcher society for vampires?"

"No, I did not," he admitted, not taking his gaze off Otis. "What is the ultimate purpose of this watching?" Otis cleared his throat and sat up a little straighter. The whiskey had obviously calmed his nerves. "The n.o.bility don't tell us peons much about that. They just told me to watch you guys' comings and goings, any new vampires that come along, and report back to them."

"You must have some idea," I prompted. I took the whiskey bottle from Werm and refilled Otis's gla.s.s.

"All I know is that a few years ago I was having a great time on an oldies tour," Otis began again. "The free booze, the women, hanging with Frampton. It wasn't as good as the seventies, mind you, but it was still pretty sweet."

Werm's eyebrows shot up and he started to interrupt, but I silenced him with a warning glance. "Go on, big O," I said.

"And I got summoned to the old country. A bunch of Sidhe over there witnessed...something." A shiver seemed to go down Otis's spine for a moment, but he shook it off.

"What?" I asked. "What did they see?" I was afraid Werm would run plumb out of booze before I could get the whole story out of this guy.

"The return of the Wild Hunt," he said.

William, who rarely betrayed feelings of anxiety or alarm in front of outsiders, actually gasped.

"What is that?" I demanded.

William explained, "The Wild Hunt is a manifestation of phantom warriors and huntsmen that were thought to ride across the sky on thunderstorms, complete with horses and hounds. It hasn't been seen in recorded history. Even the oldest blood drinkers think it's a myth. I admit I certainly always thought it was."

"It's no myth," Otis insisted. "Only one of the five Sidhe who witnessed it returned to tell the tale. The others were struck down."

"Struck down?" Werm asked.

I ignored Werm, even though he looked like he was going to faint any second. What else was new?

"So some faeries were dancing around a maypole or something and got struck by lightning. What's the big deal about a pack of ghost riders in the sky?" I asked.

"The wild huntsmen are thought to be harbingers of doom," William said. "Seeing them is supposed to presage something catastrophic-war, plague, famine."

"What did the Sidhe tell you when they summoned you to-where?" I asked.

"Ireland," Otis said, p.r.o.nouncing it like the Lucky Charms leprechaun. "The leaders of my branch of the Sidhe organized the unattached males and a.s.signed each of us a landma.s.s to cover. We're supposed to watch the activities of any and all immortals in our territory."

"Why?" I asked. "What's the connection between the Wild Hunt and vampires?"

"That's the part I'm not quite sure of," Otis admitted. "It has something to do with how vampires figure into some ancient Celtic prophecies."

Otis was getting quite drunk now, and he was starting to look depressed. For that matter, William wasn't looking any too perky either. His natural pallor had turned downright ghostly. I could tell that he didn't like the way this conversation was going. Not one little bit.

"Ancient Celtic prophecies about what, exactly?" I asked, leaning toward him. "The end of the freakin' world," Otis said, and did a face plant onto the bar.

Eight.

William Jack accepted a damp bar cloth from Seth and began to swab his drunken faerie friend's face in hopes of reviving him. Otis's glamour had deserted him when he pa.s.sed out. He now resembled a diminutive circus performer. The transformation caused some hubbub among Jack, Werm, and Seth. Evidently Otis was indeed some sort of recognizable entertainer in his true guise. Werm was especially impressed.

The tumult caused by Otis's revelations and his transformation into fey form afforded me time to gather my thoughts. I now realized there was a preponderance of evidence pointing to a looming disaster of worldwide proportions.

First there were the vague but ominous warnings that Olivia's vampires found in Alger's Celtic scrolls and tablets. Then came the fulfillment of a Mayan slayer prophecy in the person of Connie Jones. Bolstering that was the uneasiness sensed by Seth, which I'd wager was shared by the rest of the shape shifter community. Finally, and most alarming of all, was this reappearance of the Wild Hunt after thousands of years. The event had obviously frightened the Sidhe, and they didn't frighten easily.

When Jack had succeeded in propping his friend upright once again, he told Werm to brew some strong coffee. I could only hope Werm could make coffee more drinkable than Jack was used to at the garage. Faeries are a hardy lot, and this one had shared some valuable information; I didn't want to see him poisoned.

Jack gently but firmly patted Otis's face until he opened his eyes. As soon as he became oriented to his surroundings, he raised his glamour and became the old Otis once more.

"Whoa!" Werm observed, duly impressed.

Jack thrust a cup of black coffee into his friend's hands and urged him to drink. "What do vampires have to do with the end of the world?"

"Huh?" Otis muttered.

"Focus!" Jack commanded. "You were talking about ancient Celtic prophecies about the end of the world which had something to do with vampires. What's the connection?"

"c.r.a.p if I know," Otis said.

"Think hard, Otis or Stevie or whatever your name is," Jack said.

"I've told you everything I know. Honest."

I said, "Jack, why don't you take Otis back to the garage, or wherever he sleeps. I sense that he's telling us the truth. If we think of anything more to ask him, we can question him at another time."

"What-what are we going to do?" Werm asked, naturally frightened.

"Don't concern yourself," I said, trying to sound rea.s.suring. "Melaphia is already researching some related matters. I'm sure we'll know more soon. Until then, try not to worry."

Seth squeezed the little vampire's shoulder in a manly gesture of support. "William will get to the bottom of this, buddy. Why don't you go on downstairs, hop in your box, and get a good day's sleep?" Werm shivered. "I don't mind if I do." He took a couple of steps toward the door to the cellar but turned back to get the half- empty bottle of whiskey and took it with him.

Jack threw Otis over his shoulder in a fireman's carry and paused at the door. "What are you going to do?"

"I think I'll go and speak with your grandsire to see if he knows anything about any of this."

"Good luck. The last few times I've talked to Reedrek he'd gone as crazy as a s.h.i.thouse rat from being cooped up in that granite cornerstone. He was talking gibberish."

I said good night to Seth, who showed me the entrance to the tunnels. Werm had cleverly installed the steel doorway to the tunnels from the cellar when he had the building renovated. The web of abandoned tunnels was what remained of Savannah's first street level before the city was raised as protection from high tides wrought by hurricanes. I could have driven closer to the place underneath the hospital where Reedrek was entombed, but I welcomed the walk to help me think after all we had just learned from Otis.

I'd always wondered why Reedrek had chosen last autumn to track me down after these hundreds of years since I escaped him.

He'd wanted me to begin killing and turning humans in great numbers to increase his power as my sire. That must have meant that he needed power more than he ever had.

When I reached the slab of granite behind which Reedrek lay, I focused my psychic abilities and found my sire singing to himself in a strange keening voice. I paused to listen to his nonsensical lyrics. Something about a carriage and missing out on leftover lamb.

Jack was correct. Sensory deprivation had rendered him quite mad, but that didn't mean he wasn't still dangerous.

The old demon was as contrary as he was treacherous. If I asked him straight out what he knew about the Slayer or the looming catastrophe, he would think it a fine game to try to lead me astray. I had to establish the game myself. To control it.

I allowed him to sense my presence, and he spoke to me as if we stood face-to-face without the layers of granite and concrete between us.

"You've come back, my son. How good to, ah, see you. I hope your journey was a pleasant one."

Had Jack told him I was in Europe? Surely not. We'd agreed not to tell him anything he could use to taunt us. What Jack called head games were Reedrek's specialty. Just because Reedrek was immobile did not mean he was helpless, not as long as he had his psychic powers and anyone in his vast bloodline to use them on. I cursed him silently for casting the first die and rendering me on the defensive from the get-go. I fought the urge to demand how he knew I'd been gone.

"Indeed it was a pleasant visit," I said, falling back into the formal speech of the days when I'd been at my sire's beck and call. "I was able to accomplish much good."

"Is that so?" Reedrek asked benignly. "Do tell. I'm keen to hear of your exploits."

"I won't bore you. I'm sure you have your sources." I hoped he'd tell me who they were, but I didn't count on it.

"I do," he said. I could hear rather than see the mocking grin on his face. "I've learned much from them just lately."

"I learned much as well, about the past as well as the future. Our upcoming travails remind me of the famous Chinese curse-"

"May you live in interesting times," Reedrek supplied, and cackled with insane laughter. "That's a clever way of putting it."

My ploy was not working. I could tell by the brevity of his answers that Reedrek, even in his madness, sensed I was fishing. Just as I was about to turn to leave, he said, "Good news travels as fast as lightning."

Was the mention of lightning a veiled reference to the Wild Hunt? Folklorists explained away the phenomenon by saying it was a myth constructed by primitive Celts to explain electrical storms to themselves.Human beings, even learned academics, have a clever talent for protecting their fragile minds from truths that would render them mad with fear if they were ever acknowledged. They take great pains to construct reasons to distrust what the primitive parts of their brains instinctively know. But they choose to close their eyes to their reptilian brains. Only the fullness of time will tell if that tendency is a skill to aid their survival or hasten their downfall as a species.

"And what news would that be?" I asked, hoping to provoke some response I could make sense of. He would probably balk at the direct question, but I was losing patience with the game.

"Moving day is almost here!"

"Moving day? Who, pray tell, is moving?"

"Why, me, my boy. First I'll be moving north and south and east and west along with everyone else. Then I shall be moving up in the world. Surely if you've learned about the future as you claim, you've learned about that," he taunted.

"I suppose you could use a change of scene. I guess I should have made your resting place more secure." I hoped to inspire him to tell me what force he thought could break him out of granite, concrete, and steel, but he was too wily to take the bait.

"Nothing you have the power to build can keep me imprisoned when the old lords deem the time is right for my freedom."

So he thought the old lords would free him. "That's funny. I don't seem to recall seeing any of them around."

"They have their agents," Reedrek hissed.

"I haven't seen any of them, either."

Reedrek laughed again, and it had a hysterical quality that put my fangs on edge. "You think to trick me into revealing their ident.i.ties and plans. But as I said, the time is not yet right. When the time comes, you'll know. And so will everyone else."

I wished I could punch my way through the concrete and stone and throttle my sire, but there was little I could do. I couldn't threaten him, because Jack and I had already subjected him to the worst punishment we could dream up for him-to be immobilized in the dank darkness with the rats and the worms for eternity. We couldn't have killed him, for to destroy one's own sire or grandsire means death to the vampire that does the killing. I had neither carrot nor stick to influence Reedrek to talk, even if he knew anything of value.

"I have better things to do than to listen to the bluffs and ravings of a lunatic."

"Off with you, then. I'll be out of here soon enough. My carriage is coming. I can almost hear the rumbling of its wheels now!"

Disgusted, I turned on my heel to walk away, but then thought of a different tack he might respond to. At this point, what harm would another direct question do? I might get lucky. "What do you know of the Slayer?" I asked.

"Why ask me?" he answered. "Why not ask her?" For the first time in our conversation, he sounded completely sane. That shook me much more than his wild ramblings had.

After I left my sire, I returned to my automobile and drove over to the construction site where Eleanor's brothel was being rebuilt.

It was to have been a grand establishment that would have reflected Eleanor's excellent, if exotic, taste. Looking at the half-finished building now, I was tempted to set fire to it myself. It would remind me of Eleanor's treachery and her death and suffering at my hands every time I looked at it.

And that was only part of what weighed on my mind. A worldwide catastrophe, foretold by both Mayan and voodoo prophecies and confirmed by the shape shifters and the Sidhe, was imminent. I had no clue how to avert the disaster, whatever it was, unless Melaphia or Olivia turned up any relevant information in the ancient scrolls and tablets they were studying. Add to that the appearance of the legendary vampire slayer in our midst and my so-called life was complete.

I couldn't recall a moment in my long undeath when I felt as alone and powerless, not even during the time I was under Reedrek's thumb. The calamity would come and there would be nothing I could do about it. Jack would refuse to kill Connie Jones before she killed him, and if I took matters into my own hands, he might just kill me himself.

The framing on the multistory building was almost complete, making it look like a monstrous skeleton lying bleached and motionless in the moonlight. I made my way down the bas.e.m.e.nt steps to the spot where Eleanor had erected her voodoo altars in the old house. As I hung my head and remembered my lover's horrible suffering in the underworld, I felt my old familiar death wish rear its head. I deserved to be in h.e.l.l right along with Eleanor even if it meant being tortured for all eternity with some foul punishment fashioned just for me. If I had only left her alone, or at least refused her pleas to be made a blood drinker, she would be alive and well and mistress of this house right now.

I spied a pile of sc.r.a.p lumber and sawdust that some worker had piled up in a corner and seized a three-foot-long piece of two- by-four. It made a satisfactory splintering sound as I broke it over my knee, wood shards flying. One of the fragments had come away with a sharp point, producing the pleasant fragrance of timber. As I tested the weight of it, switching it from hand to hand, I heard footsteps on the new subfloor above me.

"What on earth are you doing down there?" Ginger asked as she made her way down the steps in four-inch spike heels-not an easy task even in the daylight, but she did it with grace by the light only of a nearby streetlamp. I noticed, not for the first time, how shapely her legs were and couldn't help but imagine them wrapped around me.

"Just...thinking," I said. "What are you doing here?"

"I couldn't sleep after seeing you tonight. I missed you so much while you were away."

Ginger's behavior toward me this evening was totally uncharacteristic, but the change wasn't surprising. She was no fool, and when she heard that Eleanor wasn't coming back, she evidently decided to waste no time making her move on the richest man in Savannah. What was a wh.o.r.e if not opportunistic?

"That's kind of you to say," I stated, tossing the wood back onto the pile. She was near enough to me now that I could smell her perfume as well as the sweet, heady odor of her humanity. "So you decided to take a walk, did you?"

"Yes, and I'm glad that I did, because now I get to see you again. Alone." She stepped closer to me and put her small palms against my chest. I wondered if she noticed I had no heartbeat. Her own heartbeat called out to me like a siren song. "This is very naughty of me, but I'm glad that Eleanor's not coming back," she said.

I captured her hands with my own, squeezed them gently, then brought them to my lips, first one, then the other. "Oh? And why is that?"

"Because I can seduce you," she whispered. I released her hands so she could put her arms around my neck and press herself against me. I was quickly aroused by the feel of her firm, round b.r.e.a.s.t.s rubbing my chest. Now, here was something to live for, at least a little while longer.

The chivalrous thing to do would be to take the young woman to a proper place for our very first encounter-the nearby Hyatt perhaps, or at least back to my home. But I wasn't feeling particularly chivalrous this evening. "Let's get on with that, then," I said.

My hands roamed down her body, pausing briefly to squeeze her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, then her b.u.t.tocks, and on to the hem of her black leather miniskirt. I reached underneath it and up to that magical place at the apex of her thighs. My fingertips found a fine barrier of silk and teased their way across it, eliciting a moan of pleasure from the lady. I covered her painted lips with my own, kissed her deeply, and pulled her more tightly against me. I blazed a trail of kisses down her neck while fingering aside the strip of fabric between her legs.

She was dewy with need and shuddered when I penetrated her, stroking the sensitive forward wall of her pa.s.sage with one finger.

What was it the moderns called that magical area? Ah, yes, the G spot. When I touched the swollen bud of her c.l.i.t with my thumb, her body shuddered with release. I carried her to a makeshift table made up of planks suspended side-by-side between two sawhorses. A circular saw had been set up at one end.

I ripped off her panties and set her bare bottom on the edge of the table. Glancing at the saw, she said, "You're not going to saw me in half like a magician, are you?"

I laughed hoa.r.s.ely. "I'm not that kind of magician," I said. "Besides, I want you in one piece."

I let go of her long enough to unfasten my pants and free my erection. Meanwhile she threw off her sweater, revealing a lacy bra, and shivered briefly in the winter chill. I saw her squint in the darkness to see me better, but I was blocking her light. She reached out for me and wrapped both hands around my c.o.c.k.