A scream sliced the night air-an animal sound as far removed from a human voice as the previous scream of tortured metal. It was a sound that went on and on as we hurried toward the RV. Mooncloud yanked the pa.s.senger door open and then ran around to the driver's side as I climbed up onto the bench seat. As she slid behind the wheel the other woman leapt from the building's rear doorway, sailing over the stairs and landing on the ground below. As she crouched on the asphalt, there was a shattering roar that canceled out the screaming. A ball of flame rolled out from the doorway like an orange party favor, licking the air just a few feet above her head.

Mooncloud threw the van in gear and brought it skidding around as the blaze snapped back through the opening.

Before I could reach for the door handle the woman was springing through the open window to land across my lap."Go!" she shouted, but Mooncloud was already whipping the vehicle in a tight turn and accelerating toward the parking lot's north exit. The speed b.u.mp smacked my head against the roof of the cab. By the time my vision cleared, we were driving more sedately down a side street, the woman with the crossbow sitting between me and the pa.s.senger door. In the rearview mirror a pillar of flame was climbing from the roof of the old dormitory that housed the radio station.

I shook my head to clear away the last of the planetarium show and gripped the dashboard. "Will somebody please tell me what's going on?"

"It's very simple, Mr. Csejthe," Dr. Mooncloud said, pressing a b.u.t.ton that locked the cab doors.

"You are a dead man."

Chapter Two.

"This is kidnapping." I was doing surprisingly well at keeping a reasonable tone to my voice. "Federal offense."

Not that I wasn't grateful: I had apparently been rescued from . . . well . . . something. But now my so-called rescuers refused to stop the vehicle or return me to town.

"I mean we are talking way beyond vandalism, destruction of property, a.s.sault-" I looked at Mooncloud "-impersonating a doctor."

"Obviously, you haven't been listening." This from the woman with the crossbow who had by now introduced herself as Lupe Garou. A slight French-Canadian accent seemed to authenticate her last name while the cloud of smokey, brown-black hair and coffee-with-cream complexion made sense of her first.

"Oh, I've been listening," I said. "I've heard every word you've said since we left town. The problem is I'm just not buying!"

"What part are you having difficulty with?" Garou asked.

I sighed and leaned my forehead against the dashboard.

"Be patient, dear," I heard Mooncloud murmur. "This is all rather new to him."

"Okay, let's start with me." I sat back up, turning to Mooncloud. "You say that I'm a vampire. I'll play along for a moment and pretend that there really are such things." I opened my mouth wider and ran a finger around my incisors. " 'Ook, ma; nah fahgs." I withdrew the finger. "Can't bite necks and suck blood without fangs."

Mooncloud was unfazed. "Mr. Csejthe, I did not say that you are a vampire. I was explaining that you appear to be in the transitional phase. A rather long and uncharacteristically drawn out phase, I might add."

Hoo boy.

"Yeah? Well, how did I get started on this so-called phase? Where's the bloodsucker who's supposed to have bitten me?"

"That's what we're in the process of trying to determine."

"But you are not being very cooperative," Garou added."I'm not being cooperative? I'm not being cooperative? I want to go home! Or back to the radio station. A crime has been committed, property destroyed-the authorities have to be contacted. Good G.o.d! They'll think I was responsible!"

Mooncloud shook her head. "You can't go back."

Garou chimed in. "You're going to have to face the fact that you are a dead man-both figuratively and literally."

"Look, lady, don't threaten me! I've had it up to here and if you keep pushing-"

"You'll what?" she asked coolly.

I stared back, holding her gaze for a long moment while I tried to think. "Wet my pants."

"What?"

"I gotta go." I turned to Mooncloud. "Or are you planning on driving all the way to Seattle without bathroom breaks?" The two women exchanged looks. "Oh great! You were! You really haven't planned this out, have you?"

"We planned on having more time to convince you."

"We hadn't counted on one of Ba.s.sarab's hounds showing up so soon," Garou said.

"Whatever," I said, waving my hand. I had no intention of being sidetracked now. "Pull over."

"Lupe and I will decide when and where to stop, Mr. Csejthe."

"What is the big deal here?" I gestured toward the windshield. "We're in the middle of nowhere.

Kansas back roads at three a.m. No traffic. Nothing but cornfields in every direction for miles. Where am I gonna go?" My captors exchanged a look. "Except behind a bush."

Mooncloud nodded and began slowing the Winnebago.

"Find me a spot with some bushes. I'm modest."

"I don't like this," Garou muttered.

"It will be all right, dear," her companion said. "I think once we're done here, Mr. Csejthe will be a little more trusting."

Garou scowled but nodded. "And, perhaps, a little less testy."

Gravel crunched as the RV eased over on the road's shoulder and coasted to a stop. Mooncloud killed the lights. Garou opened the door and swung down. Brandishing the crossbow, she gestured to a clump of bushes straddling a barbed-wire fence. "Two minutes, no more. You run and I'll shoot. I can put a bolt through your leg at thirty feet."

I forced a smile as I stepped down, noting that the shrubbery was no more than twenty feet away.

The crossbow came up and tracked me all the way across the ditch and over to the fence. "Where are you going?" she demanded as I spread the strands of fence wire.

"Behind the bushes, madam. Or would you prefer an 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours'

arrangement?"

Garou looked back at Mooncloud who nodded. I eased my body through to the other side of the fence.

I had already decided to make a break for it in spite of the crossbow. The odds had to be better than getting back in the vehicle with two escaped lunatics. Now that I was behind the bushes, on the other side of the fence with a cornfield maybe thirty feet beyond, it almost looked too good to be true.

The real danger would be those first ten yards without cover.

"Hurry up," Garou called.

"Hey, sweetheart," I called back, "I need to relax for the plumbing to work, and you're not helping any. These things take time, so shut up and let me concentrate!" I crouched down, hoping that would end any dialogue for the next couple of minutes."Lupe, we might as well give Mr. Csejthe some slack right here," Mooncloud was saying, "or else how are we going to convince him of the truth?"

A dark shape glided overhead, an owl hooted, and I missed her reply.

"Here, give me the crossbow," Mooncloud said. "You can climb into the back and change now. It will save us all time."

I parted the foliage and peeked back at the road, surprised at how well my night vision was operating, especially with so little moonlight escaping the barricade of clouds. Garou scowled but finally acquiesced, handing the medieval weapon to Mooncloud. I didn't wait to see any more but dropped to my hands and knees and began crawling toward the perimeter of the cornfield.

"Mr. Csejthe," Mooncloud called, as I left the hiss and crackle of dry gra.s.s and began creeping across the quiet dirt, "this is to prove to you two very important points. One: you cannot escape. And two: that we are not mad but know very well of that which we speak."

That did it. It's the crazy ones that make just that kind of speech.

I slipped between the cornstalks with nary a rustle and rose halfway to my feet. Rogers & Hammerstein wrote a little ditty in which "the corn is as high as an elephant's eye" but, by midsummer in Southeast Kansas, it was only as high as a man's shoulders. I hunched over and made like Victor Hugo's bellboy of Notre Dame, hoping I was far enough in to prevent any rustling stalks from targeting me.

"Don't hurt him, Lupe," Mooncloud called as I moved deeper into the field. Another thirty feet and I dropped to my belly and began crawling at a right angle to the rows, working my way through columns of cornstalks. Suddenly, I stopped crawling and pressed my cheek to the dirt, listening. There was a susurrus of leaves as something else entered the rows of greenery. And the patter of feet.

Two pairs of feet.

Very light, somewhat small feet.

A dog running loose, I thought, following the trail I had made into the heart of the corn. Did these women keep bloodhounds in the back of the camper for such exigencies?

I raised my head and reached out to crawl through the next row.

My hand encountered a shoe.

Empty?

Groping upward, I encountered an ankle, a leg.

Looking up, I saw a giant white spider dropping toward my face: a hand. Cold, implacable fingers closed on my collar and I found myself suddenly ascending, rising into the night sky to hover with my feet off the ground, the tops of the cornstalks now just barely reaching my waist.

"Urk!" I said defiantly, staring back at the red-eyed man who was holding me off the ground with just one arm.

"So," hissed the holdup artist, "yer da one dat's put us ta all dis trouble." Then he smiled.

Imagine Jack Palance.

Doing a Jack Nicholson grin.

Displaying Bela Lugosi's eyeteeth.

With Arnold Schwarzenegger's accent it would have been a certified Ex-Lax moment. Somehow the Brooklynese made my a.s.sailant sound like Cliff Claven on old Cheers reruns; I might have snickered had I not just entered the second stage of asphyxiation.

The roaring in my ears became a growl and a dark grey shape hurtled across my shrinking field of vision. The next thing I knew I was lying in a tangle of broken cornstalks, gasping for air.

"I command you!" the man shrieked as the silver-and-grey furred beast bore him to the ground. "I command you!" The wolf snarled and redoubled its efforts to tear out the man's throat. It almost succeeded. Then an ivory fist connected a roundhouse swing and the animal went flying past myshoulder.

"Unnatural b.i.t.c.h!" the man hissed, rising to one knee. "Abomination! I will teach you your place! I will show you who's master! I will-"

He stopped suddenly, looking down at the wooden shaft that had just planted itself in his chest.

Mooncloud stepped through a row of cornstalks, reloading the crossbow with another sharpened dowel.

It wasn't necessary; the man fell backward, pale fingers wriggling about but not quite touching the bolt in his chest. His body writhed, smoked, then crumbled to dust, leaving an empty set of clothes behind.

Porphyria, my a.s.s!

Maybe Spielberg or Lucas could've topped it, but it was better than any Hammer flick I'd ever seen and the Brits had set the standard.

"You okay?"

I fumbled for an answer before realizing that Mooncloud had addressed the wolf. It whined a bit, limping over to sniff at the ashy remains of our a.s.sailant.

Time to leave: I tried to ease backwards, through an adjacent row of corn, but the crackle of crushed stalks betrayed me: the wolf turned its head, growled, and trotted toward me.

"Lupe. . ." Mooncloud warned.

The wolf placed its paws on my shoulders and stared down at me with green eyes, its breath like a furnace on my face. Then the muzzle changed-withdrawing, absorbing back into the creature's face.

Eyes migrated. Fur retracted. Ears slid downward, revising their shape and configuration. Forget Spielberg and Lucas! Close up this was way beyond any ILM computerized morphing. I was now looking up at the face of Lupe Garou. Looking down at a body that was undeniably human and definitely feminine. Not to mention unclothed.

Oh my.

"We'd better get moving," Mooncloud said, breaking the spell. "Mr. Csejthe, do you still need a bathroom break?"

Lupe was already up and disappearing in the direction of the road as I looked down again-this time rather ruefully.

"Not anymore."

I emerged from the RV's closet bathroom with a towel wrapped around my waist. "You didn't tell me that there were facilities on board." I clutched at the doorframe as the rear suspension compensated for a pothole. "We could have avoided the whole bush and cornfield routine."

Mooncloud stood over the propane stove and stirred the contents of a small saucepan. "You needed to make the attempt and we needed to prove to you that escape was not possible. I needed Lupe to retrieve you so that you would believe our credentials."

Ah.

"That guy-"

"The vampire," she coached gently.

"The vampire," I conceded reluctantly. "That was a nice touch. Most convincing. The frosting on the cake, as it were."

"We didn't expect him. We should have: Ba.s.sarab's enforcers usually travel in pairs and he wouldn't have sent just one for an intercept so far from home."

"Whoa, whoa; you're losing me here. I'm just getting used to the idea of vampires and werewolves being for real." I staggered the length of the camper sh.e.l.l and sat on a padded bench beside the fold-down table. "Uh, Ms. Garou is a werewolf . . . right?"

Mooncloud nodded.