You know how it goes: trail of blood leads down into the cellar and someone with a death wish always seems to volunteer to go down alone to see what caused it: this is how Mother Nature purges excess stupidity from the gene pool. Another body turns up and everybody decides to split up and go out alone into the dark to see if they can find clues. Uh-huh. At this point I toss my popcorn and start rooting for the homicidal maniac.

So, why was I acting like one of those stupid twits and entering an abandoned house that wasn't quite as empty as it was supposed to be?

Because I was a bada.s.s vampire with an att.i.tude and without a h.e.l.l of a lot left to lose. I drew both Splatmasters and pushed the door back with my toe. "Honey," I murmured, "I'm home."

The stairs inside the entryway went in both directions: one set led down to the rec room, the garage, and the room I had used as my sleeping chamber this past year; the other flight, up to the kitchen, living room, and hallway. Up above, an uncertain light magnified shadows at the top of the stairs. Below, there was nothing but darkness. I hoped.

I reached out and flipped the light switch. Nothing. The power would have been shut off, of course.

The glow from the end of the hallway wavered as a breeze sighed through the open door and wandered through the house. Candles? More likely the kerosene lamp on the dresser in the master bedroom.

A shadow reared from the floor, grew against the hallway wall to a monstrous size and shape. A voice spoke.

"Daddy! You came back!"

The silhouette at the top of the stairs was scarcely four feet tall, contrasting the distorted shadow it threw up the wall and across the ceiling.

The weakness in my ankle transferred to my knees. "K-Kirsten?" The glow behind her lit her hair in a pale nimbus of light. The face at its center remained in shadow like an inky Rorschach blot.

"Daddy. I missed you."

The voice was strange, scratchy. It didn't sound like Kirsten. But, after a year, I wasn't sure I remembered what Kirsten sounded like. Wasn't sure of a lot of things.

"Mommy's gone," she said.

Of course she was.

"I know, honey," I whispered. I lowered the Splatmasters back to their holsters. One missed, slipped from my nerveless fingers, and fell to the floor with a clatter. I ignored it. I only had eyes for that shadowy face surrounded by a flickering halo of light. The rest of my body had grown distant, remote; a fuzzy lethargy extended its buzzing feelers into my head, my thoughts.

"But she'll be back," the apparition continued.

And then it became clear, the thought rising in my mind like the sun over a darkened plain, driving away the shadows of doubt.

I had survived death and so had my wife and daughter!

To h.e.l.l with Pagelovitch! The confusion was only in the details, there was no other answer: they were infected the same as I! Jennifer and Kirsten were alive and, as the thought sank more deeply into my awareness, I felt a mantle of guilt lift from my shoulders. It was only now that I realized how heavily it had pressed down upon my soul.

"Daddy, I want a hug."I lurched forward, stumbled on the second step and clambered up toward my daughter on hands and knees. At the top of the stairs she leaned over me, wrapped her arms around my neck, pressed her face to my cheek. I shivered as cold lips moved across the side of my face, moved down to where my jaw folded into my neck. I drew a deep and ragged breath.

And nearly gagged.

Garbage, came the far away thought as I closed my eyes. The food has gone bad in the refrigerator, the pantry. . . .

Lips parted and I felt the hard, sharp edge of teeth against my flesh. I jerked back. Clapped a hand to my neck.

Nothing.

No blood.

No wound.

Nothing but gooseflesh and paranoia.

Kirsten's shadowy lips curved into a smile. "What's the matter, Daddy?"

My head ached. "Nothing, princess. I'm just surprised to see you, that's all. Where have you been all this time?"

"Here." Her face was still in shadow and now she was backing into the darker recesses of the kitchen, abandoning the uncertain glow from the hallway. "Mommy thought you might come back here and told me to wait for you."

"I see." I didn't. Not at all. "And where is-Mommy-now?"

"She's out getting some food." Her voice-only it wasn't her voice, not the voice that belonged to my little girl a year ago-turned whiny and petulant. "I'm hungry."

"You're hungry?" I was trying to think, but my mind fought me every step of the way.

"I don't want to wait, Daddy. Can I have something now?"

Maybe the accident had damaged her vocal chords. Maybe. . . "Something?" I echoed.

"Something to eat."

Maybe. . . "Maybe we should wait for-for your mother to come back, first."

I caught the shake of her head in the darker depths of the kitchen, even though my night vision was failing to draw an infrared signature from her small body. "Just one of the cold things, okay? It doesn't have to be alive."

"What?" I fumbled at the switches at the top of the stairs. Nothing. My only light source was in the back bedroom at the other end of the hall.

"Just one little piece, Daddy. Alright?"

I shuffled sideways, clutching at the doorframe to the kitchen. "I don't . . ." I suddenly noticed that, as Kirsten moved away, the ripe, unpleasant odor had retreated with her. " . . . know. . . ."

There was a sound. It took a moment to identify it: the refrigerator door being opened. No little light came on. The darkness remained unbroken. But then the stench rolled over me like a wave of effluvium.

There was a reek like the wind from a slaughterhouse and it drove me back down the hallway and into the master bedroom.

The kerosene lamp sat upon the dresser, the mirror behind it amplifying the meager flame that tipped its flat cloth wick. I s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and cast about wildly. A month after the funeral I had moved my clothes out and made my bed downstairs. Though I had rarely entered the room since then, I still knew its topography intimately: something had violated this s.p.a.ce, something nested here. I turned up the flame until it climbed a third of the gla.s.s chimney's height and dribbled smoke at the ceiling.

And then I stood there. I did not want to go back down the hall.

I did not want to go into the kitchen.

I did not want to open up the darkness and look at my daughter's face.

At what unholy larder was kept in that long-dead icebox.

So I stood there, trembling, in a faint circle of light. As long as I did not look, it was still possible that my daughter was infected like me.

Was still human. Like me.

"Chris." Another voice. Also alien.

I turned and nearly dropped the lamp.

She stood in the hallway, where the pale lamplight seemed to barely touch her and then slid away into the darkness. "Jenny," I said.

"Darling." Her voice was as alien as Kirsten's. "I've missed you."

Neither of us moved for a moment.

In the uncertain lamplight she looked much as she always had. Except thinner. And dark circles under her eyes.

And something was wrong with her mouth.

She moved, turning her head as if reading my thoughts. Came into the room and veered to her left.

Orbited a quarter circle, crossing to the bed.

"I've missed you," she said again. "Did you miss me?"

Yes, I thought.

"I can't hear your answer, Chris. Did you forget me while we were apart?" She sat down on the rumpled bed.

I opened my mouth, tried to say no. No sound would come.

"Maybe you got distracted. Maybe there's someone else, now. Is there, baby? Did you find somebody-some body-to take my place?" She slid across the rumpled sheets, moving to the center of the mattress and leaning back against the headboard. Her voice took on an edge: "Maybe that werewolf b.i.t.c.h?"

I closed my mouth. There could be no answers where this conversation was heading.

"You like to do it doggie-style, Chris?" The edge in her voice turned and each word was like a hammer blow. "Are you into b.e.s.t.i.a.lity?"

I just stood there, immobile except for a tremor that was starting to work its way up my leg.

She laughed suddenly and yellow teeth flashed in her mouth. "It's all right, darling. 'Till death us do part.' Remember? So I can't really blame you: you can cop on the technicality."

"I-I thought you were gone," I whispered. "Forever."

"We're ba-ack," she sing-songed. "So, what do you say, honey? Can we be one happy family, again?" Her eyes caught the flame from the lamp and reflected it back as yellow pinpoints. "Or are you going to play doghouse with that Canadian huskie?"

It wasn't Jenny's voice. And I couldn't believe they were Jenny's words. The only real evidence I had before me was Jenny's body.

And there was something wrong with it-something beyond its painfully gaunt appearance-that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

"What about my body?" she asked, squirming in a nest of tangled sheets. "Did you miss it?" She reached up and unfastened the b.u.t.ton at her throat. "I can do it doggie-style, too." Another b.u.t.ton. "You like animals? I can be an animal. Remember?" A third b.u.t.ton and her shirt began to open. "Only I've gotten better this past year. I can be a real animal, now." The forth b.u.t.ton and the front of her shirtgaped, a breast emerged like a sly predator. She cupped it in her hand. "Remember this? Remember how good it could be?"

But I wasn't looking at her breast. I was looking at the black, ropey scars that ran from her shoulders to her chest, where they joined in a rough and lumpy "Y" and continued down her stomach to disappear beneath her jeans.

Autopsy incisions.

I stepped back. Took another step. Kept backing up. Into the hall.

"Darling," I heard her say, "whatever happened to 'for better or for worse'?"

I tripped, stumbled. Looked down at the body lying in the hallway like a b.l.o.o.d.y speed b.u.mp, and lost my footing altogether. The lamp slipped out of my grasp, rebounded off the wall, and crashed against the opposite baseboard. Blue flames washed across the floor, became yellow tapestries that fluttered up the walls. I scooted backwards, slapping at the fiery tongues that flagged from my sleeve, my pants, my shoe. The body at my feet lay half-in, half-out of the spreading flames. An older male-fifty, maybe sixty years old-it hadn't been lying there when I first came it. Hadn't died there, either: even though his throat was practically nonexistent, there was very little blood on the carpet.

Mommy's out getting some food. . . .

Kirsten.

I rolled over and crawled back toward the kitchen.

"Kirsten, where are you?"

No answer. The flames were following me back up the hallway, providing better illumination. Now I could see the outline of the icebox, its door still ajar. Masking the charnelhouse reek was the growing smell of burning hair and roasting flesh. I started to crawl onto the linoleum and nearly fell on my face as my hands slid through something thick and wet and viscous.

"Kirsten!" I screamed. There was no response, and now the flames were lapping at my feet and blistering the wall next to the stairway.

She was surely gone, more out of harm's way than I was. I turned and threw myself down the stairs.

The ceiling overhead rippled and turned orange. Smoke flowed down the stairway, impelled by a sudden downdraft. I grabbed at the doork.n.o.b, twisted, pulled. The door was locked.

I fumbled with the turnset on the k.n.o.b. No good: the door was secured with a double-keyed, sliding bolt. I turned and stumbled down the half-flight of steps leading to the lower level of the house.

The door to the garage was on my left at the bottom of the stairs. It opened easily.

I entered the garage and closed the door behind me. That cut off the smoke-filtered glow of the spreading flames up above. I took a step and banged my shin on something solid. Hold on, I told myself: Think!

Flashlight.

I fumbled along the wall and found the flashlight we'd always kept plugged in, next to the door, for emergencies. There hadn't been any. Until now.

I didn't know how long the power had been cut off but the batteries still held enough of a charge. The beam cut a swath of visibility through the smoky darkness.

A black car . . . sedan . . . no. . .

Station wagon . . . no. . .

A hea.r.s.e. . . took up most of the s.p.a.ce.

There was barely enough room for the two coffins, resting on pairs of sawhorses at the back of the garage. And a small table, the workbench, actually, set with unlit candles, a crucible, and another bowl-half filled with long, narrow leaves-some scrolls, an ankh. . .

Scrolls?Detail was uncertain at this distance, in this light, but the text looked familiar. Before I could move closer something slammed against the door behind me. The k.n.o.b rattled. but the door remained closed: out of habit, I had locked it behind me.

"Kirsten?" I called.

No response.

"Jenny?"