Her father came beside her as well, holding her. "No, Magdalena!" he whispered to her.

But she could see.

Oh, G.o.d.

There was no corpse. No corpse.

No body, no blood. Where her lover should have lain, the floor seemed burnt, with only black ash in the shape of a winged creature remaining. She started to scream again.

And her scream faded away, and the world with it.

"She has died; she will become one of the creatures!" G.o.dwin told them all firmly.

"She sleeps!" Jason protested.

"The sleep of death."

"She sleeps!" Robert Canady thundered.

"The sleep of life! She is my child, my flesh, my blood, I will heal her!"

He swept his daughter into his arms, taking her even from Robert.

And he carried her away. Walked away from the white manor made red by the glow of the moon. He stumbled, nearly fell. He rose and carried her again. The blood-red moonlight seemed blinding.

He looked up then, and realized that the moonlight was fading. It was a red streak of the sun beginning to burst forward that so plagued his eyesight.

The sun. The daylight was coming.

He began to run to his carriage.

She lay in a strange, icy world of darkness. She knew that she should fight the sensations of utter blackness and absolute cold that settled upon her like an unearthly blanket. People called to her; their voices seemed so far away. From somewhere she could see a distant ray of light, but she could not seem to reach it. Someone was holding her, she realized. She wanted to cry out. She wanted to reach the light. She could not. Let me go! she thought. But it was a soundless plea in the vast darkness, in the void, in the loneliness beyond death ...

Once again, there was sensation. So strange. She thought that the chill that had settled upon her would never go away, but there was something like warmth surrounding her, countering the bone-deep chill. Even the blackness was different.

There were shades of gray within it.

Time, she thought distantly.

Time ...

Shadows, light, darkness, shadows, light, darkness ...

The nights ... they came and went.

Finally, there came a moment when she felt her father's hands, and knew that he was with her. She felt a liquid warmth coming down her throat. Felt, yes she felt, and felt things that were real, tangible.

Time ...

It pa.s.sed more easily. She grew stronger. She could lift her head. Feel the texture of the cup from which she drank, touch her father's fingers. She lay in her own bed. Its softness surrounded and embraced her. Candlelight flickered, gentle upon her eyes.

She kept drinking, not recognizing what strange potion he had given her while she lay so sick, what warmth it was that had summoned her back from the cold. At last, she found the strength to become curious.

"What is it?" she whispered to her father. "What is it that I'm drinking?" "Blood," Jason said flatly.

She turned her head into her pillow. She cried, but tears would not come.

"For the love of G.o.d, Father!" she whispered.

"No," he said softly, "for the love of my child. Hush, now, sleep."

Her eyes closed again. She lay in a misery worse than death.

But in time, as he had gently commanded, she slept.

Jason rose with a heavy heart, pulled the covers high around her. She did need that warmth so desperately!

He walked downstairs to where his friends waited and strode to the mantel, pausing there, leaning upon the carved wood for support as he met their questioning stares.

He weighed his words carefully.

"I believe that she is going to live," he said very softly. Then he hesitated, knuckles white as he prayed that he was now making the right move in saying what he would say. He inhaled deeply. "And I believe that she is going to have a child."

CHAPTER 1.

"Oh, Christ!" Jack Delaney swore, turning from the corpse into his partner's arms, his face a strange, pale shade of green. He was a young cop, just turned twenty-five, a good- looking fellow, six feet, with light-brown eyes and sandy red hair.

"Let the rookie by, guys, have a heart here," Sean Canady said, supporting his new partner for a moment.

"You gonna be all right?" he asked quickly, the question low and spoken for only Jack to hear. For a brief moment, Jack leaned on Sean, the older cop, two inches taller than he, and at forty a broad-shouldered, tautly muscled, impressive figure with ink-dark hair and sharp, dark-blue eyes. Sean usually kept a tight leash on his emotions, preferring to work out his frustrations at the gym.

Jack inhaled quickly, glad of the break. He drew strength from Sean, nodded, and knew that the teasing he took from the other men would be light because Sean had supported him.

"I'm fine," Jack said.

Sean nodded. "Make way there, fellows. Delaney needs to start asking some questions in the neighborhood. Make sure we've got men combing these streets; someone must have seen something!" Sean said firmly, making sure that his partner made it through the rows of cops out in their rain gear circling the stretch of narrow roadway where the body had been found. The area was now all nicely roped off with yellow crime tape. Jack had arrived at the scene just moments before Sean had reached the corpse, and turned away. Jack was new to homicide, only a few years on the force, a young Irishman turned over to Sean because, the captain had said, of his name. Put the "Micks" together, that had been Captain Daniels's comment. Sean didn't deny Irish roots-they were mere somewhere- but the Irishman who had brought the Canady name to New Orleans had done so nearly two centuries ago, and Sean himself was a mixture of the many blends that made up the city.

He had French blood, English, Cajun, and who knew? Probably a little Caribbean mixed in there, too. It didn't matter. Sean liked Jack Delaney, and knew the captain liked him, too.

And that was why Jack had been a.s.signed to Sean.

"Make way for the rookie," someone else called, and Jack was on through to the other side of the barricades. No matter what Jack had said, Sean was certain his partner was about to be sick.

"This was a tough one, kid," another fellow in uniform called out, and Sean was glad to see that the men were going to go easy on Jack.

There really was no such thing as a good body after a murder. Still, some were worse than others.

Sean strode on over to where Pierre LePont was bent over the body, intent on studying the corpse. He hunkered down beside the medical examiner, who was studying the corpse's fingers. He gave Pierre a brief nod of acknowledgment, then gave his attention to the corpse.

Unlike Jack, he'd seen his share of dead bodies. Too many of them-bodies bloated from the Mississippi, human bodies barely recognizable as such. The newly dead, the fresh kill, the form that bled into the pavement as well as the corpse that had managed to remain hidden until the unbearable smell had brought it to light and the corpse that had remained hidden so long that there was nothing left but bone.

And still, there was something incredibly strange about this one.

The man hadn't been dead long-h.e.l.l, he couldn't have been, not right off Bourbon Street like this. The business day had started; it was just past nine, so the man might have been killed just before daybreak. The homeless did sleep on the street, so in the darkness he might not have been noticed. Nor was he a mess-no blood streaked over the pavement, no brains spattering the wall of the shop he lay before. This fellow was simply white- except for the line of red that circled his entire throat and neck. He wasn't just pale, nor was he grayish. He was white as a sheet. He almost looked like a caricature of life. The awful thing about him-that which had surely made Jack so green-was the fact that his eyes remained wide open, and they seemed to mirror an absolute terror. There was a look of such absolute horror in them that he was tempted to turn and try to see what those eyes had envisioned in the final minutes of life.

"G.o.d," Sean breathed.

"Yeah," Pierre agreed. "And you want to know the funny thing?"

"There's something funny here?"

Pierre made a face. "Peculiar, okay? There was no fight. This guy was scared, so d.a.m.ned scared he might have died from that alone. But he didn't put up a fight. Well, I've got some tests to do at the morgue, I can't give you guarantees right now, but it doesn't seem that he lifted a finger to ward off his attacker."

"Do you think he did die of fright?"

"He might have gone of cardiac arrest-but he didn't."

"He didn't? What was the mortal injury? The throat wound?" Sean shook his head even as he asked the question. A throat wound, obvious, if the pavement had been stained. But the way it looked, with no blood, the slashing of the throat should have come after death.

"Where's the blood?"

Pierre, a slim, balding little man and one of the best in the business, shook his head as well. "There sure as h.e.l.l isn't any blood here-and, by the way, it's not just a throat wound.

This fellow has been decapitated." He carefully rolled the head just a shade, showing Sean that the head had been completely severed from the body.

Sean felt his stomach quiver.

He pulled out his notebook. "What's his age? Late twenties?"

Mike Hays, a uniformed officer, stepped closer to the two of them.

"His name was Anthony Beale, Lieutenant Canady. Native of New Orleans, twenty-nine years old. Had a record, petty, small-time stuff. Five arrests, three for robbery, one for home invasion, and one for the procurement of prost.i.tutes. Only one of the robberies ever stuck, he served eighteen months for it. No visible means of support. He still seemed to be doing all right, eh, Lieutenant Canady? That's an Armani suit on him."

"Armani, huh?" Sean said, and shrugged. Not many of the homeless slept in Armani suits.

"Yeah, nice suit," Pierre commented dryly.

"Hey, Sean, I need a few more pictures," Bill Smith, the police photographer, called to him.

Sean and Pierre obligingly stood away.

Sean looked up and down the street. It was a decent section of the Vieux Carre, the famous French Quarter of New Orleans-if decent was a word that could be used for a street that housed dozens of s.e.x shops. On these particular blocks, however, there were businesses and residences. Two expensive tourist hotels were just down the street from him on either side. Craft shops, antique stores, and boutiques lined the downstairs buildings here, beautiful window displays showing their goods. He stepped back. Offices, dance studios, a gym, and a tanning salon were advertised as being in some of the upstairs rooms. The street was lined with the type of structure that had made the French Quarter known around the world, handsome buildings with arched windows, wrought -iron balconies, b.u.t.tresses, and other distinctive detail.

He stared at the body on the ground. New Orleans, N'Awleans, his city. He loved it.

He'd been born right here in the city, literally in the lobby of one of the fine old residential hotels, since his mother had found it deplorable to whine about labor pains before it was necessary. He'd gone away to college, he'd tried to see the world. He'd come back. There was just something about the place. It was his. It was not crime-free. It was naughty, tawdry. It was jazz, it was beauty, it was dark waters of the mighty Mississippi. It was crawfish-etouffee, the best d.a.m.ned food in the entire world, a city riddled with ghost stories, tales of voodoo queens, and more. It had entered into contemporary times with the same woes and troubles ailing it as created hard times in other big cities-drugs, crime, homelessness, inflation, unemployment. Some called it a city of the wicked, a city of the d.a.m.ned. Well, it might be, but it was his city, his city of the d.a.m.ned. Whatever he could accomplish to save it from the actual grips of h.e.l.l, he was going to do.

This seemed pretty cut and dried. Anthony Beale, small-time hood, prosperous pimp.

He'd messed with somebody bigger; he was a bad man come to a bad end. It should be one for the books. "It does make me think of the cemetery stiff," Pierre said suddenly, even as the thought occurred to Sean.

"Woman's body," Sean said. "And cut to pieces." Even such a description was an understatement. "Jane Doe," female Caucasian, twenty-five to thirty years of age, five feet five, one hundred and twenty-five pounds, had been found in one of the old above-ground cemeteries outside the French Quarter just last week. She'd been found lying on top of one of the tombs, naked and disemboweled, almost as if a modern Jack the Ripper had taken a turn with her. Body parts and her internal organs had been neatly laid out beside her. The murder had sent the city reeling into shock; it was still the topic of conversation for residents and tourists alike. Naturally, such a crime-with no suspect under arrest- led to wild speculation and a great deal of fear.

"All that cutting, and almost no blood," Pierre said glumly, referring to their Jane Doe.

"Decapitated," Sean continued with a soft whistle. "Maybe we've got ourselves a connection here."

"A prost.i.tute and a pimp," Pierre agreed. "We've got to pray that there's only one guy evil enough to do such deeds in the city. Let me get this guy to the morgue, and see what else I can find."

"You still have our Jane Doe on ice?" Sean asked.

Pierre nodded. "Yes, she's still with us."

"Maybe we can take a look at them both. Put our heads together on it."

"Sure thing," Pierre agreed. He shrugged. "Put their heads together on it," he said dryly, without humor. "I can tell you something right now."

"What's that?"

"Our murderer was a southpaw. Left-handed."

"What?"

"On both victims," Pierre continued. Again, he touched the severed head with a gloved finger. "See the way the throat was slashed? It had to have been an extremely sharp knife wielded with considerable strength. Actually, it is not easy to sever a human head."

"That's good to hear," Sean said.

Pierre nodded, rising. Sean rose along with him. "Gentlemen, are we done here?"

Pierre asked Bill Smith and the other milling cops. "May I take this fellow on into the morgue?"

"Sean is senior homicide man here," Bill said. "I've got all my pictures, though, Sean. If you're set, LePont can have the corpse."

"He's all yours, Pierre," Sean said.