"The teeth are very sharp, but quite soft." He took the clean knife from Kalani, severed and tied off the umbilical cord, handing it to me. "He didn't feel a thing. I anesthetized the area. You .

will need to keep the cord. Put it in plastic for now in the freezer. If ever he needs plasma or blood work, nothing is better than having the umbilical cord for comparison." He hesitated. "While I'm here, do you want me to circ.u.mcise him?"

"h.e.l.l, no." Tem's voice was firm. "My husband is uncut and it is a joy to behold..."

"Thanks for sharing," Hiroshi chuckled. He put on his stethoscope, placing it over the baby's heart, picked up a tiny wrist in his fingers and checked his watch.

As the baby gurgled, growled and spat, there was an odd look on Hiroshi's face. His hand moved to Beelzebub's other wrist. Then he tried taking the baby's temperature with a rectal thermometer. He tried again and again.

"Mmm...how strange."

"What is?" I asked.

Hiroshi didn't respond. He shook the thermometer again, inserted it into the baby's bottom, and with his other hand examined the little shirt the baby had been wearing. He looked at me.

"This basket...is that what you found him in?"

Tem nodded. "I know...it's hideous, isn't it? I'm going to throw it out. I can't bear to look at it."

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

"Why not?" I was curious now.

"Well, unless I'm mistaken, there's .

something...I don't quite know how to say this." "Just say it," I insisted. Hiroshi's expression was now agonized. "Well, I don't really know how to tell you this."

"Just spit it out." I winced as the baby hissed, his forked tongue sending spittle all over the place.

"Well, the thing is, call me crazy, but as far as I can tell, this baby has no heart beat, no temperature...no pulse. This is a dead baby."

Chapter Four.

lancy almost dropped her violin. "What did Cyou say?"

Kalani and I were staring at each other. A vampire baby. We knew a thing or two about vampires that our newly converted spouses did not. Some humans did not hear vampires' heart beats.

I caught Tem's anxious gaze and his thoughts flew into my brain. Don't let him take this baby from us, Div.

Not a chance, Tem. My man, still new to the art of reading my mind when I wanted him to, must have caught the drift of my thoughts, because he looked relieved.

Hiroshi was actually excited. The scientist in him was incredulous, rather than fearful. "He's dead. I don't know how, but somebody has conjured this kid up from beyond...you know...the grave..." His voice trailed away and he shrugged. He glanced at me and Tem. "How .

many people know about your family affliction?"

Tem, Kalani, Clancy and I collectively jumped as if poked with the same red hot cattle prod.

"What...affliction?" I asked, my voice sounding squeaky even to my ears. Some alpha male I'd turned out to be.

Hiroshi looked exasperated. "Todah's inu gami possession, of course. Apart from me, who else knows about it?"

We all looked at each other. "Blossom, I guess," was the first name on my lips. Our self-appointed matriarch was not actually related by blood, but she had been the one to find Hiroshi for me when Todah was in trouble.

Hiroshi fixed the steel tip on the baby bottle with the doctored formula and hoisted the baby into his arms, feeding him. "This has a number of herbs that will stop the bile rising in his throat, and it will slow down the metamorphosis into complete demonic possession."

"You say that so matter of factly," I replied.

"I would say this baby died at birth and somebody went to a soothsayer...or somebody to get him, you know...revived. With catastrophic results. I can't say I've seen it before...well, not exactly."

"What exactly have you seen before?"

Hiroshi lifted his shoulders in a helpless way. "When parents lose a baby they try many bad .

things...drastic things." He checked the contents of the bottle and stuffed the tip back into the hungry baby's mouth. "What we have on hand here will keep the baby happy and give you time to get down to Chinatown and figure out who sent you a nest of vipers for Christmas."

Tem stared at him. "Chinatown? But we can't go anywhere. We're expecting twenty people for Christmas dinner. My parents will be here in...eleven and a half hours."

"I suggest you get going then." Hiroshi handed the baby off to Kalani, the little beast suckling in a more genteel way on his bottle now, his small body apparently in a state of exhaustion from all the amateur theatrics.

Hiroshi a.s.sembled three more bottles and refrigerated them. "Each bottle will keep him calm and nourished for one hour, possibly a little longer, but you're looking at four to five hours tops, then I have no idea what he'll be capable of...whoever sent this little keg of dynamite wasn't doing it with Aloha."

"You think it was an attempt to kill us?" I was incredulous.

"Oh, no. This is an ancient curse. See this basket? It's a burial casket. This baby was brought to you in the very basket he was entombed in...at least I think it was his casket. You can still see his body formation on the base of it. And look at his .

burial shroud..."

And here I'd been thinking it was a onesie...

"Wait a second...if he's an ancient baby, how did he get dug up again?" I asked.

"Good question. But I don't have any answers for you."

"He doesn't smell like a dead baby. He has that new baby smell to him." Tem gave the baby a finger to hold and those tiny talons gripped him like a vice.

It was true, Beelzebub did not seem ancient at all. My thoughts raced. Maybe the basket had been stolen and someone thought it would be a fitting burial home for the baby.

Hiroshi's voice sliced into my reverie. "He must have been the child of somebody important. He was buried in the fetal position, which ancient Hawaiians used to do. And..." Hiroshi held up the tiny garment. "It has the crown flower pattern on it. He was the child of an influential person, maybe even an ali'i."

"Well, it sounds like they think we're important, that's why they brought him to us." That was Tem, always trying to look on the bright side of things.

Hiroshi gave him a long look. "Guys, I have no idea why somebody would send you a revived dead baby, but this kid died a long, long time ago. You're paying me for my spiritual divination as .

well as my medical skills, and I feel this is tied up in old family business. The words that keep coming to me are bad blood."

He gave us a little wave and seemed in a real rush to leave. "I'll see myself out."

For a few moments after he left, the four of us remained silent.

"Beelzebub...he's one of us, isn't he? A vampire?" Tem asked finally.

"Yes, I can hear his heart beating steadily." Kalani smiled down at the baby who looked drowsy now.

"I never knew humans couldn't hear our hearts beating. In all the time I knew you before I knew you...of...you know what I mean, I could hear your heart beating." Tem was staring at me.

"Because you loved me. You were tuned into me. I am not sure that Hiroshi is right about somebody dumping the baby on us. I'm inclined to think Moontime found him and dragged him here." A bad feeling was coming over me, that somebody had been in the act of burying what he thought was a dead baby when the cat interrupted them.

"So how do you explain the demon curse?" Clancy asked.

"You heard the man. He said bad blood. Old business." I caught my sister's frightened look. Old family business and a lot of bad blood had put .

a curse on the Thunder family. I had no idea if the bad blood was ours, or the family business, but it was time to start getting some answers.

"What if the baby's family tried to remove the vampire curse and stirred up the demon curse?" Kalani asked. "What if..."

I cut her off. "Kalani, Clancy...can you take care of the baby while Tem and I go to Chinatown?"

The girls nodded. I glanced at Moontime. "And you stay here and watch the baby. Daddy and I are going the fast way."

"We're going to fly?" Tem brightened instantly. He lived to fly. One of the perks of being vampires in love was our ability to fly...together. He was oblivious to the cat's p.i.s.sed expression. Until I knew what we were dealing with, I wanted the cat indoors, safe. Moontime was staring at me. "For your own safety, Moon...stay indoors."

"You think somebody wants to hurt our cat?" Tem looked even more worried.

"I don't know, darling. I do know we're running out of time. Let's roll."

Tem and I went to our private quarters, removed our kimonos and put on our favorite flying gear, leather pants, vests and long coats. Tem had made our matching outfits and had made a variation on them for the women in our family as Christmas presents. We let ourselves out of the house and walked to the mauka side, or .

mountain side of our property that spread makai, or toward the ocean on the other end. The night was dark, with scattered stars, some puffy clouds and a brisk freshness on the air.

Joining hands, we made a run at the edge of a gap between our private road and a rocky ravine and we took off. Our flight time would be about six minutes, but Tem and I liked to circle our property, surveying our land, checking on the horses, goats and pigs, and we found our little estate undisturbed.

"I love you!" Tem shouted as we rose above the dense sandalwood forest, what little remained of it on the crest of Tantalus. The spicy, heady scent of the dusky wood was especially intoxicating in the summer months, but to us, was always pervasive. We threaded our way between old, old trees, releasing and catching one another's hands over and around branches and leaves, until we found ourselves flying over Waikiki.

"Tem, I love you," I shouted at my man, who grinned as the wind whipped his face.

The stars twinkling so close never failed to delight us. For so many years I'd been grounded by my unusual vampire's curse. The kahuna, or high priest who'd placed it on my grandparents had allowed our family to enjoy some daylight, food, many of the typical things that a Hawaiian would enjoy. However, things like flying were .

denied us unless we were bonded to a mate. I'd forgotten how wonderful it felt to fly until I met Tem. I had always bedded women until I fell in love with him. Once I knew I needed to be with him, being without him would have been the worst curse of all.

I held his hand tighter as we neared Waikiki, its city lights like diamonds in a bed of green and black velvet. We zeroed in on Chinatown. Until we touched ground, humans could not see us. We hovered over Merchant Street and as we began our descent, the sound reached us like the blast of a car horn. People laughing, talking...and oh yeah, some idiot really was honking his horn. Tem and I touched down gently and I gathered him to me.

"Where to?" he asked me, smelling deliciously of sky and stars and a little bit of sea spray. We were close to the water's edge, maybe half a block.

"Something's off. I can feel it."

"Me too." Tem paused. "There's tension in the air."

I wished we were home in bed. Tem gave me his mouth and we exchanged a lovely, open-mouthed kiss that threatened to get hot and dirty fast. I pulled back from him and his face took on a mournful expression.

"G.o.d Tem, you always turn me to mush."

"Not completely." His hand migrated to my rock hard c.o.c.k. "That's what I'm talking about."

I laughed and gave him another quick kiss. "Let's start with the dragon queen herself."

Tem had a very good relationship with Blossom, who ruled Chinatown with an invisible empirical rod. She publicly kept herself scarce by day, except for those she knew well. Like me, she preserved her energies during the day to deal with her twilight world at sundown. Owing to her great age, which I believed to be in the hundreds, she lived by her own rules. She had outlived the whaling trade of the early 1800s, the devastating smallpox outbreak of 1853, the Chinatown plague of 1900, two bad fires, the second of which completely destroyed Chinatown, Pearl Harbor and Nine Eleven, the last of which, she a.s.sured me, rattled her the most because it had devastated world trade into Honolulu.

Running a smooth, intricate network of gambling, opium and what she insisted were love dens, she knew everybody in Honolulu, even if they didn't know her. Nothing happened in this town that Blossom didn't know about. Tem had captured her heart with his stunning clothing designs and his complete devotion to revamping her many businesses. She and I had always maintained a cordial, respectful distance. I was still uncomfortable with her in the self-appointed role of family matriarch, but it sure as h.e.l.l was a lot more pleasant than being in her bad books.

Tem and I turned down the narrow back alley side street off River Street, surprisingly alive with activity at this hour. This was one of a string of Blossom's opium dens, this one her new favorite because it was disguised as a noodle shop out front.

Pausing at the entrance, I smiled at the view inside. "Darling, the girls look so good." I turned and smiled at Tem who frowned at me.

"What do you mean, good?"

"Well, considering they used to have their t.i.ts falling into the saimin, they actually look presentable. I love the outfits you designed for them."

I was aware of Tem's enraged sniff as I admired the figure-hugging tight little red velvet dresses that cleverly accentuated each womanly a.s.set on the five food servers behind the counter. For a few bucks more, you could have your pick of girl and some opium out back. A few more bucks would get you a nice hand job as you got high, your head nestled in her lap. More money got you a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b and the equivalent of the state deficit would get you an actual piece of a.s.s.

"What would you like?" the closest girl to me called out.

I moved up to the noodle counter, my gaze falling somewhere between primitive l.u.s.t and genuine intrigue. How the heck did she keep those .

t.i.ts from jumping out all over the place?

"Ah...yes, I wouldn't mind some nipples. Er...I mean...noodles. How about you, Tem?"

"None for me." He was beyond enraged now, making a dangerously wide turn toward homicidal as he stared at what he thought was my object of desire.

"No?" I glanced away from him back to the counter girl. "Well, in that case, do you mind telling Blossom that Jimmy and Tem Thunder would like to speak to her, please?"

The girl hesitated. "Blossom?"

"Yes, Blossom." I was starting to lose my patience now.