"Your favorite Aunty, Genoa?"

Her name and her hideous death stabbed at my heart. "Yes. She had come here to care for my niece and nephew. None of them were vampires. They all died and a kapu, a forbidden zone, was placed on the house. It had to be burned down."

"How did they avoid the...you know...curse?"

"They were on my mother's side of the family." I was remembering that night, my grandfather and I fleeing before we could be quarantined or .

killed, hiding in the yam farm that made up the entire rear of my grandfather's property. It was all streets and smaller, divided parcels of land now.

Tem was watching the movie in my mind, trying to superimpose the images on the street on which we were standing. "I don't see cars. I see horses...hand pushed carts...oh wait, a couple of horse-drawn carriages. Oh, Div, how beautiful it was."

I smiled then. "Yes, it was. It was a different time. Do you know I still miss the smell of kerosene lamps at night?"

Tem's mental picture gallery was on fast forward. "Wait...that wall...I see it. It's still here."

I nodded. "Part of it." I took his hand and we took off again, flying low over what had once been our family land. Acres and acres of it. Parts of the wall were still there. It was the wall that protected the secret remains of long dead relatives.

Tem was looking at me with such sadness as we came to land on the other side of the wall in what was wilderness, a wonderful thing in big and bustling Waikiki.

"Not long after we were allowed to bury our family members, right here, on our property, my grandfather was murdered. We never discovered who did it or why, but we found him slumped over a fence, a wooden paling piercing his heart. Ironic really, considering that a stake in the heart .

is an effective way to kill a vampire, but I don't think his killer knew he was a vampire. I believe they had a bad fight over gambling debts. My grandfather loved cards...they just didn't love him back and he lost big...constantly."

"So you think they wound up here and he got thrown onto the fence in the middle of a fight?"

I nodded. "There were marks and bruises all over him. His knuckles were broken. He'd hit somebody, we just never knew who, but he'd definitely been in a fight."

"But the house was gone, wasn't it?"

"Oh yes, but he planned to rebuild. He still had the farm...he still had considerable holdings. He sold a few acres here and there to pay off gambling debts. He was a wonderful man with poor financial judgment."

"So the family curse...the kahuna cursed your great grandfather on your father's side because..."

I knew this day would come. I always had. "Love. That's usually what it's about. They loved the same woman. My great grandfather got her, but he got a nasty curse along with it. Like I told you before, I tried my best to get the curse lifted and the best thing the kahuna's family could do was give me a second chance at love."

Tem was looking at the land around us now with new and very wide eyes. "So when he died, what happened to this land?"

I sighed. "The government got it. My sister and I left this island. We had to leave. We had no idea when grandpa was murdered if people knew we were vampires. We just went into hiding. We hid for a while in my Aunty Genoa's house...her husband, my uncle took care of us but we felt we were putting his life at risk. He lived on for several more years and left the house to us. The house we all live in...but for a long time, we had to hide and...and... " And then it was all back in my mind. I pointed to a mangrove swamp ahead. "That used to be a natural spring. People came from miles to bathe there."

"Really? How come I don't see it?"

"It was filled in many, many years ago."

"No, I mean in your mind."

"I've blocked the memories..." I glanced at Tem. "Not from you. From myself. Until I met you, those were the last days I was truly happy."

He put his hand to my face. He knew the truth, he could read it. "I want to see it."

I shook my head, feeling broken pieces shaking like loose change inside me. "It's all gone now." But Tem was a persistent presence in my head. You might say relentless.

"What are the yellow flags?"

Oh, G.o.d. He was taking me...no, dragging me back there, to the night the entire street was torched by health officials. n.o.body was allowed .

to enter the houses except medical personnel. Bodies were piled up in the middle of each home, dumped with clothing, books, bedding...anything that allowed spores to travel. So much rumor had persisted about how smallpox was spread. It was, in fact, transmitted by bedbugs, but that didn't stop the hysteria. The yellow flags were flags of death, and health officials on horseback went to each door, one by one, throwing in burning logs, torching every last house to the ground.

Tem shook his head, not believing the gruesome images. He watched me running with my grandfather and my sister...my beautiful sister, running...terrified...people screaming ahead of us, suffering from the disease. I watched them jumping in the mineral spring in an effort to cool off, killing each other trying to get in and out of the deep pool. I remembered hungry pigs circling and dragging off dead bodies.

I remembered...I watched as my sister and I pulled my grandfather through a dense forest of kawao trees...trees no longer readily available on any of the islands.

Tem squeezed my hand. "Where did you go when you left Oahu?"

"Kauai. My uncle let the government take my grandfather's land. I think he always felt guilty about that, which was why he gave me and Kalani the Tantalus property."

"But by rights, if what I am seeing is correct, a large chunk of this Pali highway really belongs to you?"

I nodded. "To us. What's mine is yours."

"Wait a second, Div...the Smallpox outbreak was 1853. Are you telling me for real that now, a hundred and fifty years later, you've found happiness again? Because of me?"

"Because of you."

"I'm really your second chance at love?"

"Yeah. You took your time getting here, you know that?"

He stepped closer, kissing me and our kiss lingered, threatening to get us both rock hard and naked in about sixty seconds.

"I just thought of something." I took my mouth off him, making him scowl.

"Div, I want you to f.u.c.k me right here in this place you used to love."

"I will," I whispered. "Very soon. But we have to leave, baby."

"Why?"

I took his hand again and we took off for the western flight path toward our mountain, toward home.

"What is it?" Tem shouted as the rain started coming down again. "What's wrong?"

"Hiroshi. Remember he said something about the baby being a nest of vipers?"

Tem frowned. "Yeah, that wasn't very nice."

I shook my head. "It's worse than that, baby. Lamia...she's supposed to have the face and b.r.e.a.s.t.s of a woman and the body of..."

"A snake! Oh, Div..."

Tem and I looked at each other and, carried by a kiu wind, a top wind from the mountain, we took the extra fast way home.

Chapter Eight.

e's fine." My sister looked down at the baby"Hwho was drooling in his sleep in a basket that had, up until a few hours ago, held vegetables in our kitchen. Aunty Genoa's quilt lay underneath the baby, the cashmere throw covering him. I was so relieved the house was still standing that I didn't care about our family heirloom being under our demon seed's b.u.t.t.

"Would you stop that?" Tem looked exasperated. "He is our son. He's not a demon seed...well, not completely, right?"

Back in our home, it was hard to believe the baby could be Satan's sp.a.w.n, a victim of Lamia...any of if, frankly. He looked so peaceful, pale pink color in his little apple cheeks as he dozed. Moontime, disgusted at no longer being the center of Tem's divided universe with me, padded off to our room. I knew we would find him curled up under our bedspread, waiting for his breakfast.

Clancy was grinning. "Look, we bathed Beelzebub after he spat up all that bile on himself...and the strangest thing happened. Check out his left hand."

Tem and I could hardly believe our eyes. Beelzebub's little hand was turning back into pudgy baby fingers.

"How about that? Love does conquer everything." Tem looked ecstatic.

"I think those herbs of Hiroshi's might have had something to do with it." Kalani, however, looked very happy.

"Has he called or come back?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I keep getting his voice mail. Even G.o.d's spiritual envoy wants us to leave a message."

I grinned. "I'll try him again. Those herbs must be really something."

Kalani's gaze fell on the sleeping baby again as we told the girls what had happened since we'd left them. We told them everything except about our hot little tryst in Blossom's penthouse apartment.

"It's so odd that you went by the old place." My sister glanced at her wife. "Clancy and I looked at the casket the baby came in. It is definitely not his burial casket. The baby that was in it was much bigger. We measured very carefully. This is a newborn vamp for sure, with an extra little kick .

for good measure. I have a feeling this casket was stolen and somebody tried to bury it, put it back...you know? I think it might be valuable."

A spooky feeling came over me. "You think it was from one of the graves they found, you know...when they started construction on the Wal-Mart up on Keeaumoku Street and found those graves?"

Tem looked at me. "Div...those graves were from the smallpox outbreak, weren't they?"

I nodded. "Yes, they were."

Kalani tucked the baby in a little tighter. "But a few of them weren't, Jimmy. A few of them predated the smallpox outbreak. Remember? They said they found three graves where the victims were buried in the fetal position, the way the ancients used to bury their dead."

"But I don't remember there being talk of a baby being buried there."

"So, maybe there's a connection. Maybe there isn't. Maybe there's a fresh grave somewhere real close." Kalani looked at her wife. "I think we should take a little fly around and see what we can find. It's getting lighter now."

"It's Christmas!" Tem glowed as our old grandfather clock struck five a.m.

We all hugged and kissed each other and my sister hugged me one more time, extra hard. "You keep calling that witch doctor. We'll be in touch."

She tried to suppress a laugh. "There's one bottle of that special milk left. Good luck."

"You want your Christmas presents now?" Tem asked. "I think you might find them useful."

The two girls looked at each other.

It was Kalani who spoke. "Todah's asleep. That wouldn't be fair."

"I'll wake him up." Tem ran off like a little kid. I loved being with a man who loved Christmas.

"Well, we brewed some coffee," Kalani admitted. "I suppose a few minutes to have a cup of coffee and open our gifts...just to be sociable, you know..."

"Yes. Just to be sociable." We grinned at each other, both of us so happy, and so happy for each other that we couldn't even talk about it.

Tem returned looking furious, his sleepy brother in tow. "You should see what he dragged home last night."

"Don't you mean who?" And then I knew. I just knew that Todah was back on with Nonita, my ex-girlfriend and the bane of Tem's existence. Despite my total lack of interest in her, Tem felt wounded that she'd tried to dupe us into believing she was carrying my child at one point. Then she came under Blossom's fire and almost got herself killed.

These days, Nonita was a little p.o.r.n starlet and ran a couple of clubs in Waikiki, keeping in Blossom's good books, as far as I knew. Todah was .

not fussy about where he dipped his wick, but he hadn't been dipping it into Nonita in the past couple of months.

"What time did you two come home?" I asked Todah.

"Why do you care?" he shot back.

I arched a brow in his direction and I could almost hear the pennies dropping in everybody's collective banks. Todah was outnumbered and outmaneuvered.

"Okay, okay. I got home about one thirty." He looked very shifty. He was not telling us the truth.

"Has she been with you the whole time?" Kalani asked.

"Well...I don't...I...why? What's going on?"