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Chapter Fourteen

The walk from the parking lot to BioWeb's main entrance was too short to solve the mystery of the Chevy Nova encounter.

While our pursuit had been decidedly unfriendly and our pursuers certainly willing to do violence to my passenger, their seeming reluctance to shoot the driver took on the appearance of solicitousness for my well-being.

Assuming they even knew who was driving.

Pagelovitch was intrigued by our account—what little he was able to glean from our telepathic musings, that is. I didn't, however, sense that he was about to go running back to confront our backside besiegers. More likely, he hoped our little outing would convince me to hop in the back of his Suburban and make the return trip to Seattle. There I would be untroubled by the necessities of survival and could enjoy the peace and prosperity than came with being the prize specimen in his preternatural petting zoo.

Which moved him to the top of the list of likely sponsors for our troublesome troupe of tailgaters.

And, as I held the door for Deirdre, who had done a remarkable job with her tiny hairbrush for a second time, I didn't have sufficient time to think about my previous visit to BioWeb's Black Fortress, or even a chance to focus on whether or not tonight's air was charged with a similarly dark presence.

There was, however, just enough time to snatch the spare ammo magazine out of Deirdre's marvelous décolletage and slip it into my pocket as we stepped into the entrance hall where another "guard" waited.

The guardian of the gates wore a black sheath dress that did nothing to enhance her lack of a figure. She was a tall, thin stick of a woman, in her late forties but eerily reminiscent of grade school hall monitors. "Mr. Haim, you're late!" she scolded as she checked our tickets.

I forced a smile. "Considering the theme, being the 'late' Mr. Haim seems somehow appropriate, don't you think?"

Her frown, slightly exaggerated by the tip of an ivory fang, indicated she didn't. I did a double take, saw it was fake. A portfolio and a set of plastic teeth encased in shrink-wrap were thrust into my grasp. A second set was proffered to Deirdre.

"I don't need the teeth," she said.

"You brought your own?"

My companion nodded, pulling back her crimson lips to display her "natural" incisors.

"Marvelous," the hostess enthused. "Some people really know how to get into the spirit of things!" She directed us toward the double doors, then froze in mid-gesture. Frown lines appeared around her Egyptian-mascaraed eyes as she took in my gray slacks and blazer over a maroon shirt. "You're not wearing black. Didn't anyone tell you that this is a theme event?"

I shrugged. "I forgot." Warbled eight bars of Bob Hope's signature tune using the words: "Fangs for the memories . . ."

Deirdre saved the day—or "night" to be more precise. Not only properly fanged, but attired in the universally appropriate "little black dress," her whiter shade of pale complexion provided a stark backdrop to the rosy luster of the strand of pearls at her throat. She reached into her little black cocktail purse and produced a small wooden box inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory scrolling. "Here, Darling," she said, placing it into my hands, "didn't I tell you it was on top of your dresser?"

I opened the box and considered the razor-sharp fangs resting upon the velvet-sheathed interior. During last year's sojourn in Seattle, Liz Bachman had found a dentist who made unusual dental appliances for the special effects studios out in Hollywood. Using a dental mold of my actual teeth, taken in the name of research, she had commissioned a pair of "vampire fangs" that would fit over my actual teeth. They looked real, were actually "functional," and—most surprisingly—stayed in place without the need for any kind of oral fixative.

Back when she was still human, Deirdre had offered herself to me while I wore the teeth and had proven them every bit as effective as the homegrown kind.

Then, while I slept beside her, she had taken the appliance from my mouth and used it to open her wrists in a manner that left no question of her final intent.

"How did you find this?" I whispered.

"Aren't you glad that I did?" was her idea of an answer. "You certainly don't want to be wearing those plastic, one-size-fits-all choppers for the rest of the evening."

I grimaced and slid my faux fangs into place as the hostess opened the door into the community room. Whenever I wore my enhanced dentatia I tended to sound a bit like Humphrey Bogart doing Elvis Presley doing meth. I wasn't looking forward to any long conversations.

"Gude eevning," the vampire up on the stage purred in a so-so Bela Lugosi accent. He tapped the microphone. "Is dis thing on?"

I looked around the large room. The conference wing of the BioWeb complex was overrun with vampires in full evening dress, only a few of which were pausing to pay any attention to the spokesman up front. I was tired and depleted and the adrenaline rush of the past hour was bottoming out, but I had a brief pick-me-up of the ole "fight or flight" juice before internalizing the fact that the fangs were all plastic. At least they all seemed to be plastic. Perhaps tonight's background sensation of wrongness could be chalked up to fatigue and the jittery backlash of my hunger.

Not to mention the weirdness of using a vampire theme to elicit donations of both the red and the green stuff.

The Red Cross had established an annual blood drive and theme event called "MASH Bash" where the attendees dressed in uniforms and surgical scrubs like the characters in the old television show. It had been a resounding success in rounding up blood donors for years. BioWeb was trying for a more Halloweeny theme, kicking off their first annual blood drive utilizing the image of the ultimate blood donee.

Pop culture: ya gotta love it.

Nevertheless, it creeped me out. I had to force myself to relax, calculating an hour of obligatory schmoozing, a discrete check-in upstairs with Chalice on my blood work, and then we could go home and figure out what to do about Theresa-call-me-Terry-call-me-T.

As the lights dimmed and a descending screen caught images from a hidden projector, I worked the perimeter of the room, making a conscious effort to effect a social promenade while checking the layout, guests, and exits.

Everyone was dressed in black, the men in tuxedos, and the women in tailored dresses with hemlines and necklines of various heights and depths. Here and there were various flashes of color: jewelry and cummerbunds, but I was apparently the only one out of step with the overall color scheme. So much for the low-profile strategy.

As the spokesman made a painful attempt to be entertaining, he reeled off statistics about BioWeb's recent successes in pharmaceuticals, genetics research, and even nanotech development. Tuning him out, we passed by a food bar with rows of steaming dishes wafting odors of sauces and spices . . . and . . . 

I sniffed and nearly sneezed.

Deirdre cursed.

Garlic!

"Great!" I muttered as we hurried past the potent smorgasbord, "Buffet the vampire slayer!"

"Ooo-ooh!" cooed a feminine voice just off my left shoulder. "Mr. Haim? It is you, is it not, Mr. Haim?"

I turned and half-recognized a matronly woman from the society pages of the News-Star. I couldn't put a name with the face that showed up there three out of four weeks but she had pegged me from somewhere.

"Amanda Benton, Mr. Haim, of the Tallulah Bentons! Not the Moss Point Bentons, of course!"

I nodded numbly. "Of course."

"You have been getting social invitations for six months now and yet I never see you! I am sooo glad you could see your way clear to join us this evening! Although I am just sure you couldn't stay away when the issue is blood itself!"

I think I goggled a bit. "Excuse me?"

"What with you owning that new blood bank and all I knew it was just a matter of time before BioWeb hooked you up with a fundraiser! And the brilliance of combining the October Ball with a blood drive is genius! Sheer genius! À bon vin point d'enseigne! It has that certain je ne sais quoi! Don't you agree?"

"Çe n'est pas croyable," I said. "Ca me donne le frisson."

She gave me a blank look.

"Ça sent le poisson ici," I tried.

When it seemed that I was finally done she swatted me playfully. "Oh, Mr. Haim—may I call you Samuel? I did not know that you spoke French!"

"I do not know that you do, either. And call me Sam."

"Money, community service, and an active wit! Why Samuel, you need to start accepting more invitations! You'll be the life of the parties!"

"That would be an interesting change," Deirdre murmured on my right.

"Samuel," the matronly lady laid a white-gloved hand upon my arm, "I simply must introduce you around!"

"Must you?"

She stared at me, a fleeting look of blankness stumbling across her features. Then she started laughing—a strange juxtaposition of whooping and chuckling. "Oh, come with me you droll boy!"

Deirdre released my other arm before I was caught in a tug-o-war contest. "Looks like I'm not invited," she said.

"Stay out of trouble," was all I had time for before the crowd closed between us.

The introductions coupled with the obligatory chitchat were pretty much one and the same—the names and faces blurred in memory after a few moments. That is, until I was introduced to a portly gentleman dressed like Charles Addams' idea of a farmer.

"And this is William Robert Montrose his great grandfather was one of Monroe's original founders." Mrs. Benton said it all in a rush as if punctuation had no place in separating a man's name from his ancestry. It had been much that way with her other introductions this evening.

Montrose was as color-coordinated as the rest of the guests but, while they sported ebony and claret-trimmed evening dresses or tuxedos with crimson-lined capes, he was decked out in black satin overalls, a ruffled red silk shirt with white wing-collar and cuffs, and a lacy black cravat.

"Billy-Bob," Mrs. Benton continued, "I'd like you to meet Mr. Samuel Haim. Mr. Haim moved here six months ago and opened that new blood bank near the river."

Montrose scowled down at my would-be social guide and interpreter. "Amanda, how many times have I told y'all not to call me that? It's not dignified." He turned to me, flashed a toothy grin complete with vampire fangs and extended his hand. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Haim. Especially since you seem to be the only other person here who isn't dressed like a Bela Lugosi or Morticia clone."

We shook hands. "My pleasure, Mr. Montrose." I noticed that his grip was smooth and cold.

He laughed and I noticed something else. Montrose's incisors were almost an inch long and the real thing. "Call me Bubba."

Amanda looked as if she was trying to figure out why an old acquaintance couldn't call him "Billy-Bob" but a complete stranger was allowed more casual status.

I was trying to figure the new terrain: so far I had one vampire try to kill me, another try to bed me, a third bring along reinforcements to make me go home, and now I had one asking me to call him Bubba. . . . 

I hate high-society socials.

"Ooh," Mrs. Benton fluttered, "there's Victor Cascio—"

"Amanda darlin'," Bubba's arm cordoned me off like a crime scene, "I have business to discuss with Mr. Haim." He smiled and I felt a vague disturbance in the air. "Run along and I'll play host for awhile."

She smiled uncertainly then turned and, after a moment's orientation, trotted off toward a knot of upper-crust matrons like a Sioux warrior bent on counting coup.

"Thank you," I said.

He grinned. "Amanda could suck the life out of a person faster than a real live vampire."

I looked at him sidewise. "Isn't that an oxymoron? Real 'live' vampire?"

"Perhaps. But the world is filled with oxymorons."

"Certainly morons."

"I will concede that point quite readily, Mr. Haim."

"Please, call me Sam."

"With pleasure. Once we become good friends, perhaps you will let me call you Chris."

I looked at him sharply. "What?"

"Don't look so surprised, son. You're not such a bad detective for a Yankee who's been down here less'n a year. But we Southern boys figured out how to use and breed bloodhounds before the North even took notice that there was a South."

"Bloodhounds, eh? Are we talking about a certain fortune-tel—?"

He held up his hand. "Hold on there, son. I won't hold with casting aspersions on a lady. Especially the one you were about to name. It wouldn't be right and, furthermore, it wouldn't be safe. And if you haven't figured out that much, yet, maybe you should close down that detective hobby of yours and try your hand at gardening." His smile softened any presumed judgment in his words.

"You're her client."

He grinned. "One of 'em. And, more important, I count her as one of my friends. A good friend. A fella needs good friends when he's encompassed by the bands of death."

"Bands of death," I repeated. "Are we talking about heavy metal concerts?"

His grin faded. "Look around you. Not all of the plastic fangs are plastic." He caught my arm. "Subtly . . . let's not gawk like a chicken in a fox house."

Fatigue had dulled my senses—all six of them. Now that it was called to my attention, I saw what would have still been sneaky had I arrived on full alert. Here and there among the fake vampires were representatives of the Real Deal. Little details began to stand out: their erect carriage and attitude of aloofness—as if no one else was in the room but them. Their pallor was not the artifice of powder or paint but their true, sunless nature. And, with careful observation I could see that most of them seemed aware of one another: nods and gestures and fleeting eye contact. They were a group with a group's purpose.

"I didn't realize that there was a demesne in this area."

"There ain't, son. These boys are outtatowners. Northeast Teeth with a temporary assignment in our fair city."

So Erzsébet Báthory was importing undead from both ends of the compass. "What are they here for?"

"Well now, that's where I'm hoping you're a better detective than everybody says you are. I'd like for you to find out for us. . . ."

Count Bubba had pretty much concluded our conversation with directions to his "manse" and the invitation to drop by soonest for a more in-depth palaver about BioWeb's vampire connection. The little I learned from our brief conversation was considerable compared to my intelligence from the past six months of living here in the twin cities.

Although the BioWeb facilities were nearly five years old, the vamps on staff hadn't shown up until about eighteen months ago: a couple at first, then a couple more. Until recently, the numbers seemed to stabilize in the eight-to-ten range. That had changed a couple of days ago when those numbers had suddenly doubled.

I made a note to ask Pagelovitch how many fanged enforcers he had brought with him from Seattle.

Aside from the fact that these imports hailed from the East Coast, all but confirming Erzsébet's hand in all of this, Montrose claimed that there was no organized coven—much less actual enclave—here in north Louisiana.

He did, however, admit that he and I weren't the only rogues inhabiting the area.

I wanted to ask more questions but Billy-Bob was adamant about not drawing attention to us. Especially while we were surrounded by so many deadly undeadlies. I barely refrained from pointing out that this was advice coming from a man wearing black satin overalls.

"Keep that in mind as you work your inside sources," he said, nodding toward the "vampire" that was coming our way.

It was Chalice and she must have run Deirdre's little black dress through BioWeb's cloning labs. Her hair was piled up on top of her head, giving a clear view of her neck and the twin puncture wounds that dripped blood down to her bare shoulder. Unnatural teeth flashed behind full, red lips and jewels of blood glistened at the corners of her mouth.

I reached for her and grasped her arms as she arrived. "What happened? Are you all—" I got a closer look at her bite marks. "—right—that's not real blood," I finished lamely. "Lipstick?"

She shook her head and I could see that the teeth were Halloween plastic. "Nail polish. Lipstick just doesn't catch the light right for that freshly bled shimmer."

"I didn't expect to meet you down here," I said. "I guess the staff is expected to show support, though."

She nodded. "I didn't want to wait. I haven't slept since I started running tests on your blood samples." She kept her voice low and in the "confidential" range, but I was mindful of ears that could hear better than most dogs.

"Chalice, I'd like you to meet—" I turned but Montrose was gone, already blending into the tree-line of the crowd. "Never mind." I looked more closely and saw the haze of fatigue clouding her emerald eyes. "Hey, you've got to get some rest."

"Don't worry about me. I can sleep later."

"You should sleep now." I considered making it a command.

"There's so much to do!"

"And that's the other point. If you're tired, you're more likely to make mistakes. And that could set me—us—back more than those extra hours of sleep."

"But—"

Not here! I sent. Not now! "We should discuss this elsewhere."

Chalice swayed a bit—perhaps from fatigue, or my sending may have been a tad forceful due to my own discomfort with our surroundings.

"Outside," she said. "We could meet out back, down by the runoff pond."

I glanced around. Amanda Benton looked as if she might be working her way back in our direction. "I'll go now," I said. "Wait ten minutes and then try to slip out without attracting any attention."

She nodded and I bolted, weaving my way through the loose accumulation of bodies so as to avoid any conversational nibbles from the wrong parties.

I slipped out one of the back doors and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark. It didn't take long because it wasn't really dark. The grounds were well lit in front and to either side of the main building. Enough ambient light spilled over behind the building to illume the area to predawn levels.

A service path led down to the ornamental pond back toward the electrified fence.

As I strolled closer, I could tell that the pond had more than ornamental purposes: a chemical smell rose from its misty, oil-slicked surface and a pattern of turbulence betrayed some stirring mechanism hidden in its black depths.

No crickets sang, no bullfrogs harrumphed; the only sound was the hum of electricity from the fence capacitors, chanting a mindless mantra of death for foolish trespassers.

I looked around. I was as alone in the bleached darkness as I had been inside my own heart since Lupé's departure.

A moment later I wasn't.

Alone, that is.

Faster than you could say "abra-cadaver" there was a corpse standing in front of me. "Baron . . ." said a quiet, fluttery voice. A familiar voice. "It's me."

"Of course it is," I said. "Who else could you be?"

"Introduce yourself, soldier," said another voice from the deeper darkness behind him. It had a clotted quality—like water trickling over clods of ancient earth fouling an old drainpipe.

"Oh. Oh! Sorry, sir!" He almost saluted, then fumbled his cap off his head. "I'm PFC Willie Blankenship, Twenty-third—" What I could see of his twisted face twisted some more. Along with the cap in his bony hands. "Sorry. Cap'n is always remindin' me that we're all Louzianans now. Been dead here longer than alive all them other places put together."

Something "cleared its throat" beyond his desiccated shoulder.

"Oh, and may I present Captain Jelly Worthington."

"Commanding officer of the First Monroe Irregulars," finished the not-quite-human voice. "You will forgive me, suh, if I do not advance into the light. I am not yet presentable to living eyes."

If he considered the remains of Private First Class Blankenship to be mostly presentable maybe I didn't want to see what was standing back in the shadows. Being sort of a Yankee carpetbagger, myself, I was unsure of the proper social protocols—I nodded my head and said: "I'm honored, Captain."

"Not as much as we are, suh. We've been a waitin' for you to come for near on a century and a half."

"Hum," I said, trying to think on my feet and be ready to run with them, too. "I don't think I am who you think I am. . . ."

"It doesn't matter to us if you're an actual baron or not, suh. Bessie Crow says you're the one who's going to deal with the gray men and give us our discharge papers."

"Uh, discharge papers?"

"Our bones may be bound to the soil in which we lie but our spirits have ties to other homes and kith and family—even if they are our great-great-grandchildren. We've stood picket for a hundred and fifty years. We're overdue for relief. And we like not the company of the dragon that slumbers beneath us."

"How—how can I help?" I asked, wondering if the word "slumber" was being used in the figurative sense.

"A more likely question is how can we help? Your flesh is solid, your bones intact. You can pass for human under most circumstances. We have not adequate form, yet."

"Uh, adequate form?" I asked. "Yet?"

"The gray men pump their runoff into a dry aquifer. From there this witch's brew seeps into the earth and laces our remains with poisons that would kill us twice over were it not for the old witch woman's enchantments. Instead, the chemicals bind to our sinews and swell the dried husks that remain. The old witch has promised that we will have our hands and feet in time. She says the time to muster is soon."

"She say anything specific about what I'm supposed to do?"

"You are to break the alliance of the gray men with a woman called Marie Bochay."

"Marinette Bois-Chèche?" I should have been happy that some of these loose ends were starting to line up into some sort of pattern. What I felt now had nothing to do with relief.

"Someone's coming," said PFC Blankenship. He stepped back into the darkness with his captain.

I turned and looked back toward the building. A figure was coming toward me, haloed by the spill of lights from behind. Its features were lost in the dark silhouette created by the backlighting.

I shifted my vision into the infrared spectrum and . . . no one was there. Bubba Billy-Bob? 

I shifted back to the human-visible range and reacquired the silhouette at half the distance now: it was rushing me.

I leapt aside as it closed but it grabbed my jacket and we whirled about as though we were partners in some mad Cossack dance routine. I threw the creature off with a little help from centrifugal force, but it recovered quickly and advanced with its arms held wide, growling like some B-movie monster from the fifties.

"Look," I said, backing up and trying to maneuver so that I could regain the advantage of light and shadow. "I just came outside for a breath of fresh air. I'm sorry if I wandered into a security zone by accident. I'll just go back—"

"Cséjthe?" the silhouette growled.

"Geshundheit," I said.

What I really wanted to say was: Shit! 

"The countess will be pleased," it rumbled. And lunged.

Where was Deirdre when I needed her? I dodged again.

It caught me again. This time I couldn't shake free.

We went down. I rolled. It refused to relinquish its hold. Maybe I could roll us both into the pond. Maybe that might be enough distraction to break its grip. Then what? The backstroke?

We stopped without ever reaching the pond. One moment we were rolling, the next we weren't. Although I ended up on top, the vampire still held me close in a three-handed grip. Something was wrong with that tally but before I could think through a recount, one of the hands released my arm and grabbed my assailant's biceps. Another joined it. And another. Suddenly there were more hands than I could keep track of. The vampire reluctantly released me as a half-dozen or more hands pried his arms back and pinned them to the ground.

The hands came in an assortment of sizes and degrees of decay. The only things they had in common were that they were attached to arms that were thrusting up out of the earth and they were all dedicated to restraining my attacker. Who began to howl and struggle all the harder as his clothing and flesh began to smoke where the dead appendages held him.

. . . this witch's brew . . . laces our remains with poisons that would kill us twice over . . .   

Apparently undead flesh wasn't proof against BioWeb's toxic waste. I scrambled to my feet and stepped back. PFC Blankenship was suddenly at my side. "Captain's compliments, suh. He was thinkin' you might want to borrow his sword under the circumstances." He handed me a cavalry saber in its curved brass sheath.

The vampire continued to squirm and bellow as I drew the sword and considered its tarnished and rusted blade in the pale wash of amber light.

"Under the circumstances," Blankenship kibitzed, "it's the humane thing to do."

Actually, it was the smart thing to do: every screech and holler risked undead reinforcements. I raised the ancient blade above my head. "The humane thing to do," I echoed. "But is it the human thing?"

"Do whatever it takes to stay alive," the dead soldier whispered.

"Then it is our humanness that damns us," I said. And brought the blade down. The caterwauling stopped immediately as the head went tumbling away from the body. A moment later the vampire's remains crumbled to ash. The only evidence of our struggle was the churned earth where, even now, the cadaverous hands were withdrawing into its sour depths.

And my rumpled clothing, bearing grass stains and dirt smears and a scorch mark where the fabric was briefly grasped by poisonous phalanges.

"More company," another unseen voice called from the darkness at my back. I looked back up the path at another silhouette walking toward me. I shifted perspective: no heat signature. Shi—

"Mr. Haim?" The voice belonged to William Robert Montrose aka Count Bubba.

I relaxed but PFC Blankenship snapped to attention beside me. "Holy cow, Sarge! What are you doing here?"

Master Sergeant William Robert Montrose excused himself from the revenantal reunion he was sharing with his fellow Civil War vets—some of whom he'd helped plant here. I had assumed Billy-Bob—excuse me, Bubba—was a born and bred son of the South. I mean, what's in a name?

It turned out that he was originally from Des Moines, marched down here with the other blue bellies of the Twenty-third Infantry, and got forcibly assimilated a month after the war ended. According to his abbreviated explanation he had come through some twenty-odd battles without a scratch only to get bit by "some undead Yankee sonuvabitch carpetbagger" while on garrison duty.

I'd say he'd assimilated real good over the past one-hundred-and-forty-odd years.

Amazingly neither he nor his former comrades and foes had any inkling that either had lingered post-mortem for so long and in such close proximity. Just goes to show what a small world the afterlife can be.

"She's not coming," he said, a look of concern hardening his face.

"Who? Chalice? Deirdre?"

"Neither one's my guess." He caught my arm as I turned back toward the main building. "I'm out here for a reason: finding you was just a bonus."

"And the reason is . . . ?"

"Not to be in there, right now," he said. "Why don't you hang around here and, when the boys and me are done palavering, we'll take a walk over to the mosquito breeding ponds and see if we can figure out what the gray men are really up to?"

There was a disquieting look in his eyes—beyond the usual disquiet I generally feel when looking into the eyes of an undead creature.

"I have someone I'm supposed to meet."

"Sonny boy," he laid a cold hand on my shoulder, "this here's a fancy dress ball and that ain't nothing more than a dandified dance. One of the realities of any dance is that you don't always go home with the one that brung ya."

"What are you afraid of?"

He looked up at the building. "The Hunger," he said unevenly.

"Me, too," I said quietly. "But I can't hide from it."

"Not what I'm talking about," Montrose said. "Not my hunger, not your hunger. It's a Hunger beyond us. An Appetite . . ."

"Yeah? Well, ring my bell and call me Pavlov." I started back up the hill.

He caught my arm again after a dozen paces. "If you must go, go slowly. Go carefully. Stay close to an exit. And get away as soon as you can." He turned back to the shadows where his sesquicentennial comrades were waiting.

I stomped back up the hill muttering a string of curses. Divorce cases weren't so bad. Come to think of it, spouse stalking was a little bit like being cinematographer for America's Funniest Home Videos. I was going to memo Olive as soon as I got back in, tonight: from now on After Dark Investigations was going to handle nothing but divorce cases!

No more walking corpses!

No more End of the World conspiracies!

And absolutely nothing requiring attendance at social gatherings with dress codes!

The rear exit was one of those self-locking affairs, forcing me to hike all the way around to the front of the building to get back in.

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Framed

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Chapter Fourteen

The walk from the parking lot to BioWeb's main entrance was too short to solve the mystery of the Chevy Nova encounter.

While our pursuit had been decidedly unfriendly and our pursuers certainly willing to do violence to my passenger, their seeming reluctance to shoot the driver took on the appearance of solicitousness for my well-being.

Assuming they even knew who was driving.

Pagelovitch was intrigued by our account—what little he was able to glean from our telepathic musings, that is. I didn't, however, sense that he was about to go running back to confront our backside besiegers. More likely, he hoped our little outing would convince me to hop in the back of his Suburban and make the return trip to Seattle. There I would be untroubled by the necessities of survival and could enjoy the peace and prosperity than came with being the prize specimen in his preternatural petting zoo.

Which moved him to the top of the list of likely sponsors for our troublesome troupe of tailgaters.

And, as I held the door for Deirdre, who had done a remarkable job with her tiny hairbrush for a second time, I didn't have sufficient time to think about my previous visit to BioWeb's Black Fortress, or even a chance to focus on whether or not tonight's air was charged with a similarly dark presence.

There was, however, just enough time to snatch the spare ammo magazine out of Deirdre's marvelous décolletage and slip it into my pocket as we stepped into the entrance hall where another "guard" waited.

The guardian of the gates wore a black sheath dress that did nothing to enhance her lack of a figure. She was a tall, thin stick of a woman, in her late forties but eerily reminiscent of grade school hall monitors. "Mr. Haim, you're late!" she scolded as she checked our tickets.

I forced a smile. "Considering the theme, being the 'late' Mr. Haim seems somehow appropriate, don't you think?"

Her frown, slightly exaggerated by the tip of an ivory fang, indicated she didn't. I did a double take, saw it was fake. A portfolio and a set of plastic teeth encased in shrink-wrap were thrust into my grasp. A second set was proffered to Deirdre.

"I don't need the teeth," she said.

"You brought your own?"

My companion nodded, pulling back her crimson lips to display her "natural" incisors.

"Marvelous," the hostess enthused. "Some people really know how to get into the spirit of things!" She directed us toward the double doors, then froze in mid-gesture. Frown lines appeared around her Egyptian-mascaraed eyes as she took in my gray slacks and blazer over a maroon shirt. "You're not wearing black. Didn't anyone tell you that this is a theme event?"

I shrugged. "I forgot." Warbled eight bars of Bob Hope's signature tune using the words: "Fangs for the memories . . ."

Deirdre saved the day—or "night" to be more precise. Not only properly fanged, but attired in the universally appropriate "little black dress," her whiter shade of pale complexion provided a stark backdrop to the rosy luster of the strand of pearls at her throat. She reached into her little black cocktail purse and produced a small wooden box inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory scrolling. "Here, Darling," she said, placing it into my hands, "didn't I tell you it was on top of your dresser?"

I opened the box and considered the razor-sharp fangs resting upon the velvet-sheathed interior. During last year's sojourn in Seattle, Liz Bachman had found a dentist who made unusual dental appliances for the special effects studios out in Hollywood. Using a dental mold of my actual teeth, taken in the name of research, she had commissioned a pair of "vampire fangs" that would fit over my actual teeth. They looked real, were actually "functional," and—most surprisingly—stayed in place without the need for any kind of oral fixative.

Back when she was still human, Deirdre had offered herself to me while I wore the teeth and had proven them every bit as effective as the homegrown kind.

Then, while I slept beside her, she had taken the appliance from my mouth and used it to open her wrists in a manner that left no question of her final intent.

"How did you find this?" I whispered.

"Aren't you glad that I did?" was her idea of an answer. "You certainly don't want to be wearing those plastic, one-size-fits-all choppers for the rest of the evening."

I grimaced and slid my faux fangs into place as the hostess opened the door into the community room. Whenever I wore my enhanced dentatia I tended to sound a bit like Humphrey Bogart doing Elvis Presley doing meth. I wasn't looking forward to any long conversations.

"Gude eevning," the vampire up on the stage purred in a so-so Bela Lugosi accent. He tapped the microphone. "Is dis thing on?"

I looked around the large room. The conference wing of the BioWeb complex was overrun with vampires in full evening dress, only a few of which were pausing to pay any attention to the spokesman up front. I was tired and depleted and the adrenaline rush of the past hour was bottoming out, but I had a brief pick-me-up of the ole "fight or flight" juice before internalizing the fact that the fangs were all plastic. At least they all seemed to be plastic. Perhaps tonight's background sensation of wrongness could be chalked up to fatigue and the jittery backlash of my hunger.

Not to mention the weirdness of using a vampire theme to elicit donations of both the red and the green stuff.

The Red Cross had established an annual blood drive and theme event called "MASH Bash" where the attendees dressed in uniforms and surgical scrubs like the characters in the old television show. It had been a resounding success in rounding up blood donors for years. BioWeb was trying for a more Halloweeny theme, kicking off their first annual blood drive utilizing the image of the ultimate blood donee.

Pop culture: ya gotta love it.

Nevertheless, it creeped me out. I had to force myself to relax, calculating an hour of obligatory schmoozing, a discrete check-in upstairs with Chalice on my blood work, and then we could go home and figure out what to do about Theresa-call-me-Terry-call-me-T.

As the lights dimmed and a descending screen caught images from a hidden projector, I worked the perimeter of the room, making a conscious effort to effect a social promenade while checking the layout, guests, and exits.

Everyone was dressed in black, the men in tuxedos, and the women in tailored dresses with hemlines and necklines of various heights and depths. Here and there were various flashes of color: jewelry and cummerbunds, but I was apparently the only one out of step with the overall color scheme. So much for the low-profile strategy.

As the spokesman made a painful attempt to be entertaining, he reeled off statistics about BioWeb's recent successes in pharmaceuticals, genetics research, and even nanotech development. Tuning him out, we passed by a food bar with rows of steaming dishes wafting odors of sauces and spices . . . and . . . 

I sniffed and nearly sneezed.

Deirdre cursed.

Garlic!

"Great!" I muttered as we hurried past the potent smorgasbord, "Buffet the vampire slayer!"

"Ooo-ooh!" cooed a feminine voice just off my left shoulder. "Mr. Haim? It is you, is it not, Mr. Haim?"

I turned and half-recognized a matronly woman from the society pages of the News-Star. I couldn't put a name with the face that showed up there three out of four weeks but she had pegged me from somewhere.

"Amanda Benton, Mr. Haim, of the Tallulah Bentons! Not the Moss Point Bentons, of course!"

I nodded numbly. "Of course."

"You have been getting social invitations for six months now and yet I never see you! I am sooo glad you could see your way clear to join us this evening! Although I am just sure you couldn't stay away when the issue is blood itself!"

I think I goggled a bit. "Excuse me?"

"What with you owning that new blood bank and all I knew it was just a matter of time before BioWeb hooked you up with a fundraiser! And the brilliance of combining the October Ball with a blood drive is genius! Sheer genius! À bon vin point d'enseigne! It has that certain je ne sais quoi! Don't you agree?"

"Çe n'est pas croyable," I said. "Ca me donne le frisson."

She gave me a blank look.

"Ça sent le poisson ici," I tried.

When it seemed that I was finally done she swatted me playfully. "Oh, Mr. Haim—may I call you Samuel? I did not know that you spoke French!"

"I do not know that you do, either. And call me Sam."

"Money, community service, and an active wit! Why Samuel, you need to start accepting more invitations! You'll be the life of the parties!"

"That would be an interesting change," Deirdre murmured on my right.

"Samuel," the matronly lady laid a white-gloved hand upon my arm, "I simply must introduce you around!"

"Must you?"

She stared at me, a fleeting look of blankness stumbling across her features. Then she started laughing—a strange juxtaposition of whooping and chuckling. "Oh, come with me you droll boy!"

Deirdre released my other arm before I was caught in a tug-o-war contest. "Looks like I'm not invited," she said.

"Stay out of trouble," was all I had time for before the crowd closed between us.

The introductions coupled with the obligatory chitchat were pretty much one and the same—the names and faces blurred in memory after a few moments. That is, until I was introduced to a portly gentleman dressed like Charles Addams' idea of a farmer.

"And this is William Robert Montrose his great grandfather was one of Monroe's original founders." Mrs. Benton said it all in a rush as if punctuation had no place in separating a man's name from his ancestry. It had been much that way with her other introductions this evening.

Montrose was as color-coordinated as the rest of the guests but, while they sported ebony and claret-trimmed evening dresses or tuxedos with crimson-lined capes, he was decked out in black satin overalls, a ruffled red silk shirt with white wing-collar and cuffs, and a lacy black cravat.

"Billy-Bob," Mrs. Benton continued, "I'd like you to meet Mr. Samuel Haim. Mr. Haim moved here six months ago and opened that new blood bank near the river."

Montrose scowled down at my would-be social guide and interpreter. "Amanda, how many times have I told y'all not to call me that? It's not dignified." He turned to me, flashed a toothy grin complete with vampire fangs and extended his hand. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Haim. Especially since you seem to be the only other person here who isn't dressed like a Bela Lugosi or Morticia clone."

We shook hands. "My pleasure, Mr. Montrose." I noticed that his grip was smooth and cold.

He laughed and I noticed something else. Montrose's incisors were almost an inch long and the real thing. "Call me Bubba."

Amanda looked as if she was trying to figure out why an old acquaintance couldn't call him "Billy-Bob" but a complete stranger was allowed more casual status.

I was trying to figure the new terrain: so far I had one vampire try to kill me, another try to bed me, a third bring along reinforcements to make me go home, and now I had one asking me to call him Bubba. . . . 

I hate high-society socials.

"Ooh," Mrs. Benton fluttered, "there's Victor Cascio—"

"Amanda darlin'," Bubba's arm cordoned me off like a crime scene, "I have business to discuss with Mr. Haim." He smiled and I felt a vague disturbance in the air. "Run along and I'll play host for awhile."

She smiled uncertainly then turned and, after a moment's orientation, trotted off toward a knot of upper-crust matrons like a Sioux warrior bent on counting coup.

"Thank you," I said.

He grinned. "Amanda could suck the life out of a person faster than a real live vampire."

I looked at him sidewise. "Isn't that an oxymoron? Real 'live' vampire?"

"Perhaps. But the world is filled with oxymorons."

"Certainly morons."

"I will concede that point quite readily, Mr. Haim."

"Please, call me Sam."

"With pleasure. Once we become good friends, perhaps you will let me call you Chris."

I looked at him sharply. "What?"

"Don't look so surprised, son. You're not such a bad detective for a Yankee who's been down here less'n a year. But we Southern boys figured out how to use and breed bloodhounds before the North even took notice that there was a South."

"Bloodhounds, eh? Are we talking about a certain fortune-tel—?"

He held up his hand. "Hold on there, son. I won't hold with casting aspersions on a lady. Especially the one you were about to name. It wouldn't be right and, furthermore, it wouldn't be safe. And if you haven't figured out that much, yet, maybe you should close down that detective hobby of yours and try your hand at gardening." His smile softened any presumed judgment in his words.

"You're her client."

He grinned. "One of 'em. And, more important, I count her as one of my friends. A good friend. A fella needs good friends when he's encompassed by the bands of death."

"Bands of death," I repeated. "Are we talking about heavy metal concerts?"

His grin faded. "Look around you. Not all of the plastic fangs are plastic." He caught my arm. "Subtly . . . let's not gawk like a chicken in a fox house."

Fatigue had dulled my senses—all six of them. Now that it was called to my attention, I saw what would have still been sneaky had I arrived on full alert. Here and there among the fake vampires were representatives of the Real Deal. Little details began to stand out: their erect carriage and attitude of aloofness—as if no one else was in the room but them. Their pallor was not the artifice of powder or paint but their true, sunless nature. And, with careful observation I could see that most of them seemed aware of one another: nods and gestures and fleeting eye contact. They were a group with a group's purpose.

"I didn't realize that there was a demesne in this area."

"There ain't, son. These boys are outtatowners. Northeast Teeth with a temporary assignment in our fair city."

So Erzsébet Báthory was importing undead from both ends of the compass. "What are they here for?"

"Well now, that's where I'm hoping you're a better detective than everybody says you are. I'd like for you to find out for us. . . ."

Count Bubba had pretty much concluded our conversation with directions to his "manse" and the invitation to drop by soonest for a more in-depth palaver about BioWeb's vampire connection. The little I learned from our brief conversation was considerable compared to my intelligence from the past six months of living here in the twin cities.

Although the BioWeb facilities were nearly five years old, the vamps on staff hadn't shown up until about eighteen months ago: a couple at first, then a couple more. Until recently, the numbers seemed to stabilize in the eight-to-ten range. That had changed a couple of days ago when those numbers had suddenly doubled.

I made a note to ask Pagelovitch how many fanged enforcers he had brought with him from Seattle.

Aside from the fact that these imports hailed from the East Coast, all but confirming Erzsébet's hand in all of this, Montrose claimed that there was no organized coven—much less actual enclave—here in north Louisiana.

He did, however, admit that he and I weren't the only rogues inhabiting the area.

I wanted to ask more questions but Billy-Bob was adamant about not drawing attention to us. Especially while we were surrounded by so many deadly undeadlies. I barely refrained from pointing out that this was advice coming from a man wearing black satin overalls.

"Keep that in mind as you work your inside sources," he said, nodding toward the "vampire" that was coming our way.

It was Chalice and she must have run Deirdre's little black dress through BioWeb's cloning labs. Her hair was piled up on top of her head, giving a clear view of her neck and the twin puncture wounds that dripped blood down to her bare shoulder. Unnatural teeth flashed behind full, red lips and jewels of blood glistened at the corners of her mouth.

I reached for her and grasped her arms as she arrived. "What happened? Are you all—" I got a closer look at her bite marks. "—right—that's not real blood," I finished lamely. "Lipstick?"

She shook her head and I could see that the teeth were Halloween plastic. "Nail polish. Lipstick just doesn't catch the light right for that freshly bled shimmer."

"I didn't expect to meet you down here," I said. "I guess the staff is expected to show support, though."

She nodded. "I didn't want to wait. I haven't slept since I started running tests on your blood samples." She kept her voice low and in the "confidential" range, but I was mindful of ears that could hear better than most dogs.

"Chalice, I'd like you to meet—" I turned but Montrose was gone, already blending into the tree-line of the crowd. "Never mind." I looked more closely and saw the haze of fatigue clouding her emerald eyes. "Hey, you've got to get some rest."

"Don't worry about me. I can sleep later."

"You should sleep now." I considered making it a command.

"There's so much to do!"

"And that's the other point. If you're tired, you're more likely to make mistakes. And that could set me—us—back more than those extra hours of sleep."

"But—"

Not here! I sent. Not now! "We should discuss this elsewhere."

Chalice swayed a bit—perhaps from fatigue, or my sending may have been a tad forceful due to my own discomfort with our surroundings.

"Outside," she said. "We could meet out back, down by the runoff pond."

I glanced around. Amanda Benton looked as if she might be working her way back in our direction. "I'll go now," I said. "Wait ten minutes and then try to slip out without attracting any attention."

She nodded and I bolted, weaving my way through the loose accumulation of bodies so as to avoid any conversational nibbles from the wrong parties.

I slipped out one of the back doors and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark. It didn't take long because it wasn't really dark. The grounds were well lit in front and to either side of the main building. Enough ambient light spilled over behind the building to illume the area to predawn levels.

A service path led down to the ornamental pond back toward the electrified fence.

As I strolled closer, I could tell that the pond had more than ornamental purposes: a chemical smell rose from its misty, oil-slicked surface and a pattern of turbulence betrayed some stirring mechanism hidden in its black depths.

No crickets sang, no bullfrogs harrumphed; the only sound was the hum of electricity from the fence capacitors, chanting a mindless mantra of death for foolish trespassers.

I looked around. I was as alone in the bleached darkness as I had been inside my own heart since Lupé's departure.

A moment later I wasn't.

Alone, that is.

Faster than you could say "abra-cadaver" there was a corpse standing in front of me. "Baron . . ." said a quiet, fluttery voice. A familiar voice. "It's me."

"Of course it is," I said. "Who else could you be?"

"Introduce yourself, soldier," said another voice from the deeper darkness behind him. It had a clotted quality—like water trickling over clods of ancient earth fouling an old drainpipe.

"Oh. Oh! Sorry, sir!" He almost saluted, then fumbled his cap off his head. "I'm PFC Willie Blankenship, Twenty-third—" What I could see of his twisted face twisted some more. Along with the cap in his bony hands. "Sorry. Cap'n is always remindin' me that we're all Louzianans now. Been dead here longer than alive all them other places put together."

Something "cleared its throat" beyond his desiccated shoulder.

"Oh, and may I present Captain Jelly Worthington."

"Commanding officer of the First Monroe Irregulars," finished the not-quite-human voice. "You will forgive me, suh, if I do not advance into the light. I am not yet presentable to living eyes."

If he considered the remains of Private First Class Blankenship to be mostly presentable maybe I didn't want to see what was standing back in the shadows. Being sort of a Yankee carpetbagger, myself, I was unsure of the proper social protocols—I nodded my head and said: "I'm honored, Captain."

"Not as much as we are, suh. We've been a waitin' for you to come for near on a century and a half."

"Hum," I said, trying to think on my feet and be ready to run with them, too. "I don't think I am who you think I am. . . ."

"It doesn't matter to us if you're an actual baron or not, suh. Bessie Crow says you're the one who's going to deal with the gray men and give us our discharge papers."

"Uh, discharge papers?"

"Our bones may be bound to the soil in which we lie but our spirits have ties to other homes and kith and family—even if they are our great-great-grandchildren. We've stood picket for a hundred and fifty years. We're overdue for relief. And we like not the company of the dragon that slumbers beneath us."

"How—how can I help?" I asked, wondering if the word "slumber" was being used in the figurative sense.

"A more likely question is how can we help? Your flesh is solid, your bones intact. You can pass for human under most circumstances. We have not adequate form, yet."

"Uh, adequate form?" I asked. "Yet?"

"The gray men pump their runoff into a dry aquifer. From there this witch's brew seeps into the earth and laces our remains with poisons that would kill us twice over were it not for the old witch woman's enchantments. Instead, the chemicals bind to our sinews and swell the dried husks that remain. The old witch has promised that we will have our hands and feet in time. She says the time to muster is soon."

"She say anything specific about what I'm supposed to do?"

"You are to break the alliance of the gray men with a woman called Marie Bochay."

"Marinette Bois-Chèche?" I should have been happy that some of these loose ends were starting to line up into some sort of pattern. What I felt now had nothing to do with relief.

"Someone's coming," said PFC Blankenship. He stepped back into the darkness with his captain.

I turned and looked back toward the building. A figure was coming toward me, haloed by the spill of lights from behind. Its features were lost in the dark silhouette created by the backlighting.

I shifted my vision into the infrared spectrum and . . . no one was there. Bubba Billy-Bob? 

I shifted back to the human-visible range and reacquired the silhouette at half the distance now: it was rushing me.

I leapt aside as it closed but it grabbed my jacket and we whirled about as though we were partners in some mad Cossack dance routine. I threw the creature off with a little help from centrifugal force, but it recovered quickly and advanced with its arms held wide, growling like some B-movie monster from the fifties.

"Look," I said, backing up and trying to maneuver so that I could regain the advantage of light and shadow. "I just came outside for a breath of fresh air. I'm sorry if I wandered into a security zone by accident. I'll just go back—"

"Cséjthe?" the silhouette growled.

"Geshundheit," I said.

What I really wanted to say was: Shit! 

"The countess will be pleased," it rumbled. And lunged.

Where was Deirdre when I needed her? I dodged again.

It caught me again. This time I couldn't shake free.

We went down. I rolled. It refused to relinquish its hold. Maybe I could roll us both into the pond. Maybe that might be enough distraction to break its grip. Then what? The backstroke?

We stopped without ever reaching the pond. One moment we were rolling, the next we weren't. Although I ended up on top, the vampire still held me close in a three-handed grip. Something was wrong with that tally but before I could think through a recount, one of the hands released my arm and grabbed my assailant's biceps. Another joined it. And another. Suddenly there were more hands than I could keep track of. The vampire reluctantly released me as a half-dozen or more hands pried his arms back and pinned them to the ground.

The hands came in an assortment of sizes and degrees of decay. The only things they had in common were that they were attached to arms that were thrusting up out of the earth and they were all dedicated to restraining my attacker. Who began to howl and struggle all the harder as his clothing and flesh began to smoke where the dead appendages held him.

. . . this witch's brew . . . laces our remains with poisons that would kill us twice over . . .   

Apparently undead flesh wasn't proof against BioWeb's toxic waste. I scrambled to my feet and stepped back. PFC Blankenship was suddenly at my side. "Captain's compliments, suh. He was thinkin' you might want to borrow his sword under the circumstances." He handed me a cavalry saber in its curved brass sheath.

The vampire continued to squirm and bellow as I drew the sword and considered its tarnished and rusted blade in the pale wash of amber light.

"Under the circumstances," Blankenship kibitzed, "it's the humane thing to do."

Actually, it was the smart thing to do: every screech and holler risked undead reinforcements. I raised the ancient blade above my head. "The humane thing to do," I echoed. "But is it the human thing?"

"Do whatever it takes to stay alive," the dead soldier whispered.

"Then it is our humanness that damns us," I said. And brought the blade down. The caterwauling stopped immediately as the head went tumbling away from the body. A moment later the vampire's remains crumbled to ash. The only evidence of our struggle was the churned earth where, even now, the cadaverous hands were withdrawing into its sour depths.

And my rumpled clothing, bearing grass stains and dirt smears and a scorch mark where the fabric was briefly grasped by poisonous phalanges.

"More company," another unseen voice called from the darkness at my back. I looked back up the path at another silhouette walking toward me. I shifted perspective: no heat signature. Shi—

"Mr. Haim?" The voice belonged to William Robert Montrose aka Count Bubba.

I relaxed but PFC Blankenship snapped to attention beside me. "Holy cow, Sarge! What are you doing here?"

Master Sergeant William Robert Montrose excused himself from the revenantal reunion he was sharing with his fellow Civil War vets—some of whom he'd helped plant here. I had assumed Billy-Bob—excuse me, Bubba—was a born and bred son of the South. I mean, what's in a name?

It turned out that he was originally from Des Moines, marched down here with the other blue bellies of the Twenty-third Infantry, and got forcibly assimilated a month after the war ended. According to his abbreviated explanation he had come through some twenty-odd battles without a scratch only to get bit by "some undead Yankee sonuvabitch carpetbagger" while on garrison duty.

I'd say he'd assimilated real good over the past one-hundred-and-forty-odd years.

Amazingly neither he nor his former comrades and foes had any inkling that either had lingered post-mortem for so long and in such close proximity. Just goes to show what a small world the afterlife can be.

"She's not coming," he said, a look of concern hardening his face.

"Who? Chalice? Deirdre?"

"Neither one's my guess." He caught my arm as I turned back toward the main building. "I'm out here for a reason: finding you was just a bonus."

"And the reason is . . . ?"

"Not to be in there, right now," he said. "Why don't you hang around here and, when the boys and me are done palavering, we'll take a walk over to the mosquito breeding ponds and see if we can figure out what the gray men are really up to?"

There was a disquieting look in his eyes—beyond the usual disquiet I generally feel when looking into the eyes of an undead creature.

"I have someone I'm supposed to meet."

"Sonny boy," he laid a cold hand on my shoulder, "this here's a fancy dress ball and that ain't nothing more than a dandified dance. One of the realities of any dance is that you don't always go home with the one that brung ya."

"What are you afraid of?"

He looked up at the building. "The Hunger," he said unevenly.

"Me, too," I said quietly. "But I can't hide from it."

"Not what I'm talking about," Montrose said. "Not my hunger, not your hunger. It's a Hunger beyond us. An Appetite . . ."

"Yeah? Well, ring my bell and call me Pavlov." I started back up the hill.

He caught my arm again after a dozen paces. "If you must go, go slowly. Go carefully. Stay close to an exit. And get away as soon as you can." He turned back to the shadows where his sesquicentennial comrades were waiting.

I stomped back up the hill muttering a string of curses. Divorce cases weren't so bad. Come to think of it, spouse stalking was a little bit like being cinematographer for America's Funniest Home Videos. I was going to memo Olive as soon as I got back in, tonight: from now on After Dark Investigations was going to handle nothing but divorce cases!

No more walking corpses!

No more End of the World conspiracies!

And absolutely nothing requiring attendance at social gatherings with dress codes!

The rear exit was one of those self-locking affairs, forcing me to hike all the way around to the front of the building to get back in.

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Framed