"Nia, you're reading my mind."

A cool wind drifted across them, like a final, gasping breath.

"We're creeping ourselves out," she said. "Let's get this over with. I'll be back in a minute."

"I'll be waiting right here."

He watched her stride through the yard and cross the street.

It's funny, he thought. I meet the woman of my dreams, at a time when I've fallen into a nightmare. Wasn't life bizarre?

Nia opened the front door of the Bennetts' residence and slipped inside.

When Nia stepped into the Bennetts' dark, tomb-silent home, a distinct feeling of unreality gripped her.

I'm inside the home of a couple that I hardly know, looking for a gun that we'll use to defend ourselves against vampires. She wanted to laugh. Or cry. It was crazy. She believed the threat was real, but it was crazy nonetheless. Nothing ever happened in sleepy, dull Mason's Corner. Now they were battling the armies of darkness.

She giggled, involuntarily, and the sound was so strange in the preternaturally quiet house that she quickly shut up.

She clicked on a lamp in the living room. Framed photographs of the Bennetts were everywhere. They were a happy, golden pair; they had the kind of fabled, old-school marriage that she'd love to have one day.

But first, she would have to survive.

She switched on the light in the study. As Franklin had instructed, she located the Smith & Wesson revolver in the drawer. It glimmered like a dark jewel.

Although the gun surely only weighed a few pounds, for Nia, it was like lifting a forty-pound dumbbell. The weapon was heavy with its power to spit out death.

Carefully, she put the revolver and the box of ammunition in her purse. As she returned to the door, she cut off the lights. The darkness seemed to chase her to the doorway, and she hurried to step outside and lock up behind her.

Across the street, David rested against the truck. He waved at her.

She smiled tightly. G.o.d, she wanted so badly to hold him and close her eyes and forget that any of this was happening. Someone could wake her when it was all over.

Franklin's words came to her thoughts: You must partner with David. He needs you.

How could she disobey the words of a man who might be, quite literally, on his deathbed? Abandon David? Desert her hometown?

She couldn't do it, not ever.

She began to stride across the walkway, to the street. She glimpsed quick movement in the corner of her eye-a large shape. Then she heard the low, threatening growl.

She stopped, her heart clutching.

A red Doberman trotted along the curb. There was another dog, a bullmastiff, posted on the opposite curb. The canine on her side of the street rested on its haunches and watched her. The other hound faced David.

These were not the same animals that they had seen outside the cave. How many of these supernatural attack dogs were out there?

Her own words, spoken in Franklin's hospital room, came to her.

11 ... a person can be turned, I guess you could call it, by being bitten by one of those mutts that serves the vampires ... "

She reached her hand into the purse to get the revolver. The Doberman grumbled, its eyes narrowing.

She slid her hand out of the purse. The dog quieted.

"What do you want?" she said, in a whisper. "What the h.e.l.l are you here for?"

Inside David's house, King barked furiously, pawing at the window, the curtains swaying.

Like a rapidly moving shadow, a blot of blackness flashed along the middle of the road. And stopped.

It was Kyle Coiraut. The vampire.

Chapter 13.

f David had harbored any remaining doubts about the existence of vampires, they were squashed when Kyle Coiraut appeared in the street with the speed of a cold wind.

The vampire wore fewer garments than he had been wearing when David had seen him earlier in the day. He was clad in a long-sleeved black shirt, black pants, black boots. The sungla.s.ses, gloves, jacket, and hat were gone.

A drooling hound stood guard behind Kyle. David saw a Doberman on the other side of the road, blocking Nia's path.

Kyle looked at Nia. Seeming to dismiss her, he faced David.

David noticed that Kyle held a book. It was the Bible, which David had lost when running out of the woods.

s.h.i.t, David thought. What does this guy want from me?

Behind David, King snapped relentlessly. David wished the dog were at his side, though King might not be able to protect him against the two monster hounds and the vampire. Standing on the crutches, with no weapon whatsoever, he was defenseless and vulnerable.

A large black bird swooped out of the night sky and landed on the Pathfinder's roof. David thought nothing of the bird, but Kyle glared at the creature, then turned to David.

"You must explain how you came to possess this," Kyle said. He tapped the cover of the Bible.

"Why do you need to know?" David said.

The dogs growled. The Doberman moved to flank Kyle.

"Do not waste my time with needless debating!" Kyle shouted. "Do you know the man who took my father away from me? Are you his ancestor? Speak, human, or I will tear the words out of your throat!"

David's hands were clammy on the handles of the crutches. In the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the front door of the house. There was no way he could make it inside before the vampire or the dogs caught him.

Answering the creature's questions was an almost equally dangerous course. The puzzle pieces were shifting into place. Someone in David's family-he'd have to contemplate the family tree to discover who-had been responsible for imprisoning Diallo, the head vampire, in the cave, just as the drawings in the Bible depicted. Kyle blamed David's ancestor-and, by extension, him for doing so.

David could not tell him the truth, and telling a lie would not help, either.

"You will reveal the truth" Kyle began to march forward, and his dogs kept pace with him. "Or else, my hounds will rend you to pieces."

David retreated. Hands shaky on the crutches. Praying that he did not stumble.

King was in a frenzy of barking.

Atop the Pathfinder, the bird squawked, ruffled its dark wings. It was not a crow, as David had first thought. It was a raven. Ravens were bigger than crows.

Hadn't he seen one just like this a few days ago, when he'd visited his father's cabin?

Kyle glared at the raven. "You will not stop me. Not anymore ""

David stopped in his clumsy retreat, confused.

The raven and the vampire were locked in a staring match.

What is going on? David thought.

"You will not stop me!" Kyle said. He waved his hand.

The hounds launched forward.

Jesus, I can't get away from them. They'll pull me down before I get anywhere near the door.

He turned to flee. One of the crutches slipped out of his grasp and clattered against the ground. Robbed of his balance, he fell and slammed against the gra.s.s.

Through his haze of pain, he saw a dark ma.s.s wheeling in the sky. Birds?

The dogs, maybe only a dozen feet away from David, squealed. Their ears flattened against their heads.

The winged creatures screeched.

No, not birds. Bats.

The bats swarmed to the ground in a black funnel, leathery wings battering the air.

David covered his head, but they did not attack him. The bats attached themselves to the dogs, and enveloped Kyle, too. The vampire shielded his head with his arms and shouted curses.

Wailing, the dogs fled. Kyle zigzagged blindly across the yard, trying to shake off the horde of bats, flailing his hands in an attempt to knock them away. He finally broke away from them and vanished down the street in a black blur.

As suddenly as it had arrived, the swarm spiraled into the sky, and out of sight.

Breathing hard, David looked at the raven perched atop his truck.

It watched him for several heartbeats. Then it flew away into the night.

Nia ran across the street and helped David stand.

"Oh, my G.o.d," she said. "Are you okay?"

"I'm all right, a little shaken up," he said. "But I think my mind is blown."

King was still barking, though less vehemently.

"Can you please let him out?" he said. "He's going nuts in there."

Nia opened the door. King bounded outside and leapt onto David so enthusiastically that David almost fell down.

"Easy, boy." He stroked the dog's head. "I'm okay."

"We have to talk about what happened," Nia said. "That was unbelievable."

"Yeah, and it gives us a bunch more questions, too"

David reached down to rub King's neck, but the dog wandered away from David's side and roved across the gra.s.s, sniffing.

"Don't run off, King," David said.

The dog poked his snout into the gra.s.s and retrieved an object. Holding it between his teeth, he brought it to David.

It was the Bible.

In the house, David and Nia locked every door. They shut and locked every window, too.

If a vampire or a canine minion was going to get them, it would have to break in, David thought.

He was rattled by the vampire's thwarted a.s.sault, but he was determined to hold up. They had too much work ahead of them for him to lose his nerve.

They kept Franklin's gun on the dinette table. King sat near the kitchen doorway, his dark eyes unusually vigilant.

After Nia brewed a pot of strong coffee, they sat at the table and pieced together their ideas about the vampires in Mason's Corner.

"I think William Hunter is the man who's in these draw ings," David said. He had revisited the lineage of Hunter men traced on the inside cover of the Bible, then begun to page through the ill.u.s.trations. "William lived through the early and mid-eighteen hundreds, around the time that Diallo apparently attacked a plantation that William lived on." He put his finger on the drawing that showed William and some other men battling a horde of savages-vampires, presumably-on the plantation.

"Yes" Nia cupped her coffee mug, as if for warmth.

David flipped to another page. "But William and a few of these guys somehow escaped, met up with some Indians, and tracked the vampires to the cave, where they were probably asleep during the day. The vampires' monster dogs guarded the cave. The guys had to kill those suckers before they could get inside."

"And I bet it wasn't easy," Nia said. "That might explain why the number of good guys drops from seven to four. Three of them either didn't survive fighting the mutts, or ran away, I guess"

"I think you're right. Then, inside the cave, our heroes attacked the vampires with guns, arrows, and fire," David said. "It doesn't look like they stopped the big guy, Diallo. He still came after them"

"Until someone probably set off some dynamite and brought down the walls," Nia said. "Sealed up that joker in there"

"And that was the end of it," David said. "But my ancestor, William, was never the same after that. He became this fearless freedom fighter. I remember hearing the stories about him roaming throughout the South, helping slaves escape to the North. Then, like Franklin told us, he had a hand in the insurrection at Edward Mason's plantation."

"Yep," Nia said. "Right alongside with my relative, and the ancestors of a good number of people who live in town today."