"Come on!"

"No. Tell me."

"Please," I say.

And I think my eyes are so desperate, as are the corners of my mouth and other regions of my face, that she silently follows me.

We run through the crowds.

People are wolfing down fried dough. People are prowling in packs. A child is screaming by the moonwalk, "My arm is broke! My arm is broke!" People are shoving and grabbing.

Lights spin over us. There's screaming all around. And above it all, voices booming out over the gruesome disco from the merry-go-round, "We d.a.m.n him in his thought. We d.a.m.n him in his speech. We d.a.m.n him in his being. Our hate is ranged against him."

The crowds push; people sing; someone barfs behind a tent. His back heaves again and again, as if it's being wrung.

"A hot dog! A hot dog! I wanna hot dog!" yowls a child dragging a bear by the ear, but her parents are lost in the crowd.

And I lead Rebecca through it all to a grove of trees off to the side.

And we stand there, together, in the warm summer's night.

The moon is pale above the whirling lights and is fringed by silver wings of cloud. The trees rustle softly above us, as if anxious with sap.

The smell of the gra.s.s is sweet, and the night feels wide and the adventure good; and I feel we can, together, do something. We will pound on desks; we will point at the map and direct the police and use words like "zone six," "ETA," and "triangulation."

Finally.

"Chris," she says, stepping toward me. "You are so strange sometimes." She says it gently, so gently it's like she's stroking my face. (She isn't.) She leans back against a tree trunk, her legs stiff. Her toe is touching mine. I don't know if she notices. I wriggle my toe closer to her toe. Softly, she urges me, "I'm ready for your revelation. Whatever it is."

Finally. Finally.

"Rebecca," I say (I can't believe I'm saying the name!), "it is very hard to talk about."

She nods her head. "I can see. Don't worry."

"I have to explain something."

She laughs lightly. "Yes, you do."

"But I will explain myself."

She pushes herself up with her hands outspread, so she is standing close to me. "You have to be brave," she says.

She is standing very close to me. Her arms are at her sides, but they don't need to be. If they moved up any, they would be around me. My arms would be around her. She is looking up into my face and searching it; her lips are parted.

Her neck is turned to look up at me, and I can almost feel its silky gra.s.s-sweet skin, follow its curve down past her collarbone and the fluting of her throat to her soft chest. My teeth are moving. They are becoming fangs. I need to talk quickly.

"Rebecca, there's something . . . You'll have to trust me."

Her skin is beautifully cool and white in the moonlight, as cool and white as a tomb. And beneath it, her blood races. "Look, Chris, you've got to stop beating around the bush." She puts her hand on my arm and rubs it up and down to rea.s.sure me. It does not rea.s.sure me. My teeth are swelling because of the blood. They're enormous. They're crowding the rest of my mouth. I can barely move my tongue.

It is now. Now or never.

I reach up and almost take her hand. Leaning toward her, I murmur urgently, "Rebecca, you have to underthtand - under -"

"What?" She leans toward me, holding my arm.

My teeth are huge. "I thaid, you - I thaid thaid -" -"

"What?"

"I, uh, it'th jutht - it'th - ohhhhhhhhhh, thit!" I wail. I turn from her and smack a tree ineffectually. "Thit! Thit! Thit! Thit! Thit!" I hide my mouth with my hand.

My teeth are mammoth; tusklike; throbbing; barely crammed into my mouth.

I am filled with rage. I don't even know at what. Rebecca looks at me, maybe even frightened. I stagger back away from her like a cowering animal. "Chris?" she says.

I am ready to pounce. Her neck is spread out, her arms, her chest - I want to feed on her. I want to kill her. I back away. I run back toward the fairground, screaming petulantly, "No! No! No! Oh, thit, thit, thit, thit, thit! thit!"

Back through the crowds of screaming teens, back through the teeming maze of stalls.

"Chris!" she calls.

But I am all alone; I know that now. I am all alone with the Forces of Darkness ranged against me.

I lope down the littered aisles, wild with longings.

Lolli - I am thirsty; and she is evil. Kill two birds with one stone. That is my plan: Kill two birds with one stone. Drink Lolli's blood. I will drink Lolli's blood to stay alive.

As I run on, the thoroughfares are empty, the fairground air dank with chill. Something has happened. Now no one smiles in the sweet-smelling stable decay of the tents and tarps; a few fat faces gawk as I stumble past stalls; and they turn and talk.

I notice now that grandparents grimly grab their sticky charges as I hurtle past and on and on, past the narrowed eyes of lone fair-folk, leaning against their machines - the ferris wheel deserted, the teacups drained to the dregs - past a gaggle of girls, their limbs ripe and red; past a cl.u.s.ter of couples holding babies (sacks of blood as succulent as grapes) - I am thirsty; she is evil - kill two birds with one stone - I tear through the fair, gasping for breath, greedy for gore, I sprint across the lawn to the Rigozzis', stumble up the steps, almost crowing for the kill . . .

And silence greets me.

The house blares with light, but there is no sound. There is no sound but the agitation of crickets that have seen things.

The door is ajar.

I slip in.

The music is off. Overturned beer cups drool on the carpeted stairs.

Something is wrong.

I step gingerly into the living room. The stereo is on, but the CD player mute. No one is there to listen. Paul's camcorder lies crumpled and kicked on the floor. Chairs are overturned; the table where Lolli danced and bucked is broken; and I look up and see, splattered across the wall, the stains where a head with blood-wet hair slammed down and slid.

Carefully, I approach the blotch. It is already beginning to dry.

The beer keg drips in the silence.

Plick. Plick. Plick. Plick.

I examine the first impact where the head must have hit, the trail where it smeared down to the baseboard.

Plick. Plick. Plick.

The sprinkled droplets are drying to black.

Plick. Plick.

"This is not a good party."

I whip around; I stagger backward. The voice is coming from the other side of a sofa turned away from me. Carefully, I approach. Some soph.o.m.ore stoner sits there, staring vacantly away from me. I can tell at a glance that he is baked. He looks tiny slumped on the sofa, lost in a pool of his own huge clothes.

"Who is that there?" he asks. "Knock-knock. Knock-knock!"

"No one," I whisper. "No one thpecial."

I back away to the wall.

I draw my lips together. I crouch down so I'm below his line of sight. I'm hunkered next to the wall, ready to sprint.

"Man," he says. "Ma-ha-ha-ha-han." He sighs. "Ma-ha-ha-ha-han."

"What happened?" I ask, almost in a whisper.

For a minute, he just sits there, still staring in the opposite direction. I can no longer see him over the back of the sofa. "This . . . She didn't show up on film. She. Pete Gallagher. He. You know Pete?"

I want to get him talking. "I know Pete," I say. "What happened?"

Carefully, watching the back of the sofa, I lean and put my cheek against the wall. I stick my tongue out and begin licking the blood.

"Man, ma-ha-ha-ha-han." I hear him shift slightly. "He was taking this video, you know. There was this, and it, this guy with her. He started to. You know. Beat out of, I mean, the c.r.a.p out of Pete. The c.r.a.p."

I'm crazed and nervous in the quiet, just listening to the monotone of his idiot voice over the distant crickets through the open door. I press my cheek closer to the wall and keep lapping silently at the salty sc.u.m.

"They started to punch at first. Then it turned into this whole big fight. This whole big fight. Chaos. Complete chaos." His voice is sliding up the scale, getting higher and whinier. "He killed Pete, I think. I think Pete is dead. G.o.d. I think he's . . . bought the farm. A hundred and twenty acres of the best, man. Cattle and pastures. With a ding-dong here, and a ding-dong there."

My tongue rasps against the drying clots. I realize he's stopped talking. Got to get him going again. I open my eyes, panting, draw my tongue in, and ask, "Tho what happened then?" Go back to licking.

"Then that b.i.t.c.h. What's her name? She ran and tried to get away. She and this guy, running down the driveway. People thought they were just going to get away?"

Faintly, from upstairs, I hear careful footsteps.

They start in Kathy's bedroom.

"Tony, he . . . There. He got in his car, drove full speed into her. Bam! She couldn't be killed but I guess that did . . ." He sighs again, and shifts slightly. "The trick. She went flying, man. Flew. Broke her back. She was out. Knocked out. They called the police. Took her into town for a . . . you know. Execution. Formally."

The footsteps stalk down the carpeted hallway toward the stairs. I don't know who it is, but it sounds as if whoever is making the footsteps is walking softly, so as not to be heard.

"If I ever see that b.i.t.c.h again," the stoner drones, "man, I'm not going to give her the time. Not the Time. Of. Day. No way."

I really want to run, but the blood is too good, even in dried flakes like fish food. I rise. I bob down to get a quick last lick at the scab, then briskly make my way toward the front door. The footsteps upstairs pick up.

"Can't. How can she do that to Pete, man? Just do that. To, like, the captain of lacrosse."

The footsteps are racing down the steps from upstairs. I hurtle out through the door.

Down the steps. I pound down the driveway toward the main road.

Looking back, I see a shape throwing itself down the front stairs. Someone is running after me, arms flailing with speed.

I'm almost down the driveway, darting through little pools of light from lamps among the rhododendrons.

My feet slap the tarmac. I'm hurtling down the slope toward the road.

I am on the main road. I turn left, the direction of the fair.

The streetlights along the narrow road cast a ghastly sheen over the cracks and rubble where the road fades to forest.

Gasping for breath, I pound toward the field where people are parked.

I have to reach a crowd. I have to reach a crowd.

I have to tell them not to kill her.

I can hear footsteps clattering down the driveway.

They have to stop the killing. For one thing, she knows where to find the convocation of vampires. So I have to stop them.

My shirt is untucked, my mouth hanging open, dragging at the air.

My tongue, in spite of everything, still stings and squirms in happy memory.

I hurtle toward the fair.

I jump roadkill.

I look back.

Bat, sprinting toward me. Suddenly slowing and stopping. Looking past me.

I turn; look.

Right behind me, Chet flickers and solidifies. His teeth glint like iron in the dim light.

He grabs my wrists and yanks them up above my head.