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Chapter One

Here's a question.

Do people wear straightjackets because they're crazy?

Or do they go crazy because they're wearing straightjackets?

Because I can tell you right now those long-sleeved, buckle-down, canvas kook-shirts are so uncomfortable that you are likely to go mad if you're stuck in one for any extended period of time.

I don't know how long I'd been stuck in mine but I'd probably be well on my way to foaming and raving and going absolutely starkers were it not for the drugs. They kept me calm. Relaxed. Even while my own voice was screaming in the back of my head that I was in really deep doo-doo!

Doo-doo . . . ?

Given the normal vocabulary of my fight-or-flight responses, the fact that the voice shouting from my hindbrain was coming up with that word choice had to be another side effect of the drugs.

That and the inability to stay focused.

Or remember how I got here in the first place.

And: drugs were the only explanation as to why the babelicious Dr. Fand did not command my full attention while she was in the room for our latest session.

Well, more of a cell than a room, actually. With padded walls and recessed lighting and absolutely no windows to permit one to gauge the passing of time. Or weaken loony-town security by giving me something to bang my head against.

I had this warm, fuzzy sense of contentment that my well-being was so well looked after.

Or maybe that was the drugs, too. My attention had shifted from my psychiatrist to the cell décor and there was no other adequate explanation for that. Unless I really was as crazy as Dr. Fand professed.

"Not 'crazy,' Mr. Cséjthe . . ." She pronounced my name correctly—"Chay-tay"—but added some little foreign inflection that I couldn't quite attribute to any specific nationality.

" . . . a 'psychotic break' is a coping mechanism," she continued. "Your mind was traumatized by the accident, by the deaths of your wife and daughter. You blame yourself because you were driving, because you survived and they didn't . . ."

Maybe the drugs weren't that effective: memories began to burn through my medicated haze like napalm strikes in a thick London fog. Two years had passed since I'd awakened in a morgue next to what was left of Jenny and Kirsten, yet the sudden flash of pain tied to that memory was brisk and sharp.

Like fresh stitches as the anesthesia wears off.

"Your subconscious wrestles with the unfairness of life, the injustices of fate," Dr. Fand went on. "With pain. With regret. It tries to make sense of what seems so senseless. Like a skinned knee, it tries to heal your memories by forming a false skin—a scab, if you will—to insulate the trauma from the rest of your mind. It builds a layer of false memories, creates more acceptable 'realities' for you to inhabit while dealing with your grief and rage."

"Like this one?" I growled, shrugging against the heavy canvas and leather garment that pinned my arms across my body.

"Really, Christopher . . ." She paused. "May I call you Chris?"

"You can call me anything you want; you're the doctor." And my keeper.

And something more that I couldn't quite put my finger on . . . 

Perhaps the drugs . . . 

"Coyote-ugly" stories are legion. Romantic trysts struck up at a bar with attractive strangers after an injudicious amount of alcohol, leading to sobering morning-after revelations. "Babes" or "studs" reverting to their pre-buzz, unenhanced appearances. And the hung-over temptation to gnaw one's own arm off, coyote-fashion, to facilitate escape without waking the stranger clinging to it like a steel trap.

I wondered if Dr. Fand would look any different after the drugs wore off. She was more of a babe than anyone sober would expect of a psychiatrist. In fact, Doctor F was more of a babe than anyone might produce without the benefits of an airbrush or the latest photo-editing software with all of the graphical plug-ins.

So . . . probably the drugs.

She had blonde hair, so white with silvery highlights that age might have been inferred had any lines begun to etch her flesh. Instead, the corona of platinum hair that was not precisely white and not precisely silver, gave her an ethereal appearance. Her tilted, lavender eyes added an exotic cast to her features. Small nose, wide mouth, skin like porcelain, kiln-fired with attar of rose. She wore a white blouse that seemed tailored to accentuate how her bosom stressed the crisp, not quite opaque fabric. Her abbreviated suit jacket looked more like a bolero vest with sleeves and her matching dark skirt was short enough to show the better parts of her thighs before she sat down on the folding chair she'd brought in for our latest session. If the gems that glittered at her throat and dangled from the peekaboo lobes of her ears were real, then head-shrinking was more likely avocation than primary paycheck. She had to be independently wealthy.

Of course, I might just be the one pro bono case in her life files of the rich and insaneous. That . . . or it could just be the drugs.

"Let's talk about what's real, Chris."

I dragged my attention back to the conversation.

"Up until the accident you had no difficulty with separating fact and fiction, fable and reality. I imagine that you read fairy tales to your daughter when she was little. Maybe watched monster movies when you were younger. But you understood the difference between make-believe and reality. Until the car crash."

"So . . . you're suggesting brain damage?" I asked.

"Not in the manner of which you speak," she said, crossing her legs in a manner that threatened to re-distract me. "Not a physical injury but emotional trauma." It came to me that she wasn't wearing stockings or hose. "It is as if your mind has drawn upon fable and fairy tale to construct a psychic hedge-maze, a place to wander about, insulated from the harsh realities of a cruel and apparently senseless world."

"So you're saying I've like rearranged my perceptions of reality to . . . to . . ."

Trying to follow a coherent line of thought was like trying to tune in a distant radio station on bad batteries.

" . . . um . . . like . . . create an alternate world . . . inside my head . . ."

I needed to keep my responses short. I only had so many functional brain cells. When I wasn't diverting half of them to assist my speech center, I could actually feel my mind starting to clear.

" . . . where I can hide from my own pain and loss?" I finished weakly.

She clapped her small, perfect hands in a similitude of delight. "Very good, Chris! I believe that we are starting to make some progress here."

"Progress," I repeated.

"Yes, the first steps toward recovery are anchored in recognizing that one is ill. Denial is counterproductive to therapy and recovery."

"Therapy," I said. "Recovery."

"Yes," she said. "As pleasant as it may be to live in a fantasy, isn't it better to build the sort of a life that we want in the real world?" She looked at me and waited. "Isn't it, Chris?"

My lips were dry and I licked them. "I'm thinking . . ." Not very well yet but enough to know that something was terribly wrong.

Wrong beyond occupying a rubber room with no time sense or idea of how I got here in the first place . . . 

"Well," she said, "whether or not we think we're ready to take on all the aspects of a fully actualized personality, we still have responsibilities whether we're ready to acknowledge them or not." She looked at me expectantly.

"As . . . for example . . . ?" was my eventual response.

"Your son."

I groped around in my mental fog for a minute or so. "Will?"

She leaned forward. More distraction: she wasn't wearing a bra, either. "Is that what you've decided to call him?"

Named him? What would she say if I told her we'd actually met during my little trip to New York six months ago? And bonded while cleaning out a Nazi fortress in the Rocky Mountains shortly thereafter? When it came to father and unborn son camping trips, nobody had more merit badges than the Cséjthe clan.

That is not, however, the sort of family business one shares with one's shrink. Particularly when sporting the me-so-crazy line of active wear. I pulled helplessly at the buckled sleeves anchored behind my back. "How long have I been here? Is he born yet?"

She nodded slowly. "Yes. An hour ago. His mother died in childbirth."

I wasn't prepared. "Lupé?" More napalm spattered across my mind, the fog recoiling from its fiery remembrances. "Oh my God!" I choked on a sob but tears would not come. The drugs oozed back and forth in my skull, attempting to quench the flames.

"The important thing is that your son is alive, Chris. He's alive and must be looked after. I have some papers for you to sign so that he can be taken care of. You realize that you are in no shape to do that right now. And he would be better off in a foster home than a state orphanage. Don't you agree?" She held up a piece of paper.

The drugs sizzled across the overheated parts of my brain like the tarry sludge of boiled-down coffee at the bottom of the pot. The paper looked more like parchment than an eight-and-a-half by eleven sheet of twenty-pound white bond.

"My son," I whispered.

"And you want what's best for him, of course."

"What's best for him," I murmured.

"But right now you cannot be there for him. He's your responsibility. But you are not well enough, right now, to be responsible." She held up the parchment. "The only responsible thing you can do, right now, is sign over your parental rights to a foster agency so that they can place him with a loving, normal family. At least until you're well enough to return to a normal life for yourself."

I looked down at the floor, my stomach twisting viciously. "You're saying that I cannot take care of my own son."

"Mr. Cséjthe"—it was no longer Chris now—"you are still suffering from a psychotic break. You think that you are a vampire . . ."

My head bobbed up. "I am not a vampire!"

"But you said—"

"I am infected with one of the two viruses," I continued, locking my eyes on hers, "that combine to create the undead condition. But. I. Am. Not. A. Vampire."

Not yet, anyway.

The suddenness and intensity of my response had startled her. The parchment dropped to the floor and settled near my feet as she held her hands up before her. "All right, Mr. Cséjthe. I apologize for misquoting you. But don't you see? Vampire or half vampire, it all comes down to a similar disconnect."

She picked up another sheet of paper—this one more in line with your typical, office-supply standards. "I've distilled the notes from our previous sessions. Let's revisit your perception of events around and following the accident that killed your wife and daughter." The sheet she consulted looked more like a typewritten report than the slightly curled parchment at my feet.

Perhaps it was the difference in the fonts.

"You say that you passed out while driving because you had been forced to give a blood transfusion to Count Dracula . . ."

"Prince."

She looked up. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Prince," I corrected, "not 'count.' Now you're the one confusing monster movies with reality. Vlad Dracul the Fifth of the Bassarab line was never a count. Back during the fifteenth century he was the prince of Walachia. Some of the more popular sources identify him as Vlad III: there's a bit of historical confusion over the Bassarab Vlads II through V—which was 'Tepes' and which was 'Tsepesh'; Daddy 'Drakul' and progeny '-ula.' In terms of his own position in the family line, he invokes 'the fifth.' But, whatever the number, he was a prince. And I can assure you that he takes umbrage whenever the popular entertainments demote him."

Umbrage. They were getting sloppy with the pharmaceuticals: the medication was definitely wearing off.

Her smile was small and sad. "Again, Mr. Cséjthe, take a mental step back and try to consider your own words from anyone else's perspective." Her eyes flicked down to the transcript of our previous session. "You say that the virus that turns the living into the undead is actually a—" she stumbled a little here "—combinant supervirus. That this supervirus is made up of two lesser viruses."

I nodded. "One resides in the blood of a vampire, the other in the saliva. Each has its own effects on the human host. Stoker chronicled some of the effects on those victims who were initially bitten but not immediately drained or killed. He did not, however—nor did anyone else that I know of—document the effects of the blood-borne virus without the combinant effect of the salivary pathogens. We know that a vampire makes another like himself by infecting his victim with both viruses through the bite and the commingling of blood."

She shook her head. "Bram Stoker wrote novels. Fiction. Entertainments. Though I must say, Mr. Cséjthe, your imagination would serve you very well if you turned it to inventing stories for readers of a certain bent. Alas, it does not serve you by redrawing your own perceptions of reality, it only does you harm.

"But—" she held up her hand as I opened my mouth again "—let me continue. You believe that, as a result of this transfusion, your blood is now infected with one of the two viruses and this makes you allergic to sunlight and garlic but gives you increased strength and speed and the ability to heal faster than normal people." She looked up. "Did you notice your own words, here? Normal people. You acknowledge that what you are describing falls outside of the boundaries of normalcy. Of reality."

My inner English major joined hands with my stubborn streak. "The words 'normal' and 'real' are not interchangeable, Doctor. Something can be real without being normal."

"You have no fangs," she continued, ignoring me. "You claim to have met other creatures of myth and fable since the accident. You believe that your lover, the mother of your newborn son, is a werewolf. That a three-thousand-year-old Egyptian sorcerer resurrected the bodies of your deceased wife and daughter and possessed them with demonic spirits. That the four-hundred-year-old countess—" she glanced up to see if I would correct her use of titles "—Elizabeth Báthory, tried to bind the spirits of the voodoo gods and bring about the end of the world."

"Actually," I corrected, "it was the demoness Lilith, masquerading as Erzsébet Báthory. And the voudon spirits are properly referred to as loa, not gods."

She made a little noise and returned to her reading. "You now believe that you can talk to the dead. That your blood is now further infected with mummy serum—"

"Tanna leaf extract . . ."

"Mmm hmm. And, in addition to human blood you say you've tasted the blood of a werewolf, an angel, and a demon—"

"Actually, it was the blood of a human host who was possessed by a demon at that particular moment and I'll just stop talking now," I said as she gave me a look over the top of her printout.

"—and that the infamous Nazi doctor, Josef Mengele," she continued, "or his clones—injected you with thousands of tiny machines called nane—nun—"

"Nanites. And we're probably talking millions, now."

"—microscopic machines that infect your preternatural flesh in new, mysterious and unknown ways. That you have died and lived as a ghost for a couple of days. That you are able to bloodwalk—" She looked up. "How does that work, again?"

"The Wendigo taught me how to enter another vessel through a chakra-point and possess their body for a time."

She nodded. "The Wendigo. I see. How about a demonstration, then? Prove it by possessing me." She smiled another sad smile. "Go ahead."

I exhaled and shook my head. "The chakra entry only works on lower forms of animal life. Well, I've only used the chakra technique with a wolf, actually. To possess a higher life-form, I have to enter the host through their blood. That's why it's called bloodwalking."

Her smile grew sadder. "Mr. Cséjthe, if you think I'm going to injure myself to provide blood for your delusional claims, you are sadly mistaken." She returned to the paper. You count among your friends, some zombies that live—" she glanced up but I didn't say anything, "—in the graveyard next to your former residence, a fortune-teller whom you claim to be the 'real deal,' another woman who now runs the detective agency that you started up a year or so back. Which would sound normal except that you claim that her dead nephew also works for the both of you. Then there's an ancient, Central American bat-headed demon—"

"Camazotz," I said, nodding. "Though I wouldn't call him a friend, exactly. More of a stalker/would-be disciple."

"I suppose that would be difficult: maintaining a friendship with a demon and an angel," she said archly.

"Who? Mikey? To tell the truth, I'm not sure whose team he plays for or whether he's a free agent. Most days I suspect it doesn't really matter."

Apparently Dr. Fand didn't think it mattered, either. "And a two-headed woman," she finished as if I hadn't spoken at all.

I cleared my throat. "You left out Billy Bob Montrose and J.D."

"Another vampire and the ghost of yet another one." She sighed. "What would be the point?"

"Just trying to keep the record as accurate as possible. So, I guess I should also point out that Deirdre isn't technically a two-headed woman. She is a woman who has temporarily acquired a second head."

Dr. Fand's eyes widened but retained a weary cast as she asked, "And the distinction being?"

I shrugged beneath the confines of my straightjacket. "A 'two-headed' woman implies that both heads are actually hers to begin with."

Dr. Fand tossed the sheet of paper aside and it, too, wafted down to the floor. The second page still looked like paper while the first page still looked like parchment. Maybe it wasn't the drugs, after all.

"I had hoped that the antipsychotics that we've administered would give you some moments of clarity. Can you not see how ridiculous your version of the past two years sounds? Vampires, zombies, demons, cloned Nazis? No judge is going to grant you custody of a child that you have no legal claims to. You had not cohabited with Ms. Garou even long enough to meet the definitions of a common-law union." She got up and reached down for the parchment on the floor near my feet. "So, do what's best for your son, Mr. Cséjthe. Sign the papers that will ensure a good foster home for your son. Don't send him off to a state orphanage."

I twitched my right foot as she picked up the form in question and she was back and out of reach in the blink of an eye.

"Why do you care, Doctor?" I asked slowly. "What is my son to you?"

"I'm human," she answered. "Is it so strange that I should care as to what happens to an innocent child? And you are my patient. I don't think that we can properly start your treatment and recovery while you are tied to outside problems and presumed obligations. So, let's get you back on the road to sanity, Mr. Cséjthe. Sign the paper."

I smiled a crooked grin. "'Sign, sign, sign!' they said. 'Sign, King John, or resign instead!'"

Her hand fluttered to her chest. "I beg your pardon?"

"Look, Doc—may I call you 'Doc'?—I realize that a crazy person isn't going to think too rationally, especially when loaded up on drugs that turn one's head into a Chia planter. So, it's no wonder that I'm having trouble figuring a couple of things out, here. Maybe, if you could help me sort them out, it would make sense to do your Magna Carta thing."

"Well—"

"First of all, you say I'm having a psychotic break, designed to substitute a kinder, gentler reality for the big, bad, real world. If true, wouldn't I come up with something more pleasant than being infected with a necrotic virus that is slowly turning me into a monster?"

"Well, I—"

"And wouldn't I construct better fates for my family than to have their bodies desecrated and possessed by the dark sorceries?"

"That—well—"

"You see, I just don't understand how this 'coping mechanism,' as you describe it, would set me up with a perceived reality, populated with monsters and such, when that is far worse than what you say is the normal reality. In this so-called protective fantasy, my wife and daughter are still dead, I'm a monster, and the world is a far worse place than I ever imagined before. So, I have to wonder, Dr. Fand. Where did you get your training? 'Psychiatry for Dummies'?"

Her violet eyes flashed fire and she drew herself up to a height that did not seem possible for her diminutive frame. "There's no need to insult my intelligence!"

"Why not? You're insulting mine!"

"The science of the human mind is not a simple matter and I hardly expect you to understand the complexities of your own case in a few short sessions, Mr. Cséjthe!"

"In other words, you're the doctor so shut up and do as you say." I shook my head. "Are you a lawyer, too, Doc? See, the other thing that bothers me is how you're so keen for me to sign over my son. Never mind the fact that you've raised the threat of state orphanages—an institution rendered extinct by family services and the foster care system nearly a century ago. No, you see, the signing of a paper presupposes some sort of transfer of rights—yet you've just told me that I have no legal claim on my son. If no judge will recognize my relationship with my son's mother, how will signing a paper serve any purpose? Especially by a guy who's not in his right mind. I believe the phrase is non compos mentis and we're not talking the 'Freshmaker mints' here." My eyes flicked from hers to the parchment in her clenched fingers. "So what is the point of paperwork if we're operating outside of the courts? And I gotta ask myself: why would a shrink traffic in black market babies?"

She stared back at me, her face colorless. "You must realize that you are quite mad."

"Mad? Lady, I'm so pissed it's going to take years of anger management sessions to dial me back down to moderately hostile! The drugs were pretty effective at first but my metabolism has had time to adjust. I've been able to think a little more clearly of late. And—while I wish to God the past two years really were a delusion or a dream—your One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest performance just doesn't convince."

"You question my credentials? You're not a psychiatrist!"

"No. I'm an English teacher." Was an English teacher. Who gave exams. And time for her to take one of mine . . .

"American and World Lit," I babbled on. "Not so much a scholar of Jung and Maslow. More a scholar of Shakespeare. A very savvy shrink, the Bard. Wrote this little treatise called Hamlet. Now I know what you're going to say: When B.F. Skinner talks, people listen. But if you listen to the depressed Dane, brooding around Elsinore castle, he comes up with some very effective self-therapy."

"I don't know what you're babbling about!" she said irritably.

I sat back and stared at her. "Time's up. Put down your pencil and close your booklet."

"What?"

"The test's over. You flunk."

She arched a wispy eyebrow but I could tell her temper was starting to fray badly. Even if she'd had the training, she would have lacked the discipline. "I don't think you're qualified to administer state psychiatric boards, Mr. Cséjthe."

I arched right back at her. "Bet I could fake it better than you, though."

Her smile showed more teeth than tolerance. "What would be the point of such a bet?"

I leaned forward. "How about this bet? I'm betting the sum total of your credentials as a Freudian are a couple of wet dreams and a soggy cigar."

Her face went white. The crumpling parchment in her fist looked positively ethnic in contrast. "Churl!" Her hair began to stand away from her head like a static cloud. "You dare to speak vulgarities—"

I had her, now. Just another little push or two . . . 

"Wanna hear my analysis, Doc? If I should call you 'Doc.' I think you're some kind of schizo-ceramic. That's shrink terminology for 'crackpot.'"

The parchment in her hand suddenly burst into flame and her violet eyes began to glow with an unearthly light.

"Um," I said, feeling the overheated parts of my brain go cold, "I was betting on you being FBI. Maybe Homeland Security. Guess I was wrong. Wasn't last year's tax audit after all, huh?"

"If you will not give me what I want, then I shall simply take it when I will!" She floated up off the floor, a nimbus of lavender light flickering around her. "Then you will come to us, begging to do our will!"

I got up, too, though a little less elegantly and a lot less otherworldly. "Why wait?" I growled. "Let's negotiate now!" I ran at her and head-butted her into the padded door. Which flew open and the two of us continued our momentum across the hall and into a less-yielding wall.

She appeared to be doubly surprised: first, that I would do such a thing and second, that I could do such a thing. That she could appear surprised at all and not totally unconscious from the dent she made in the wall was not a good thing. Women who levitate and glow and cause things to spontaneously combust are not to be messed with. You take them down and out immediately or the amount of living-to-regret-it may be short-time and intense.

She threw out her hand in a gesture and uttered something in an unintelligible language. There was no misinterpreting the echo-chamber quality in her voice, though. A wind sprang up and I felt tingly all over.

Other than that, nothing.

And that seemed to surprise her all the more.

In any kind of a fight it's those half-second hesitations that can make all of the difference. I pushed up against her and grabbed her ear with my teeth. "Any chance you watched The Silence of the Lambs for your homework, Doc?" I mumbled around and into her ear. "Unless you want me to go all Hannibal Lector, I suggest you start unbuckling me!"

Then I noticed something as she squirmed against me . . . 

No, not that.

Not those, either.

I'd gotten my incisors through her tresses and latched onto the upper crest of her ear. I eased my tongue out to verify the configuration as she bellowed: "Setanta!"

Crap! Assuming the other side was a match, she had pointed ears!

"Setanta!" she shrieked. The next shriek was less intelligible as she twisted and my tongue slipped, giving her a full-bore wet willie.

I broke my "hold" and we exchanged looks of horror.

A huge guy wearing leather and a baroque, oversized mullet appeared at one end of the hall. He took one look and started to run toward us.

I whirled and ran in the same direction—away from him, that is.

I wasn't going to get very far. Major Mullet had longer legs and the thews of an Olympic decathlete. ("Thews"? Had to be the drugs . . . ) I, on the other hand, had no clue regarding the layout. And the faster I tried to run while wearing a straightjacket, the more likely I was going to end up body-surfing on a waxed floor.

And again, there was the handicap of the drugs.

But I was short on options so I ran . . . 

Sheet-rocked corridors gave way to flag-stoned floors and rock-faced tunnels. Glowing patches of lichen and phosphorescent fungi replaced fluorescent tubes. I had to slow my pace as the hallway became an earthen tunnel with odd bits of root and stone projecting out into my path.

Okay. I was underground.

Add in pyrokinesis, pointed ears, and levitating ladies and it wasn't a total leap to figure I was inside a faerie mound. Except: one, I had no idea what the inside of a faerie mound was supposed to look like. And: two, there were no such things as faeries.

Or vampires or werewolves, right?

A human woman could still have exotic, upturned eyes and even pointed ears—if the genetic mutations parsed just right. But levitation, psychokinesis, and creating purple glows out of thin air? Too bad I was a total white belt in the dojo of elf-defense.

I staggered against a wall, spun around the bend, and fell to my knees. Except my knees never quite touched the ground. The Mullet had me by one of the leather straps across the back of my laughing jacket.

"The time grows too short for such nonsense," he hissed, jerking me back so that I slammed into the brick wall. The leather-clad brick wall that was his chest, that is. He spun me around and seized my throat, lifting me off the ground.

My lungs immediately went into overdrive but there was no more air coming or going. And not a lot of blood, either. My eyes went into screen-saver mode and my brain began the shutdown sequence to hard-drive hibernation. I tried kicking but my legs seemed weak and unresponsive. My arms and hands spasmed painfully and, far away, I heard a distant oath.

And felt the floor.

Against my face.

My vision blurred back from reddish black enough to see the goon "Doctor" Fand had sicced on me. He was standing a few steps back and looking back at me with a frown that was two parts speculation and one part consternation.

I pushed myself up from the floor. It would have been nice to lie there a little longer—just until the tidal wave of nausea washed back out to sea—but this Setanta guy didn't look like the type to give extended time-outs. I flattened my hands like blades of flesh and struck a tai chi pose hoping my opponent had seen just enough kung fu flicks to be intimidated.

He was intimidated, all right. "How?" he asked, "How did you do that?"

I wasn't about to tell him the Glenwood Community Health Center offered evening classes in Tai Chi or Eastern Meditation Techniques. And then I suddenly understood why he was so impressed.

My arms were free.

The closed sleeves were torn open at the ends and the leather straps that buckled behind my back were shredded and hanging in tatters.

No wonder he had backed up. Hell, even I was impressed!

"You—you're not human!" He took another step back.

"Oh, I get it," I said, "she's the brains and you're the brawn. It's all so clear now."

"Nobody tells me anything!" he groused.

"Maybe if you didn't have this whole Dog the Bounty Hunter vibe going on, people would take you a little more seriously."

He stopped backing up. He tilted his head and fixed me with a look I can only describe as "distant." Ditto the voice: "What did you call me?"

He didn't look offended. He seemed . . . thoughtful.

His face lacked the tilted-eye exoticism that set Fand apart from ninety-eight percent of the human race. Likewise, the retro-hippie headband that tamed his reddish blonde Jeri curl 'do, revealed ears that were rounded in such a way to eliminate elven DNA from the suspect list. Never mind the fact that he was a foot taller than me and a hundred pounds heavier—all muscle: if he was human I should be able to take him. Laying aside the issue of my virally-enhanced strength, a single scratch would be sufficient to initiate a bloodwalk and go riding around inside his brain pan. Then he would be my bitch and we'd see about discouraging any future kidnapping plans involving me or my family.

That which does not kill me makes me angrier.

But then The Mullet screamed two words: "Your eyes!" And, whirling about, ran back the way he'd come.

Well, that worked, too, I guess.

"Heh," I said, watching him go. "What a maroon!" I reached behind me and started working on the remaining buckles and straps, singing under my breath: "Vampire-man, vampire-man; friendly, neighborhood, vampire-man, / Is he strong? Listen, bud: he's got necrophage-mutant blood! / Look out! Here comes—"

My musical improvisation came to a screeching halt as I got a good look at my hands. My fingernails had suddenly turned into inch-long talons!

Razor-sharp, inch-long talons!

Silvery, shiny, razor-sharp, inch-long talons!

I reached out and tentatively scratched at a piece of stone embedded in the tunnel wall.

The rock flaked and crumbled like badly cast Styrofoam.

I double-checked, just to make sure. Yep: limestone substrate and harder than any chunk of premium 4400 concrete you were likely to find.

I looked back down at my undamaged, stone-cutting, extendable talons. "Grandma," I murmured, "what big claws you have."

No wonder The Mullet had stopped chasing me: I'd just pulled a double Freddy Krueger and without any gloves!

Then I remembered: it wasn't my hands that had made him scream and flee in terror . . . 

It was my eyes.

 

I didn't know much about faerie mounds in the theoretical sense (and nothing at all from the practical). I did remember enough poetry and fable from undergraduate coursework in Medieval and Romantic Lit to recall that they sometimes housed entire armies, if not cities.

Not exactly the case here.

Wandering back along the now-deserted corridor I discovered that I had been incarcerated in the underground equivalent of a Winnebago. All I had seen, up until my escape, was the inside of a padded cell. I had never actually observed anyone but Fand and the guy sporting the achy-breaky coiffure during my confinement. At least not that I remembered. And, all in all, there were maybe three more rooms—one of them sleeping quarters for two.

Everything had the look of a cot and bare walls, temporary setup for short-term occupancy. Which explained how they were able to evacuate so fast and leave nothing of apparent value behind.

Except the rest of my clothing and personal effects.

By the time I found these, my mystery-alloy, press-on nails had disappeared. This made buckling on my fanny holster so much easier. But, as I checked the magazine and seated my Glock 20 under my shirttail, I was faced with a minor dilemma. I wasn't sure which was more disturbing: that ten incredibly hard and sharp metallic knives had sprung out of my fingertips without explanation or warning—or that they had disappeared again without rhyme or reason.

A more thorough search of the premises was out of the question as my captors might be on their way back with reinforcements. The more distance I put between this place and me, the soonest, the bestest. With or without Swiss army digits, an automatic handgun loaded with silver-tipped dumdums has its limitations.

And such were no damn good against sunlight, which my newly retrieved watch said was on its way in a few hours.

I found an exit and emerged from a hillock in back bayou country.

It was dark. Not that I didn't expect darkness but it was the kind you only find far from human habitation and the electrical grid. The moon was high in the sky and the color of blood. Its uncertain light lent a dim tint of dread to the shadows that seemed to writhe just beyond the edge of my vision.

I took a moment to do a three-sixty scan of my surroundings. Then did another turn, running a check in the infrared spectrum. No heat signatures. The entire area appeared to be devoid of life. Which was both reassuring and discomforting.

I pulled out my cell phone, a long shot at best as it hadn't seen a charger in—how long? Yup: dead as a doornail. These past two years I'd learned that "dead" has all sorts of relative meanings when it comes to biological organisms. But you could always count on the steadfastness of technology dependent on batteries: dead really does mean dead.

I tucked it back away and took another look 'round at the horizon. Without knowing where I was, directions—north, south, east, west—were meaningless. Better to find indications of human habitation—city, town, farm, road—and head toward that.

As I said, it was dark and far removed from the artificial lights of human influence. So far removed that there were no lights visible in any direction from where I stood, even on the distant horizon.

And, of course, no signs on the ground around me of anyone's comings or goings.

Great.

In old movie serials and pulp thrillers the classic deathtrap usually comes equipped with all sorts of technology: sliding doors, lasers, conveyer belts, spike-lined pits, vats of acid. Where's the menace in a long walk home?

In the past two years a three-thousand-year-old Egyptian necromancer, an ancient Babylonian demon, cloned Nazis, cybernetic monsters, vampire assassins, and a female dhampir had tried to do me some ultimate harm. Their best efforts had failed. But if I didn't get home before dawn it would make little difference. My sensitivity to solar radiation had increased over the past six months. Since I was only "half-undead" it would probably take me twice as long to burn to a pile of ashes as a full-fledged vampire.

But the end result would be the same.

Just more painful.

I started with a slow steady jog, hoping I was headed toward rather than away from civilization and negotiable transportation. And something to drink.

I was very, very thirsty.

 

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Framed