“Jesse, Walter,” Sally cried. “Do you hear it too?”

In her mind the scream was maddening. But Walter had his head cocked as though he were listening to something far off.

Then Jesse emerged from the earth and Sally had to focus on him: the last remnants of sweetness faded from his face as he floated toward her.

“You’re Jesse, you love to bake, you make killer salads, your garlic dressing is the best I ever tasted,” Sally gasped. “You love Walter, you love Walter, he’s the love of your life…” Walter watched, unmoving.

Humanity flashed and then dimmed on Jesse’s gentle face. His mouth stretched, showing hard teeth. “Walter!” she gasped. “Can’t you… stop him…”

Walter glided away into the trees.

Jesse’s cold breath tickled her throat. Ridiculous! She couldn’t end this way! The scream had switched to back gleeful laughter, as monotonously as a politician switching positions on a hot button issue or a noble changing sides during the Wars of the Roses.

Needle teeth slid in like painful ice, right on the spot which had itched and felt strange for days now.

He bit harder. Sally heard something crunch under his jaws, not the way bone crunches but the crunch you hear when you accidentally bite the inside of your cheek, just before the miserable pain begins.

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Her life slowed and narrowed to this one moment. I’ll never see Lavinia again, but not because she will die this night.

Flailing in the dark space between life and undeath, she looked for some loophole, some plot twist, some way out.

He was not only draining her. As he drank, something actively evil flowed in, something hateful but achingly exciting as well.

Through her dimming vision (she still was determined to stare down the evil) she saw blood on his neck, welling darkly from a gash which hadn’t been there a moment before.

The itching, allergic pleasure that was also an ache spread through her neck and face and breast, grew stronger.

She understood in this fading moment that Lavinia had bitten her while she slept, had bitten her many times. Almost certainly without knowing it.

She, Sally, now carried a healthy serving of vampire essence. Enough so that – so that when she absorbed the kid’s story, she slipped into daytime paralysis, helpless to move until the sun went down.

But the sun was now down, it had to be. And if so…

She reached up with hands of steel and smacked Jesse aside as if he’d been made of crumpled paper.

The air seemed to hiss on every side.

She sat up in a quick fluid movement and darted her eyes around, taking in too many details at once.

Walter was gone. Was that good or bad? From the crypt below came a dry scraping that set her skin crawling.

Jesse lay in the thickening gloom, his head at a bad angle. His fingertips drummed as he struggled with something.

And in the thick vegetation, the kid still lay, broadcasting his message of hopelessness and despair.

Ignoring the crawling evil below, Sally did the only thing she could think of, the thing the voice commanded her to do.

Feeling around, she scooped up a blackened bit of fractured marble, pushed herself upright, and staggered toward where poor miserable Rich lay stewing and fretting and dreaming.

This is too easy. No way will it be allowed to work!