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twin punctures in Ryan’s neck, wounds like the dead girl’s, struggling to stanch the bleeding. In half a minute, the makeshift compress was red and sodden. The flow of blood wouldn’t slow.
    Forbes awkwardly used his left hand to switch on his radio. Static crackled. “This is Forbes,” he said. “I have an officer down. Repeat, Officer Ryan is down. We’re in the manatee exhibit. Get an ambulance.”
    “Understood,” the tinny voice of the dispatcher replied. “Help is on the way.”
    After that, the minutes crawled by. Despite Forbes’ best efforts, Ryan kept bleeding. Every few seconds, Forbes looked over his shoulder or glanced at his pistol to make sure it was still lying where he’d put it.
    The murderer heard me radio for help, Forbes told himself. So he must have run away by now. I'm not in danger anymore. But he was having trouble believing it. Perhaps the phantom he’d been chasing wasn’t afraid of a new contingent of cops. After all, the bastard hadn’t had any trouble neutralizing the first wave.
    Forbes looked around again. No one was behind him. Panting as if he’d run a marathon, his eyes stinging with unshed tears, he returned his attention to the dying Ryan. When he lifted his gaze again, only a moment later, he saw a smear of reflection on the aquarium window before him. It was barely visible, but seemed to possess a human shape.
    Terrified, Forbes snatched for his gun. At the same instant, powerful hands grabbed him, jerked him to his feet, and thrust him toward the glass. With a burst of pain, his forehead slammed against the window. His shooting hand clenched convulsively, and the automatic blazed. Somewhere in the room, glass shattered and water gushed.
    Forbes’ assailant yanked him back from the window and pulled him against his body. A powerful arm wrapped itself around the policeman’s chest and fresh pain ripped into his throat. His wife’s face shone before Forbes’ inner eye; then the world went black.
    ♦
    Pallid and slender, her waist-length raven hair seeming to shine even now that the moon had set, the vampire paced along the eight-foot stucco wall, psychically sensing what lay on the other side. Her diaphanous white gown, her only garment, rippled in the night breeze, and the cool, dewy grass kissed her feet.
    After a minute an image of guard dogs, stocky black animals with cropped tails and ears, entered her mind. Despite her anxieties, she smiled for an instant. She’d always found animals even easier to manage than she did humans. She stepped away from the wall and then bounded over it, noticing as she did so the alarm strip embedded in the top of the barrier.
    She landed lightly, her lovely, inhumanly powerful legs soaking up the shock of impact. Before her extended a broad expanse of exquisitely manicured lawn, its flower beds planted with red and yellow roses and orange hibiscus with magenta eyes. To her sight, the colors shone as brightly by night as they would by daylight, and she could smell the sweet scent of the rose petals from fifty feet away.
    Her sense of urgency notwithstanding, the loveliness of the grounds tugged at her, tempting her to linger. She no longer thought of herself as a Toreador. She’d long ago grown beyond such categorizations to become a singular entity. But she’d been reborn into undeath a Toreador, and her identity was still defined by the bloodline’s fascination with art and beauty.
    Shaking off the bewitching spell of the verdure, she walked toward the darkened mansion standing at the center of the grounds. A horned owl, a fellow night hunter, swooped over her head. Then three snarling hounds slunk out of the shadows.
    She smiled at them and spread her arms. I love you, she thought, and I want you to love me too.
    The animals stopped growling. One of them whined, as if ashamed of its truculent behavior. Their tails began to wag. She knelt and they ran to her, nuzzling, licking, lolling on their backs so she could tickle their