A/N As usual, no copyright infringement is intended, although most of these characters are mine.

Chapter Three

Night passed as Eric and Carly held each other on the couch, their bodies resting together, their hands joined together.

"It will be dawn soon," Carly spoke, squeezing Eric's hand as she did. "Don't you need to get home."

"I can rest here. No windows." Eric pushed a stray hair out of Carly's face. "Can you stay with me? Or do you need to go back to your house?"

"I don't know what to do." Carly leaned back and stretched. "I don't even know what day it is. I should probably go home, change, and go into work for a little while."

Eric checked his watch. "It's Wednesday. Astonishing, isn't it? It feels like an eternity, so much has happened, but it has a week."

"We've touched it, though, haven't we? Eternity?" Carly caressed Eric's face before continuing. "I don't know why it makes me feel so sad, when I've felt such ecstasy. Part of me wishes we could just surrender to it, but it feels like we'd be cheating to be in that state constantly, like we'd be running away from our responsibilities."

Drawing her into a close embrace, Eric whispered, "We do have responsibilities. Yours are more cosmic than mine, Carly, but I feel that something weighty has been left to us. I don't quite know what it is, but we have obligations now that will change our lives dramatically." A faint glimmer crossed his eyes, and his teeth popped out. "But I will continue to hunger for you, Carly."

"Nothing beats the sex addiction, does it, viking?" Carly laughed and licked at his fangs until he purred. "Is your car outside?"

"I think so," Eric replied. "I was in my travel coffin when we went to the airport, and I'd flown home from your house."

Carly smiled, "Well, give me your keys, so I can drive your hot rod."

"Mmm," Eric smiled, "any time at all."

After a languorous and drawn out good-bye, Carly left the club, locking up behind her and taking Eric's car. Since it was so early, she had more than enough time to drive home, shower, and head to work.

As she drove through Shreveport, she attended to the changes in her senses and her reaction times. Her field of vision seemed larger and sharper, but she felt less overwhelmed than she usually did behind the wheel, although the years in Albuquerque had cured her of being a nervous driving. She thought back to rush-hour traffic up Central Avenue on a Friday afternoon, to college students pouring out of the university parking lots, eager to get to their parties or their part-time jobs, to the cruisers in their low riders getting an early start on their weekend festivities, bouncing slowly along the road, tying up what little traffic moved easily. The tail-gating, drunkenness, and aggression of Albuquerque drivers inspired a resigned nihilism that she still felt even driving in more sedate circumstances.

But that nihilism had evaporated as she took in whole 180 degree vistas all in one glance, replaced by a feeling of complete control. As she approached her home, she caught a glimpse of police lights in her rear-view mirror. She looked down at her speedometer, which showed she was going 85 miles an hour. "Ah, shit."

Carly slammed on the breaks and pulled over immediately. She had no idea where Eric kept the registration—or if he kept registration in the car. Within seconds, she also realized she had no purse, no driver's license, no identification at all, and she couldn't recall where she'd left it.

Turning off the car, putting her hands on the steering wheel in plain sight, Carly kept her eyes pointed ahead, periodically stealing a view in the left hand mirror. She saw the patrolman move slowly along the driver's side of the car, inching toward her door with his hand on his gun.

Carly muttered under her breath, "Seriously?"

The patrolman leaned down to look in the open window. "License, registration, and insurance, ma'am."

Carly smiled at the officer brightly. "Sir, I think the registration is in the glove box. This is my boyfriend's car."

"Then let's start with your license."

"Well," she giggled, "that's a problem. I can't remember where I left my purse last night. I'm just trying to get home now."

The officer pulled out a ticket pad. "You know that it's against the law in Louisiana to drive without your license."

"Yes, sir." Carly smiled again, more broadly this time. "I understand that I will be ticketed, but please be assured that I have a Louisiana driver's license in good standing. Would it be okay if I gave you my name? At least then you could see that I don't have any warrants out for my arrest?"

The officer remained unresponsive. "Let's go with registration and insurance, slowly."

Carly reached for the glove box as instructed and pulled the door open. When she opened the box, she sighed with relief that the only contents of the box were the manual and a ridiculously conventional insurance holder, which showed the car registered to "Northman Enterprises, LLC, Shreveport, Louisiana."

With the insurance and registration in hand, Carly spoke to the patrolman. "I guess my boyfriend has it registered under his company's name.

The officer inspected the registration and insurance, took down some information, and then gave it back to her. "Can you get out of the vehicle, ma'am?"

Startled, Carly responded, "Why?"

"Standard procedure, ma'am." As he backed away from her door, he placed his hand on his gun holster once again.

Carly unbuckled her seat-belt and opened the car door entirely before she got out. "My boyfriend's not available right now, but I think I could reach one of his associates, although I don't have my cellphone either."

"I just need you to come stand behind the car, ma'am."

Following his instructions, and remaining silent, Carly moved to the back of the car, listening in to his thoughts as she took the steps.

Can't take anything for granted with that the dead woman at the gas station last night, then those girls turning up drugged at that vampire club, and Detective Andrews looking for that artist he can't track down. Don't know what the hell's come over this town. Audibly, he asked, "Please open the trunk."

After hearing Detective Andrews's name in the patrolman's thoughts, Carly had some hope she could get through this without being frisked (the best scenario) or arrested (the worst). "Sure." She clicked open the trunk. "I hate to bring this up, since I'm not one to ask for favors, but I work with the police from time to time. I'm a forensic artist with the Medical Examiner's office."

"Yeah?" He smiled suddenly. "Are you Carly Michael?"

She returned the expression with relief. "Yes. I'm sorry I'm such a dimwit and left my purse behind. I know one detective pretty well, Detective Andrews, and my boss and the district attorney can vouch for me as well."

The officer shut the trunk without looking in it and heaved a sigh. "You have no idea how worried they are about you, Miss Michael. Andrews is nearly fit to be tied."

"I've been out of town a couple of days." Carly couldn't understand why anyone would be so upset. Ellen knew she'd be gone.

"Well, I guess something's come up and they've been trying to reach you and haven't been able to get in touch."

Carly thought back to her cellphone, which she couldn't locate either—had she left it in Eric's apartment in New York? Or was it in New Orleans? Or Fangtasia? She couldn't recall any messages, and she thought that she'd used it since she'd been in the city, although she couldn't be absolutely certain. As she thought, she wished that she could put her hands on it, look it over, that she'd just left it in the trunk of Eric's car. With an overpowering and sudden certainty, she knew that was where it was, that she'd somehow summoned it there from wherever it had been.

"You know, sir, I didn't get a look in the trunk when I opened it for you. Could I open it again?"

The officer nodded to her as she clicked the button.

When it swung open, she saw her purse laid out neatly in the center of the trunk. "Look at that. I really am forgetful, huh?" Carly reached in and grabbed her purse and held it up to the officer. "I'll be damned. I guess I just am a little bit more jet-lagged than I thought I was."

"That's good news, Miss." The officer opened her door. "Check your messages, because I know Andrews wants to see you ASAP."

Carly smiled sweetly and walked back to the driver's seat, whereupon the patrolman closed the door tightly and leaned on the window frame. "Now, slow down a little, and check those messages and call before you start up again." With a tap on the frame, he strutted back to his car, got in, and radioed.

Unfortunately, Carly's phone was dead, no charge, not a glimmer, and Eric didn't have a charger in his car. Since Carly felt stirrings of hunger, she decided not to call any other things to her, since doing so clearly used whatever cosmic fuel powered her batteries.

Instead of going home, Carly drove directly to police headquarters, since she preferred not to deal with these issues over the phone. Miles Andrews had a brusque manner that too often came across as anger on the phone. When she worked with him in person, she found his affect reassuring—fatherly, vaguely humorous, competent.

After parking Eric's car as far from all the others as she could (so no one would scratch it), Carly hiked the distance to the front door, smoothed back her hair, tied it into a bun, and walked into the station with as much confidence as her crumpled outfit could convey. With any luck, it would suggest "jet-lagged traveler" rather than "oversexed bimbo" to the station personnel.

The station had a somewhat peculiar arrangement with the detective bureau accessible through a set of double doors just beyond the reception area. She didn't need permission to enter the bureau, but she did sign in at the desk, as required.

Within seconds of her entry, Miles Andrews recognized her and took a running jog toward her. "Where the hell have you been?"

Irritated that he somehow thought that she needed to be on call, Carly brought out her cellphone and shook it gently in front of him. "Dead phone. Sorry."

Andrews huffed and responded in kind, pointing at an outlet. "Charger?" Shaking off his frustration, Andrews finally smiled and said, "I'm sorry, it's just been a helluva couple of days. Must be the full moon or something, because we've had all hell break loose around here."

"I'm not usually on call for fresh bodies, Miles. Why were you trying to find me?"

He grabbed her arm gently and pulled her into a conference room, shutting the door behind him. "To be honest, it was that vampire of yours I was really looking for, since I guessed he'd be with you. I couldn't get anything out of those women at the club. During the day this ditzy bitty who could barely follow a sentence answered the phone, and at night some Elvira brushed me off without even a howdy-do."

Ginger and Pam-Carly recognized immediately the two obstacles he'd encountered in trying to reach Eric. "I thought you had his cellphone number?"

"I do, but I was getting the same response from it as yours. It was all scrambled up, with these weird echoes and buzzing. I left one message, I think, but I couldn't tell. It sounded like I was talking in a cave, and then there were all these beeps."

"When did you call?"

Andrews recorded his every move on a pad he kept in his breast pocket, which he pulled out and consulted. As soon as he started going through the times, Carly knew that he'd tried to reach them when they'd been "in transit"-when she'd sent them from one place to another through "her direct route." Who knows, she thought to herself, whether the phones even existed at that point? They might have been atoms scattered through a worm hole or distributed between dimensions.

"Well, we were in New York then," she lied, since she'd been in New York, over the Appalachians, in Turkey, in Sweden, beneath an apple tree in New Jersey, back in New York, and on her way to Shreveport. In between those locations, the two of them had been in a state of "in-between-ness" she could never hope to explain to anyone. "Maybe there was some electrical interference? Or our phones were roaming and not getting a signal properly?"

"No matter now, since we've got you two back in town. Do you think you could let him know I need him as soon as he's up tonight?" Andrews looked nearly frantic.

"Sure," Carly agreed without hesitation. "But can I do anything in the meantime?"

Andrews threw up his hands. "Who knows? I've got eight people dead and one crazy man locked in a cell downstairs. We're afraid to move him because he seems to be contained down there, but we know he needs medical care—he's full of glass and birdshot, and I've seen reports from all over the state of similar things, along with warnings about motorcycle gangs of three and four, who've been breaking into houses—vampires' houses—and attacking them. A couple of the vampires were able to hold 'em off. One sweet old gal near the Arkansas border heard them attacking her vampire neighbor and she blasted the one guy to kingdom-come with her shotgun. The others got on their bikes and took off.

"Do these bikes have Mississippi plates?"

"The one they recovered does." Andrews narrowed his eyes at her. "How did you know that? What's going on here, Carly?"

She'd agreed long ago that she'd act as Eric's intermediary whenever she could, but he'd demanded that she didn't divulge any secrets about vampires to humans. "Did you see the thing on CNN about Heinrich Himmler?"

The detective's eyes widened suddenly. "This has got something to do with him?" Andrews brushed his hand over his head.

"Indirectly, I think. Mississippi's vampires have had a power struggle because one of them was distributing his blood. I think that these might be addicts who found their supplies dried up."

Andrews rubbed his face with his palms. "Sounds like a bad B movie—cranked up Wild Ones go crazy over vampire blood."

"Cranked up?" Carly asked for clarification.

Andrews tried to explain. "Everything I've heard suggests these guys are strong—nearly vampire strong. The poor woman we found at the station had her arm ripped off, and it looks like they've got dogs with them too."

The realization hit Carly squarely in the stomach and she felt nausea explode like a grenade from her belly outward. "Dogs? She was bitten?"

"Eaten, damnit!" Andrews stretched his back. "I haven't seen anything so disgusting in a really long time. Even that crazy pharmacist left a less disgusting crime scene. We know that group isn't traveling on motorcycles, at least, but we don't have any idea about their vehicle. The station was trashed, so we don't have video either. Our video guys think they might be able to put a little of the surveillance tapes back together, but they found them shredded."

The visions from Lister's mind came back to Carly unsolicited and she wanted desperately to get out of the station—to get home or to work—so that she could forget the rape and cannibalism. Even though Lister had been in his wolf form when he tore into the poor woman's body, Carly still categorized it as cannibalism. Perhaps, within their society, werewolves made a distinction, but she couldn't possibly see how they could sustain that belief system. Of course, she never understood cannibalism in humans or other primates.

Shaking off these thoughts, Carly asked, "Why do you want Eric's help? Does he need to warn other vampires about the potential for attack?"

"For one, but we don't really know what we'll do with them once we get hold of them, especially if they're as strong as the guy downstairs."

Downstairs. Part of her wanted to ask if she could see the man, see within him, provide Andrews with additional leads that could help grab these forty or fifty werewolves before their rampage took more lives. Closing her eyes, swallowing to rally her courage, Carly asked, "Do you want me to talk to him?"

"Yes," Andrews nodded, "but honestly I don't know if you should do it without Northman. From what I've heard about vampires through the grapevine now, I'm guessing Northman could tear this guy's head off. As it stands, he's pumped full of Haldol, with glass embedded in his back and birdshot in his belly, and he's still been shaking the cage like King Kong."

They would have to wait for nine hours, at least, before Eric could be here with her. She asked herself if it was worth the risk?

"Well," Carly paused. "Could you come down there with me?"

"Are you willing?" Andrews looked hopeful.

"Guardedly." Carly rubbed her stomach again and then said, "Then let's get it over with. Maybe he'll be tired."

As they went downstairs to the holding cells, used primarily for detaining suspects prior to transfer to the county jail, Andrews gave Carly the little information they had on the thug. The man, who called himself Mike Hamilton, carried a Florida driver's license that appeared to be stolen or a forgery. He'd been apprehended after attacking a vampire at a strip mall on the edge of the Shreveport city limits. According to Andrews, the vampire had thrown the man fifty feet through the front window of a convenience store. When the assailant threatened the convenience store clerk, the clerk unloaded his shotgun into him. The vampire pushed a shelf over onto the man and held him down until eight officers dragged him into a transport and to the station.

"Do you know who the vampire was?" Carly asked.

"She refused to give her name, and none of the officers felt like arguing with her. They said she was barely five feet tall but scary as hell."

Carly knew immediately it had to be Thalia. "This is a stupid question, but why didn't she just kill him?"

"She told the officers that there were too many people around." Detective Andrews shrugged. "I don't think she would have hesitated if it hadn't been so busy. She'd have saved the city some trouble. Three of the officers wound up in the ER."

When Carly and Miles passed through the locked metal door, Carly saw a line of four holding cells. Only two were occupied. One, on the end, had three catatonic teenagers in it, who Carly felt grateful, glimmered with the energy that stayed behind after a human death. With her attention focused on them for just a moment, Carly consumed the energy and fortified herself with it for the confrontation.

The werewolf, still beating on the walls and screaming even hours after his apprehension, was flanked by empty cells on either side. Carly saw that he'd bent the heavy gauge wire that kept prisoners from reaching through the bars into the other cells. A fine layer of masonry dust covered the floor at the front of the cell, and Carly observed the deteriorating plaster on the anchors in the ceiling. If he continued at this same level of intensity, he might actually break out of the cell, she thought.

"And he's injured?" Carly knew the answer, but she wanted to express her amazement somehow.

Andrews nodded seriously. "We have no idea of what he's hopped up on, but it hasn't worn off, even after ten hours. I'm guessing it's a combination of speed and vampire blood."

The werewolf slammed into the bars. "What are you lookin' at, vampire bitch?"

Carly looked around the holding area and realized that there were no windows and no clocks. If she hadn't just come from outside, she would have no way of knowing that it was daylight outside.

"I guess I need to get more sun," Carly joked with the detective, trying to avoid any uncomfortable questions.

"You want to fucking burn, whore? Come over here," the werewolf salivated, "so I can get a bite of you. I'm hungry."

Andrews put his hand on Carly's elbow. "You're not that pale, Carly. Why does he think you're a vampire?"

"Can't you smell the stink, asshole? She stinks like a vampire, so she's a fucking fanger." The wolf grabbed his crotch and growled, "Get over here and give me a taste."

"I don't think so, Mike." As she answered the impertinent werewolf, Carly tried to tune in to the wavelength of his frantic mind. It was moving fast, incoherently, she could hear nothing but a loud ringing. Nevertheless, she caught a few glimpses that were enough to shake her. Russell slashing across his throat, allowing blood to pour into waiting mouths; men shaking and quivering as they transformed into wolves, wolves so strong they were able to rip deer and men apart in seconds.

"Is Mike your real name?" The visions confirmed the wolf's membership in Russell's pack, but offered no explanation for his presence in Shreveport. Carly needed more information, starting with the beast's name.

The wolf laughed, then clutched at his ribs and struggled to take a breath. "You want to register for china, fanger?"

Carly laughed loudly at the wolf. "No, I'm spoken for, Mike. But is that your name?"

"Yeah, bitch." The wolf backed up from the front of the cell, groaning, and walked back to the cement block wall.

Carly caught another flash, an image of a Jacksonville, Florida, road sign. "How long has it been since you've been in Jacksonville?"

The werewolf turned toward her and growled, before he took a running leap at the bars. More plaster fell from the ceiling. Andrews drew back from the bars and grabbed at Carly's shoulder, but she shrugged him off and moved toward the bars.

"Why do you need a fake Florida ID, Mike?" Carly decided to capitalize on his assumption that she was a vampire and push a glamour onto him. Since she could glamour vampires, she anticipated no problem with a werewolf.

Calming slightly under her power, the werewolf took a deep breath and said, "I got a couple names. Hamilton's my mom's name. I got warrants under my real name."

"What is your real last name, Mike?" Her voice calm, Carly continued to subdue the werewolf.

"Edmunds," he whispered. "I'm Mike Edmunds."

"Did you come to Louisiana alone, Mike?"

"No," Mike shook his head. "I came here with my buddies, Cooter and Jedd. I was waiting for them to come back from a job, but they never come back."

Andrews asked, "Where did you come from?"

Mike stood silently, hanging off the front grill of the cell. Carly had to direct Mike to answer.

"Jackson, Mississippi." The werewolf groaned slightly and shifted his weight to the other leg, still hanging off the bars. "I'm in the King's pack."

"Is that the name of their gang?" Andrews's reflected his confusion. "Who's this king?"

"Is Russell your master?" Carly intensified the glamour, trying to control the wolf before he divulged something she couldn't explain to the detective.

The wolf shuddered and then grunted, "Yeah, I serve him." After another spasm, the wolf started vomiting up a noxious stream of food and blood.

Andrews jumped in front of Carly and pushed her against the back wall so they could escape the spray. "God damn it! We'll have to get him to the hospital. He must have internal injuries."

With a burst of strength, the wolf slammed against the bars, knocking them free from their ceiling anchors. "You're not getting out of here, pig." The wolf growled, and Andrews ran for the exit, dragging Carly behind him. With the ceiling anchors dislodged, the door to the cell proved a minor obstacle to the beast who climbed over it as if it were a chain-link fence. The other inmates backed against the far wall, too frightened to try to secure their own escape.

Andrews and Carly made it out the exit of the holding area before Mike reached them, but not before he slammed himself against the exit and pushed through into the offices outside the detention cells.

Carly saw all of the action in slow motion. She faced Mike, even though she'd fallen backward as Andrews had pulled her through the door. The crazed wolf scowled and screamed at the police officers, who retreated to the armory as quickly as they could to retrieve their weapons. When Mike spotted Carly on her ass, hands behind her, he laughed and jumped toward her to attack.

Detective Andrews tried to cover her, to shield her from attack, but she pushed him away, confident that she could deal with the threat herself.

Mike flattened himself against her and taunted her. "Give me a taste, vamp bitch!" He bared his teeth and lunged toward her neck, but not before Carly raised her hands to push against his chest. Aware that ten police officers were watching her and expecting the wolf to tear her throat out, Carly focused her mind and visualized current pulsing through her hands, invisible lightening penetrating the wolf's chest and silencing his heart. The wolf sputtered, spat up more blood, and collapsed on top of her.

She pushed the werewolf off her, scrambled to standing, and took in the gory mess that covered her shirt and pants. "Shit."

A crew of police officers rushed to the wolf and pulled him away from her and took his pulse. Feeling none, the diagnosing officer, a young man only on the force for a year and scared to death, said authoritatively, "Nothing. He's dead, detective."

"Of course he is," Carly muttered.

"What?"

Andrews scowled, and Carly realized she'd been too flippant.

"I mean," she corrected, "why would he live long enough to be helpful."