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“Stop that silliness! She’s hurt!”

Bernadette’s good heart won out over her fear. She threw off the blanket, revealing a faded-blue, ankle-length flannel nightgown that swirled just above the floppy slippers she wore. Together they dragged Mary Margaret inside. Bernadette closed and relocked the door immediately.

“Call 911!” Carole told her.

Bernadette hurried down the hall to the phone.

Mary Margaret lay moaning on the foyer tiles, clutching her bleeding abdomen. Carole saw a piece of metal, coated with rust and blood, protruding from the area of her navel. From the fecal smell of the gore Carole guessed that her intestines had been pierced.

“Oh, you poor child!” Carole knelt beside her and cradled her head in her lap. She arranged Bernadette’s blanket over Mary Margaret’s trembling body. “Who did this to you?”

“Accident,” Mary Margaret gasped. Real tears had run her black eye makeup over her tattooed tears. “I was running … fell.”

“Running from what?”

“From them. God … terrible. We searched for them, Carmilla’s Lords of the Night. Just after sundown we found one. Looked just like we always knew he would … you know, tall and regal and graceful and seductive and cool. Standing by one of those big trailers that came through town. My friends approached him but I sorta stayed back. Wasn’t too sure I was really into having my blood sucked. But Carmilla goes right up to him, pulling off her top and baring her throat, offering herself to him.”

Mary Margaret coughed and groaned as a spasm of pain shook her.

“Don’t talk,” Carole said. “Save your strength.”

“No,” she said in a weaker voice when it eased. “You got to know. This Lord guy just smiles at Carmilla, then he signals his helpers who pull open the back doors of the trailer.” Mary Margaret sobbed. “Horrible! Truck’s filled with these … things! Look human but they’re dirty and naked and act like beasts. They like pour out the truck and right off a bunch of them jump Carmilla. They start biting and ripping at her throat. I see her go down and hear her screaming and I start backing up. My other friends try to run but they’re pulled down too. And then I see one of the things hold up Carmilla’s head and hear the Lord guy say, ‘That’s right, children. Take their heads. Always take their heads. There are enough of us now.’ And that’s when I turned and ran. I was running through a vacant lot when I fell on … this.”

Bernadette rushed back into the foyer. Her face was drawn with fear. “Nine-one-one doesn’t answer! I can’t raise anyone!”

“They’re all over town,” Mary Margaret said after another spasm of coughing. Carole could barely hear her. She touched her throat—so cold. “They set fires and attack the cops and firemen when they arrive. Their human helpers break into houses and drive the people outside, where they’re attacked. And after the things drain the blood, they rip the heads off.”

“Dear God, why?” Bernadette said, crouching beside Carole.

“My guess … don’t want any more vampires. Maybe only so much blood to go around and—”

She moaned with another spasm, then lay still. Carole patted her cheeks and called her name, but Mary Margaret Flanagan’s dull, staring eyes told it all.

“Is she … ?” Bernadette said.

Carole nodded as tears filled her eyes. You poor misguided child, she thought, closing Mary Margaret’s eyelids.

“She’s died in sin,” Bernadette said. “She needs anointing immediately! I’ll get Father.”

“No, Bern,” Carole said. “Father Palmeri won’t come.”

“Of course he will. He’s a priest and this poor lost soul needs him.”

“Trust me. He won’t leave that church basement for anything.”

“But he must!” she said, almost childishly, her voice rising. “He’s a priest.”

“Just be calm, Bernadette, and we’ll pray for her ourselves.”

“We can’t do what a priest can do,” she said, springing to her feet. “It’s not the same.”

“Where are you going?” Carole said.

“To … to get a robe. It’s cold.”

My poor, dear, frightened Bernadette, Carole thought as she watched her scurry