Outside, Artemis and I had a look around the house.

As frightened as I was by the prospect of this actually being a Nosferatu attack, it would make things easier in quite a few ways. As I said before, there are many different types of creature that fall under the heading of 'vampire.' Of those, Nosferatu are amongst the easiest to hunt if you get to them before they start to reproduce.

Some vampires, like the Noble Vampire, can come and go almost at will and without leaving any telltale signs in their wake. But they're easy to identify because of the two delicate puncture wounds they leave on their victims' throats. Also, as a generality, their victims are willing and usually well looked-after by the vampires themselves.

Others are outright confusing, like the east-Asian Jiang-shii (literally, "Stiff corpse"), which hops rather than walks because of its physical nature. It is very, very dead. And would probably be classified as a zombie except that it doesn't devour its victim's flesh - instead, like other vampires, it drains vital life essence; in this case, the victim's Qi. I'll leave those to the Taoist priests who are best equipped to control and destroy them, and welcome to them.

Two breeds of vampire from the area around Greater Britannia, Gaul, Germania and Romania are incorporeal; that is, they're spiritual entities rather than physical ones. Like the Jiang-shii, they drain life essence rather than blood, and can be nearly impossible to track if you don't catch them while feeding.

You get the idea. There are almost as many different types of vampire as there are countries in the world. I'm personally of the opinion that they're all very different species of creatures that have been lumped together due to having a few similar traits. It'd be like saying that both dolphins and lobsters are fish because they live in the ocean.

Anyway, I say that the Nosferatu is amongst the easiest to track and kill for several reasons. Firstly, it is - like the Noble Vampire and Jiang-shii - a physical creature. But unlike the Noble Vampire, it cannot change shape or use magic, which means that it leaves obvious tracks and traces wherever it goes to hunt.

Secondly, it's behaviors are similar in many ways to a simple haunting. Unless starving, it will try to return to the places it knew in life, and may even try to follow patterns it followed in life. This makes it at the very least somewhat predictable - if you can learn where it lived and what its schedule was like in life, you can often waylay it.

Unless it's starving, which only happens when there's a lot of them in a relatively small area. Then you get the Black Plague. Which is why it's best to deal with them quickly.

Thirdly, and this relates to their behavioral patterns, they're not very creative and their intelligence fades pretty quickly. They know everything they knew in life, at least at first, and tend to stick close to their personality in life. But, as I said, it fades faster the longer they're dead; I imagine it has something to do with the fact that their brain cells are no longer replacing themselves. Be that as it may, eventually they're reduced to a high level of animal intelligence, which makes them that much easier to trap and kill. Rather like the classic zombie (there's the Z-word again), they have a base animal intelligence that drives them - hunt, feed, hide.

(Sometimes I wonder why Nosferatu weren't classified as a form of zombie. The only reason I can think of is that they just drink blood rather than devouring body parts.)

Finally, their vulnerabilities are well known and fairly easy to follow through on. The traditional method of killing a Nosferatu is rather spectacular: A wooden or iron stake through the heart, cut off its head, fill its mouth with wild roses (a practice I believe comes from Christianity, of all places, but it seems to be effective as a paralytic agent - perhaps an allergy of some sort), then burn both parts of the body.

Of course, realistically that would kill just about anything. But it's effective nonetheless.

Fortunately for me, they're very vulnerable to magic. Fortunately for Athena, they're also vulnerable to silver. I'd procured several silver-bladed daggers for her and for myself, as well as special ammunition for her unusual revolver.

When choosing a firearm for her, Athena and I had done quite a lot of research and spent hours discussing the merits of various manufacturers and styles of gun. After lengthy discourse, she settled on an unusual weapon designed by a small manufacturer from Brittany named LeMat. They'd been around for a little over a century as a manufacturer of very elegant and high-quality Magearms, and had recently begun to produce a larger than normal revolver with nine chambers that held .44 caliber shells. The central section of the cylinder led into a barrel below the main one and held a 16 gauge shotgun shell.

The owner of the shop we'd been in at the time had extolled the virtues of having a shotgun shell as a backup in case the larger than normal nine-round cylinder was insufficient. He had also pointed out that a shotgun shell could carry unusual payloads, and pointed us to a store that sold 6mm beads in pretty much every material imaginable.

A shotgun shell filled with silver shot. I had been told time and again that silver made bad bullets. It's a soft metal that tends to flatten under pressure, causing bullets made of it to tumble and become inaccurate after a very short distance. Here was a simple solution, and Athena liked the weight and feel of the gun - even if it did look a bit oversized on her.

All of which amounts to this: Both of us were well equipped to deal with this creature, should it appear.

Artemis, on the other hand, was at a bit of a disadvantage in this case. Don't get me wrong...no matter what you are, you do not want to tangle with a pissed-off snow leopard. She weighs about 85 pounds, and when that hits you doing about 65 kilometers per hour and turns into a blur of flailing claws and biting fangs...

'Nuff said.

But while she could tear the thing to ribbons - and while animals were immune to the Nosferatu’s bite - I wasn't sure that would do it any lasting damage. I had been taught that Nosferatu had amazing regenerative capabilities, and that simply doing massive damage was not enough. Dismembering them would inconvenience them terribly, but unless the entire body was completely destroyed - fire was best - or buried in consecrated ground using special methods, it would pull itself back together eventually.

Yuck.

"Stick close to me, Artemis," I said softly as we made our way around the side of the house, "And tell me what you find."

> she replied. Her nose was hard at work, her eyes roaming the ground around us. As we reached the rear corner of the house, she suddenly stopped and her ears flattened back against her head. >

"That's probably our target," I said dryly. "Dead creatures will do that. Which way?"

Artemis glanced up at me, then swung her head left and right, trying to follow the scent. After a moment she looked up again. >

I sighed. "Figures. Well, never mind. Come on."

We moved slowly back and forth across the back yard, being careful not to step on anything that might be a track of some sort...which turned out to be next to nothing at all. When we reached the back corner of the yard, marked by a picket fence, I sighed. "Nothing. Did you see anything, pet?"

Artemis sniffed at the corner of the fence and blew out a sigh. >

"I suppose that stands to reason. Anything watching this house would probably try to do it from the edge of the property." I folded my arms and leaned against the fence, looking up at the house. I could see Billy's window from here - I knew it was his because Athena was standing in it, watching us. She lifted her hand and I returned her wave. >

> she replied. >

> I pushed myself off the fence and looked around. >

> Artemis asked.

"Could be. Come on."

We made our way down the length of the fence to the shed that stood in the other corner. It was a smallish thing, about fifteen feet square and maybe eight or nine feet fall, and stained a pleasant rust color to blend in with the fence and the house's brick. It had a padlock on it, which was tightly shut - I double checked, giving it a couple of good tugs to make sure it wouldn't come loose.

The shed's double doors were tightly attached - I checked the hinges - and well-fitted. There was barely any gap between the doors and the frame. >

>

Artemis and I took the opportunity to make a quick circuit of the shed. We discovered a compost heap squeezed in between it and the fence, the smell of which made Artemis sneeze and rub her nose with her paw. I reached down and rubbed her ears gently.

> she said, backing away from the compost.

"That's not surprising, I suppose. I can smell it right here too." I looked at the pile thoughtfully. It wasn't a large one, certainly not large enough to hide a teenage girl.

A few minutes later Mrs. Fisher came around the corner of the house and hurried over to us carrying a key ring. "Did you find something?"

"Not yet, Mrs. Fisher," I did my best to sound reassuring. "We just want to check the shed. It seems pretty unlikely, but..."

"My husband was just in there the other day to get the lawn mower," She said, handing me the keys.

"Assuming we're dealing with a Nosferatu," I replied, trying to sound as clinical as possible; this used to be her daughter, after all, "We have to check all immediate possibilities. These creatures are abnormally good at hiding themselves away during the day. So..."

I opened the padlock and slipped it out of the hasp. Before I could open the door, Artemis interposed herself between the door and Mrs. Fisher, leaning against her and gently pushing her back.

Mrs. Fisher gave me a surprised look, and I smiled. "Artemis is more perceptive than she lets on. I doubt there'll be anything out of the ordinary here, but she's right."

"All right," she said softly, taking a few more steps back.

I took a deep breath and silently gathered the Anima I'd need to cast a quick and dirty lightning bolt, just in case. Then I opened the door.

Immediately, I realized that the shed would make a miserable hiding place for a Nosferatu. There were a pair of square windows facing one another on the side walls, making the interior of the shed well lit. One of them was even letting in a patch of late-day sunlight, which would have been anathema to the creature.

I shot a wry smile over my shoulder at Mrs. Fisher. "I should have noticed those windows."

She returned my smile tiredly. "I forget about them all the time myself, dear. I take it there's nothing here, then?"

I shook my head and began locking the shed back up. "No, it would be a terrible hiding place. Just once I'd like the obvious answer to be the right one."

She snorted a little laugh as I handed the keys back to her. "If only life were that simple."

I turned back to the house and frowned, looking up at it. No tracks in the back yard, but its scent was spread widely enough to mess with Artemis's ability to backtrack it. There was no sign of it trying to nest in the shed, and there were no other structures in the back or front it could hide in. The storm cellar's doors were tightly locked, and...

Something clicked. The front and back yards were large, but the side yards were narrow. The houses were about twenty yards apart. A superhuman leap, to be sure, but I'm pretty sure I could do it with a bit of magic. Athena might be able to do it with a running start. Artemis definitely could. And a Nosferatu, with its superhuman strength would probably be able to make that jump without too much trouble.

Which immediately tripled the borders of any search I might run. No, more than that. If it was using rooftops - if it even existed - it could be anywhere.

I suddenly had a headache.

With an exhaled sigh, I looked at Mrs. Fisher. "I think at this point the best thing we can do is keep watch over Billy tonight. With three of us watching him and the house, if something is hurting him we'll catch it and stop it."

She nodded and we started back to the house together. "Do you think it's a vampire, Miss Kinnear?" There was real fear in her voice, and I sympathized.

"I'm not completely sure yet. I'll need to examine Billy for bite marks, but that's not conclusive." I fell silent for a moment, then gave her as reassuring a smile I can manage. "We'll know for certain tonight, one way or another."

Athena gave me a slightly relieved smile as Artemis and I returned to Billy's room.

>

I smiled and gently patted her shoulder as she went to stand by the window again. > I sat down in the chair beside Billy's bed and smiled at him. "How're you feeling?"

He shrugged tiredly. "All right, I guess. Kinda tired, but not like I could sleep tired. Just..."

"Like you've got no energy?"

Billy nodded. "Yeah, that's it exactly. Your familiars are really cool."

I grinned. "Yeah they are, aren't they? I'd be lost without them."

"Athena said the same thing about you," he grinned back at me.

Athena, visible on the other side of Billy's bed, turned fully towards the window. But not before I saw her blushing. It made me laugh softly. "Well, both are true. Billy, I need to take a look at your neck."

He looked up at me with absolutely trusting, guileless eyes. "Okay."

The collar of his shirt was turned down in short order, revealing unblemished and unbroken skin on both sides of his neck.

"Huh," was all I could say.

"Am I okay?" He asked in a small voice.

I smiled and gently tousled his hair, then helped him fix the collar of his robe. "That's what we're trying to find out. I'm going to cast a few spells over you..."

"Wow, really?" He asked, sitting up a bit straighter, excitement coming into his face. "I've never seen somebody cast spells up close."

"Well, now's your chance," I replied warmly. "I'll even tell you what they do."

"Cool!"

"For example," I said, gathering the Anima to cast a diagnostic spell, "This first one is going to give me an idea of your general health." As I said it, I decided to waste a bit of energy and be flashy about it.

Billy's eyes were wide with wonder as heatless sparks of blue-white light drizzled from my fingertips as I waved my hands over his body. The sparks danced in the air less than an inch away from him as he breathed out another awed "Cool!"

What I saw made me blink in surprise. Most of the sparks of light changed from blue-white to greens and golds, colors that indicated good health, except for seven spots of pulsing red. The spots of red were aligned in a straight line down the center of his body; at the crown of his head, his forehead, his throat, the center of his chest, and then three in a tight group over his abdomen, the base of his spine, and between his legs.

"What's it mean?" He asked, his voice a mixture of wonder, curiosity and apprehension.

I smiled reassuringly. "The greens and golds indicate that you're a very healthy and ordinarily energetic young man. Which is good. The red spots are your Chakras...energy centers within your body. But they shouldn't be red, they should have stayed blue."

"So what's wrong with me?" He asked.

"Well," I temporized, thinking fast, "This gives me a few clues, but I think we're going to have to wait for tonight to be sure. Athena, Artemis and I are going to stay with you all night, so you'll be perfectly safe."

"Do you think it's my sister?"

"No." I shook my head firmly. "Actually, I'm pretty sure it's not."