The excited crowd whispered as Lavinia surged higher, sunlight gleaming on her olive skin. Nobody else heard the scream which sliced to a knife edge and cut off like a breath held inhaled.

Sally, heart hammering, looked at faces. The bluff older cop (he looked like a Greyhound driver who’d once slammed Sally’s bag disgustedly at her) licked his lips. The younger cop with the neat moustache looked awed and happy. The rainbow hippy had tears in her eyes. The mother held her little boy up and pointing, whispering in his ear. The TV crews filmed with excited detachment, wanting to catch the footage of the century without looking like idiots.

Jeremy’s eyes followed Lavinia, looking like the eyes of movie gunmen. Had that moan of horror come from him? But he was too far away; it had been loud.

And there had been something familiar about it which had nothing to do with Jeremy. Where had she heard it before?

She kept scanning faces, waiting for disaster to strike.

♦

Charity Claire, brimming with tenderness, held her little vampire boy as he watched everything with huge eyes. His pudgy arms around her neck (he was long past being paralyzed in the daytime) made her heart ache in a painfully sweet way and whenever he nestled his cheek against her breastbone she stroked his neatly combed hair and planted a kiss on his crown. He’d said his name was Thomas but she suspected it wasn’t and that he just loved Thomas the Tank Engine.

She’d wanted to cover his eyes when Lavinia stripped. But she trusted the people on stage. Whatever they were doing, the boy must be allowed to see. Anyway, she had slept with two men and heard them making love behind her. Why be prudish about nudity just because her mother used to embarrass the life out of her prancing around naked with purple nails, preparing for a different man each night of the week?

Still, she was relieved to see Tommy giggling as Lavinia undulated. She heard the silver-haired woman with the rainbow cap murmur, “Right on, sister,” and wished her own face wasn’t burning. But when Lavinia flew, she gasped with everyone and watched with her mouth hanging open.

“Dat wady fwying, Aunt Chatty,” Tommy squealed, pointing. “Totawwy awesome!”

She had told him to call her Aunt Charity because she honorably intended to find his birth family when he could remember who they were. Usually she felt the pang of loss to come when he called her that. But this time excitement overrode everything. “Yes, my little man, she is,” she whispered. “And you’re like her: you can fly too!”

He considered that, then said brightly, “Can I fwy wight now?”

Face flaming again, she thought of him naked with a pencil-sized erection, moving in that flagrant way. Oh dear God, what do I do?

“Not right now, dear,” she temporized. “It’s her turn. Another time it will be your turn.”

He accepted that and turned his face to the sky again. Thank goodness.

♦

Jeremy Paxton had been numb for weeks.

He’d thought his goal was to get the vampires off the earth. He’d thought he had a path to that goal: convince the world to say together, “Vampires, you’re not welcome in our home.”

He loved Sister Amanda and leaned on her motherly presence more than he’d imagined. Their small group would have grown, they would have persuaded first a city, then a country and then the world.

But then she had appeared, the vampire who could think and plan like that vampire. “Send him out to us and we will let you live.” He still remembered that well-fed face that had smiled and given him a thumbs up when he had, maybe, pushed his little brother out the front door.

And the new vampire’s own sister had given him permission to kill her.

Couldn’t she see that he wanted permission to let her live?

Then Mr. Donald had made the decision for him and the one vampire who might have helped him find that vampire lay on her back with a stake erupting from her chest. As Sister Amanda closed the anguished eyes and smoothed the sad little face, a wave of white fury had nearly blasted Jeremy’s mind apart. He could barely remember what he had done next.

Now he watched with helpless outrage as the crowd applauded a vampire.

Lonely, horny, with crimson fantasies of what two lesbians did together surging just below the surface, Jeremy hated himself for ogling the woman gasping in midair, pink flashing between her olive thighs. Sister Amanda was tolerant of cuss words but she wouldn’t approve of this if she were here.

He hadn’t answered her calls for weeks, embarrassed at what he’d done. If she could see this, would she come back to his side? He’d told her the truth that he had wanted his brother to die and she’d said his feelings were understandable. If she was on their side, if people clapped for a vampire…

Then he was the one outside, homeless in the dark.

♦

Sally watched Lavinia start down. It still took effort but Lavinia had learned to click the mental switch which let her surrender to gravity while still in ecstasy. She landed with solid grace. Sally walked forward and put the kimono over her shoulders.

The crowd clapped hard. That was good but were they just clapping for a Vegas magic show? She looked back at Charla and surprised approval on her face. Sally was annoyed that it warmed her to her core. Cautiously she smiled at Charla, who nodded with an oddly speculative look as she took the microphone.

Sally took Lavinia’s hand again and Lavinia, breathing deeply, stroked Sally’s hand sensually. Charla frowned at them and instantly Sally wanted to kick her. The woman was so exasperating!

But Charla did as they’d planned, wound down the crowd, vouched for Sally and Lavinia, stressed that what they’d seen was no trick and said, “That’s all for now, folks. Chew on that and we’ll have another announcement in a week.”

The next announcement would be about inviting vampires into their homes.

As they talked to reporters and excited people, Sally found herself trying to shield Lavinia from every direction at once. “Will you chill out, babe?” Lavinia finally whispered and Charla rolled her eyes so visibly that a couple of reporters exchanged glances.

Sally seethed as Charla moved into the role Sally wanted to fill, cracking jokes to make up for Lavinia’s bluntness and prompting Lavinia to fill in gaps in her explanations. But Lavinia’s hand in Sally’s was warm and solid.

Chilled, she saw Jeremy watching Lavinia with his haunted eyes. He still wore his shirt with the boot kicking a vampire into space and the big red letters that said, “The Earth is our home. Blast off, vampires.”

His fist curled as though he held a wooden stake.