thin gold chain he wears around his throat. Is it eating the chain? Good God, David! The 
fangs.
  
  Why is my voice dried up inside me? Am I even there in the mangrove forest? My body 
vibrates as I struggle to move, dull moans coming from behind my sealed lips, and each 
moan taxes every fiber of my being. David, beware!
  
  And then I see that he is down on one knee, with the long shiny rifle cocked against 
his shoulder. And the giant cat is still yards away, bearing down on him. On and on it 
rushes, until the crack of the gun stops it in its tracks, and over it goes as the gun 
roars once again, its yellow eyes full of rage, its paws crossed as they push in one last 
final breath at the soft earth.
  
  I wake.
  
  What does this dream mean-that my mortal friend is in danger? Or simply that his 
genetic clock has ticked to a stop. For a man of seventy-four years, death can come at 
any instant.
  
  Do I ever think of David that I do not think of death?
  
  David, where are you?
  
  Fee, Fie, Fo, Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.
  
  "I want you to ask me for the Dark Gift," I'd said to him when first we met. "I may not 
give it to you. But I want you to ask."
  
  He never had. He never would. And now I loved him. I saw him soon after the dream. I 
had to. But I could not forget the dream and perhaps it did come to me more than once in 
the deep sleep of my daylight hours when I am stone cold and helpless under literal cover 
of darkness.
  
  All right, you have the dreams now.
  
  But picture the winter snow in France one more time, if you would, piling about the 
castle walls, and a young male mortal asleep on his bed of hay, in the light of the fire, 
with his hunting dogs beside him. This had become the image of my lost human life, more 
truly than any remembrance of the boulevard theatre in Paris, where before the Revolution 
I'd been so very happy as a young actor.
  
  Now we are truly ready to begin. Let's turn the page, shall we?
  
  THE TALE OF THE BODY THIEF
  ONE
  
  MIAMI-the vampires' city. This is South Beach at sunset, in the luxurious warmth of the 
winterless winter, clean and thriving and drenched in electric light, the gentle breeze 
moving in from the placid sea, across the dark margin of cream-colored sand, to cool the 
smooth broad pavements full of happy mortal children.
  
  Sweet the parade of fashionable young men displaying their cultured muscles with 
touching vulgarity, of young women so proud of their streamlined and seemingly sexless 
modern limbs, amid the soft urgent roar of traffic and human voices.
  
  Old stucco hostelries, once the middling shelters of the aged, were now reborn in smart 
pastel colors, sporting their new names in elegant neon script. Candles flickered on the 
white-draped tables of the open-porch restaurants. Big shiny American cars pushed their 
way slowly along the avenue, as drivers and passengers viewed the dazzling human parade, 
lazy pedestrians here and there blocking the thoroughfare.
  
  On the distant horizon the great white clouds were mountains beneath a roofless and 
star-filled heaven. Ah, it never failed to take my breath away-this southern sky filled 
with azure light and drowsy relentless movement.
  
  To the north rose the towers of new Miami Beach in all their splendour. To the south 
and to the west, the dazzling steel skyscrapers of the downtown city with its high 
roaring freeways and busy cruise-ship docks. Small pleasure boats sped along the 
sparkling waters of the myriad urban canals.
  
  In the quiet immaculate gardens of Coral Gables, countless lamps illuminated the 
handsome sprawling villas with their red-tiled roofs, and swimming pools shimmering with 
turquoise light. Ghosts walked in the grand and darkened rooms of the Biltmore. The 
massive mangrove trees threw out their primitive limbs to cover the broad and carefully 
tended streets.
  
  In Coconut Grove, the international shoppers thronged the luxurious hotels and 
fashionable malls. Couples embraced on the high balconies of their glass-walled 
condominiums, silhouettes gazing out over the serene waters of the bay. Cars sped along 
the busy roads past the ever-dancing palms and delicate rain trees, past the squat 
concrete mansions draped with red and purple bougainvillea, behind their fancy iron gates.
  
  All of this is Miami, city of water, city of speed, city of tropical flowers, city of 
enormous skies. It is for Miami, more than any other place, that I periodically leave my 
New Orleans home. The men and women of many nations and different colors live in the 
great dense neighborhoods of Miami. One hears Yiddish, Hebrew, the languages of Spain, of 
Haiti, the dialects and accents of Latin America, of the deep south of this nation and of 
the far north. There is menace beneath the shining surface of Miami, there is desperation 
and a throbbing greed; there is the deep steady pulse of a great capital-the tow grinding 
energy, the endless risk.
  
  It's never really dark in Miami. It's never really quiet.
  
  It is the perfect city for the vampire; and it never fails to yield to me a mortal 
killer-some twisted, sinister morsel who will give up to me a dozen of his own murders as 
I drain his memory banks and his blood.
  
  But tonight it was the Big-Game Hunt, the unseasonal Easter feast after a Lent of 
starvation-the pursuit of one of those splendid human trophies whose gruesome modus 
operandi reads for pages in the computer files of mortal law enforcement agencies, a