Terror pushed her feet faster then she'd ever run before. When she hit the top of the hill, she launched off the edge, flying right over the head of Javier's mother, who looked up in surprise from where she still sat before the tomb's doorway.

Helena rolled and jumped up, then ran over to the old woman and pulled her to her feet. Helena dragged in breaths to warn her. "Camp...now...he's coming...kill you."

The old woman laughed and brushed off Helena's hand. "He assured me I am safe. I have been faithful, and he is grateful."

Helena vehemently shook her head, "No, he just said he will kill you last. It's a game to him. You mean nothing."

Uncertainty flicked across the old woman's face. Her eyes searched the jungle above the tomb.

She firmly pushed off Helena's hand. "No, I will stay and wait for the apu as he commanded me."

"He's not an mountain spirit! He's a vampire. And he's going to kill everyone, including you and Javier."

The old woman turned away and crossed her arms over her chest. "The apu would not lie."

"Stay and die then." Helena pulled out her walkie and pressed the button as she turned to run towards camp. "Fitzy? Javier? Come back, over."

Fitzy said, "I'm here."

"Vampire! He's a vampire, Fitz. The guy in the tomb. I just saw him. He's coming, and he's going

to kill everyone."

"Hells Bells, are you feeling okay?" Fitzy's laughter came through with his reply.

She sobbed. "You have to believe me. Please. Javier? Please Javier. He's coming."

She burst into the camp and skidded to a halt. There was no way of knowing where everyone was. Once the vamp reached camp, how fast could he move to kill people? More importantly, how were they going to defend themselves?

She forced herself to stand still and take a deep breath. She had to think clearly about what weapons they had on hand. Gasoline. They could burn him. Machetes to cut off his head. Stakes? Well she didn't have time to get a branch and carve a sharp pointy stick.

Fitzy pushed out of the command tent and waved at her with a big smile on his face that turned into one of horror when his eyes moved to the path behind her. She didn't need to turn around to know that the vampire was there.

She tore into the middle of camp at the same time Fitzy ran towards her. They collided in the middle, and Fitzy hugged her to him, his wide terrified eyes locked on the path behind her. "Helena, I never... I'm sorry... how is it... he's flipping real!"

She turned to look. The vampire stood at the head of the path, dragging Javier's mother by her arm. The old woman hung limply from his hand. He released her and she dropped directly to the ground and lay unmoving. There was no way to tell if the old woman was alive or dead.

The vampire stalked forward, fury directed at Fitzy who had a hand on Helena's shoulder. "No one touches what is mine," he snarled.

Fitzy gulped and moved to step in front of her, but she pulled him back and stepped in front of him instead. "He is my friend. If I'm supposed to be your mate or whatever, then honour my wishes that you don't hurt anyone else in this camp."

The vampire halted, amusement replaced the fury. He smiled at her, and her traitor body blossomed with warmth in the radiance of it. "Oh, my pet. You have much to learn. But I like your spirit. Let me show you how it is." Helena blinked and suddenly the vampire stood before them but now with Jake in his arms. "This one has been very trying for me. I wanted to kill him immediately for touching you, but it has been most satisfying to drain him slowly. Let him be your first lesson in how to mind me, my pet." With a vicious smile, the vampire bit Jake's neck and sucked.

Helena shrieked "No!" and launched herself forward. Fitzy yelled for her to stop and grabbed at her, but he only caught the back of her shirt and ripped part away. By the time Helena had covered the thirty feet between them, the vampire held Jake's body away from him, ready to discard him. "Barely a sip left," he said.

She leapt at him to claw his eyes out. "You bastard!" she screamed.

He caught her by the neck and held her aloft as she coughed and sputtered in his chokehold.

She scratched at his hands for release. He brought Jake's body up, opened his mouth wide and ripped out Jake's throat. He dropped her and spit the bloody mass on the ground in front of her. Then he threw Jake's body at Fitzy, knocking him over. "Let that be a lesson to you, my pet. Now, I need to finish my meal, so I am fully replenished. It can be painful or pleasant for the others. The choice is yours."

She rolled to her hands and knees, face pressed to the dirt as she coughed to regain her breath. She wanted to look away from the grisly piece of Jake the vampire had spat on the ground, but like a car crash, her eyes stayed glued to it. It built a fury in her over Jake's death she never knew she was capable of. "I won't let you hurt them!" she croaked. She leapt to her feet and threw herself at him again.

He caught her mid-air once more, bunching her shirt in his hand, and threw her. She flew through the air and landed hard in front of the medical tent, skidding across the ground on her back. The impact knocked the wind out of her.

The vampire was on top of her almost instantaneously. He straddled her hips and placed his hands just above her shoulders. "Perhaps I made a mistake with you after all. Your body pleases me immensely, but I don't know if it is worth breaking your spirit." He ripped away her shirt and pawed her breast. "But I will have you again before I kill you. Perhaps by then you will have learned, and I will decide to keep you after all. Either way, you will be a delicious dish to savour. The scent of your blood is most rousing." He smiled at her, revealing long fangs in place of his incisors. Then he leaned down and licked the length of the column of her throat.

Finally able to take a breath, she squeaked out, "I thought I was safe from you."

He replied as he moved down her chest, inhaling the scent of her skin, "Only my mates are. But if you are not worthy of being my mate, I won't give you the honour of adding your head to my collection. I will simply use you for release, then drain you as the food all humans are."

Her heart hammered in both terror at her possible imminent death and arousal as her body responded to his touch. "Your collection?"

He began kissing and licking her chest. "Yes, the pots you so wisely didn't disturb. That would have made me most upset. I'll be happy to share them with you. But only if I decide to keep you."

Her throat constricted again as panic gripped her. The pots were full of heads. Heads of women he'd called his mates.

She threw her arms out wide in a vain effort to grab something to help her clamber out from under him. Her hand landed on the end of a tent peg. At the same moment, she felt a rush of warm liquid flow over her and the vampire's body became suddenly limp and heavy on her.

"Helena, the peg! Stake him!" Javier stood above her in the medical tent doorway, a bloody scalpel in his hand. She pushed the vampire off her and saw that she was slick with blood from his partially decapitated head. He lay on his back where he landed when she pushed him, his face frozen in a rictus of shock, a pool of blood gathering under his head that hung askew by the unsevered flesh of his neck. "Quickly, Helena!"

She rolled to her knees and pulled at the tent peg. A machete clattered to the ground beside her, then Fitzy's hands wrapped around the peg over hers and, with a collective grunt, they pulled it free. Turning as one they stabbed down into the vampire's chest, directly into his heart. Within seconds, his skin turned grey, then he was ash suspended in air before it collapsed into the outline of the man on the ground. The stake remained standing where the point was buried in the earth.

A sob tore out of Helena, and Fitzy wrapped his arms around her. She could feel him trembling from top to toe.

"Helena, my love," Javier said and dropped beside her to wrap his arms around her as well.

She wrapped her arms around Javier's neck and buried her face there. She sobbed for several long seconds at the enormity of what had just happened. Javier tenderly kissed Helena's cheek, then pressed his forehead to her temple and wrapped his good arm around her. She pulled back.

"Your mother, Javier," she said, looking over to the path.

"I'll go," Fitzy said and pushed off the ground. Helena and Javier clung to each other, watching Fitzy's progress. She kept glancing at the ash, expecting the vampire to reassemble and attack again. Fitzy nodded and gave the thumbs up, then picked up the old woman and carried her over. "She's unconscious, but doesn't appear injured."

Javier sagged in relief. "Thank God," he said and closed his eyes.

"Let's get her inside," Fitzy said.

He pushed aside the tent flap, but Helena called out, "Fitzy, what do we do about...the ash?" She couldn't bring herself to say 'vampire' out loud. She didn't want to leave it unattended. Vampire stories were just that, stories. They were dealing with the real thing here. "I know your mom's a pretty devout Catholic, she didn't happen to teach you how to make holy water?"

He mouth twitched. "It doesn't quite work that way."

"My mother has some. I know where she keeps it." Helena and Fitzy looked at him, eyebrows raised in disbelief. "My mother does not differentiate between Christianity and the old ways.

They are one and the same to her. She attends mass every week at church, but also attends every ritual for apu that she can."

Helena grimaced. She never wanted to tell him the truth about what his mother had done, but she couldn't carry what she knew. It was probably best to get it out while they were all somewhat numb from what they had just witnessed. "Javier," she waited until he looked at her then said as gently as possible, "I'm sorry to tell you this, but your mom was sending people to the vampire to be killed."

Javier pressed his eyes tightly closed. "She honestly thought the spirit in the tomb meant no harm."

Helena shook her head and laid a hand gently on his cheek. "I'm sorry, Javier. I found thirteen bodies, at least. He had torn them apart. Did she know what he was doing?"

"She would not have sent people if she knew. She told me the apu had asked for devoted followers for a special ritual. He told her to sit and watch the tomb and make sure no one went inside to disturb anything."

"He was going to kill her last," Helena said, hating the vampire for the flash of pain that crossed Javier's face. She looked over at Jake's body. "What are we going to say? No one will believe us. And what do we do with this?" She nodded at the ash outline.

Javier took her hand and squeezed it. "We gather the ash and sprinkle the holy water over it. Maybe put it back in the tomb."

Fitzy nodded. "I say we separate it into different piles, then bury it sprinkled with the holy water. We don't know what was going on with the tomb. Maybe those symbols were some kind of spell." Javier nodded agreement.

Helena snorted. "Witchcraft, Fitzy?"

He leveled a look at her. "Helena, we just staked an honest-to-God vampire. A vampire! I'll believe anything now."

Her shoulders slumped. "You're right. I'm sorry. I think I'm a bit in shock."

"We probably all are," Fitzy said. "As for what to say, we say it was a grave robbers or poachers who killed our team members. The body in the tomb disappeared along with them. They'll assume the corpse was stolen. We never saw who took the body from the tomb. It's all true. No one needs to know it was a vampire. Personally, I'd like to stay out of a sanitorium."

"The professor- Crap! Where is he? Is he okay? And where is everyone else?" Helena jumped up and looked towards the professor's tent.

"Prof's dead to the world on happy pills," Fitzy replied. "Everyone else took off, I think. When I did my rounds this morning, most of the tents had been cleared of belongings, so maybe they got spooked and left in the night."

"Thank God." She had never been so relieved to hear people had gone AWOL. She held out a hand to help Javier to his feet.

Fitzy shouldered the flap open further. "I'll take Javier's mom in and treat her."

Javier smiled at Helena and lifted her hand to kiss the back. "I'll go get the holy water. Be right back, my love."

She nodded and watched him walk away, happy tears stinging her eyes that he was okay. Then she picked up the machete and began to separate the ash.