Living Dead in Dallas

scents of drinking and sex. She sniffed as if she were following a trail, and then she swung to face Mike Spencer. His middle-aged body did not fare well in the chilly air, but Callisto seemed delighted with him.
    “Oh,” she said as happily as though she’d just gotten a present, “you’re so proud! Are you a king? Are you a great soldier?”
    “No,” Mike said. “I own a funeral home.” He didn’t sound too sure. “What are you, lady?”
    “Have you ever seen anything like me before?”
    “No,” he said, and all the others shook their heads.
    “You don’t remember my first visit?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “But you’ve made me an offering before.”
    “I have? An offering?”
    “Oh, yes, when you killed the little black man. The pretty one. He was a lesser child of mine, and a fitting tribute for me. I thank you for leaving him outside the drinking place; bars are my particular delight. Could you not find me in the woods?”
    “Lady, we didn’t make no offering,” Tom Hardaway said, his dark skin all over goose pimples and his penis gone south.
    “I saw you,” she said.
    Everything fell silent then. The woods around the lake, always full of little noises and tiny movements, became still. I very carefully rose to my feet beside Bill.
    “I love the violence of sex, I love the reek of drink,” she said dreamily. “I can run from miles away to be there for the end.”
    The fear pouring out of their heads began to fill mine up, and run out. I covered my face with my hands. I threw up the strongest shields I could fashion, but I could still barely contain the terror. My back arched, and I bit my tongue to keep from making a sound. I could feel the movement as Bill turned to me, and then Eric was by his side and they were both mashing me between them. There is not a thing erotic about being pressed between two vampires under those circumstances. Their own urgent desire for my silence fed the fear, because what would frighten vampires? The dog pressed against our legs as if he offered us protection.
    “You hit him during sex,” the maenad said to Tom. “You hit him, because you are proud, and his subservience disgusted and excited you.” She stretched her bony hand to caress Tom’s dark face. I could see the whites of his eyes. “And you”—she patted Mike with her other hand—“you beat him, too, because you were seized with the madness. Then he threatened to tell.” Her hand left Tom and rubbed his wife, Cleo. Cleo hadthrown on a sweater before she went out, but it wasn’t buttoned.
    Since she had avoided notice, Tara began backing up. She was the only one who wasn’t paralyzed by fear. I could feel the tiny spark of hope in her, the desire to survive. Tara crouched under a wrought-iron table on the deck, made herself into a little ball, and squeezed her eyes shut. She was making a lot of promises to God about her future behavior, if he’d get her out of this. That poured into my mind, too. The reek of fear from the others built to a peak, and I could feel my body go into tremors as they broadcast so heavily that it broke through all my barriers. I had nothing left of myself. I was only fear. Eric and Bill locked arms with each other, to hold me upright and immobile between them.
    Jan, in her nudity, was completely ignored by the maenad. I can only suppose that there was nothing in Jan that appealed to the creature; Jan was not proud, she was pathetic, and she hadn’t had a drink that night. She embraced sex out of other needs than the need for its loss of self—needs that had nothing to do with leaving one’s mind and body for a moment of wonderful madness. Trying, as always, to be the center of the group, Jan reached out with a would-be flirty smile and took the maenad’s hand. Suddenly she began to convulse, and the noises coming from her throat were horrible. Foam came from her mouth, and her eyes rolled up. She collapsed to the deck, and I could hear her heels drumming the wood.
    Then the silence resumed. But something was brewing a few yards away in the little group on the deck: something terrible and fine, something pure and horrible. Their fear was subsiding, and my body began to calm again. The awful pressure eased in my head. But as it ebbed, a new force began to build, and it was indescribably beautiful and absolutely evil.
    It was pure madness, it was mindless madness. From the maenad poured the berserker rage, the lust of pillage, the hubris of pride. I was