I stepped out of the crowd like I was flinging aside a curtain. My skin tingled with the memory of shoving bodies, but I stood alone on the last step. The screaming crowd was still up above me, struggling for the exits. But here, just above the ring, there was nothing. The silence lay in thick folds against my face and hands. It was hard to breathe through the thick air. Magic. But whether vampire or cobra, I didn't know.

Stephen stood closest to me, shirtless, slim and somehow elegant. Yasmeen had on his blue shirt, hiding her naked upper body. She had tied the shirt up to expose a tanned expanse of tummy. Marguerite stood beside her. The black woman stood on Stephen's right. She had kicked off her high heels and stood flat-footed in the ring.

Jean-Claude stood on the far side of the circle with two new blond vampires on either side. He turned and stared at me across the distance. I felt his touch inside me where no hand was ever meant to go. My throat tightened; sweat broke on my body. Nothing at that moment would have made me go closer to him. He was trying to tell me something. Something private and too intimate for words.

A hoarse scream brought my attention to the center of the ring. Two men lay broken and bleeding to one side. The cobra reared over them. It was like a moving tower of muscle and scale. It hissed at us. The sound was loud, echoing.

The men lay on the ground at its. . feet? tail? One of them twitched. Was he alive? My hands squeezed the guardrail until my fingers ached. I was so scared I could taste bile at the back of my throat. My skin was cold with it. You ever have those dreams where snakes are everywhere, so thick on the ground you can't walk unless you step on them? It's almost claustrophobic. The dream always ends with me standing in the middle of the trees with snakes dripping down on me, and all I can do is scream.

Jean-Claude held out one slender hand towards me. The lace covered everything but the tips of his fingers. Everyone else was staring at the snake. Jean-Claude was staring at me.

One of the wounded men moved. A soft moan escaped his lips and seemed to echo in the huge tent. Was it illusion or had the sound really echoed? It didn't matter. He was alive, and we had to keep him that way.

We? What was this «we» stuff? I stared into Jean-Claude's deep blue eyes. His face was utterly blank, wiped clean of any emotion I understood. He couldn't trick me with his eyes. His own marks had seen to that, but mind tricks—if he worked at it—were still possible. He was working at it.

It wasn't words, but a compulsion. I wanted to go to him. To run to him. To feel the smooth, solid grip of his hand. The softness of lace against my skin. I leaned against the railing, dizzy. I gripped it to keep from falling. What the hell were these mind games now? We had other problems, didn't we? Or didn't he care about the snake? Maybe it had all been a trick. Maybe he had told the cobra to run amuck. But why?

Every hair on my body raised, as if some invisible finger had just brushed it. I shivered and couldn't stop.

I was staring down at a pair of very nice black boots, high and soft. I looked up and met Jean-Claude's eyes. He had left his place around the cobra to come to me. It beat the hell out of me going to him.

"Join with me, Anita, and we have enough power to stop the creature."

I shook my head. "I don't know what you're talking about."

He brushed his fingertips down my arm. Even through the leather jacket I could feel his touch like a line of ice, or was it fire?

"How can you be hot and cold at the same time?" I asked.

He smiled, a bare movement of lips. "Ma petite , stop fighting me, and we can tame the creature. We can save the men."

He had me there. A moment of personal weakness against the lives of two people. What a choice.

"Once I let you inside my head that far, it'll be easier for you to come in next time. My soul is not up for grabs for anybody's life."

He sighed. "Very well, it is your choice." He started to turn away from me. I grabbed his arm, and it was warm and firm and very, very real.

He turned to me, eyes large and drowning deep, like the bottom of the ocean, and just as deadly. His own power kept me from falling in; alone I would have been lost.

I swallowed hard enough for it to hurt, and pulled my hand away from him. I had the urge to wipe my hand against my pants, as if I had touched something bad. Maybe I had.

"Will silver bullets hurt it?"

He seemed to think about that for a second. "I do not know."

I took a deep breath. "If you stop trying to hijack my mind, I'll help you."

"You'll face it with a gun, rather than with me?" His voice sounded amused.

"You got it."

He stepped away from me and motioned me towards the ring.

I vaulted the rail and landed beside him. I ignored him as much as I was able and started walking towards the creature. I pulled the Browning out. It was nice and solid in my hand. A comforting weight.

"The ancient Egyptians worshipped it as a god, ma petite . She was Edjo, the royal serpent. Cared for, sacrificed to, adored."

"It isn't a god, Jean-Claude."

"Are you so sure?"

"I'm a monotheist, remember. It's just another supernatural creepycrawlie to me."

"As you like, ma petite ."

I turned back to him. "How the hell did you get it past quarantine?"

He shook his head. "Does it matter?"

I glanced back at the thing in the middle of the ring. The snake charmer lay in a bloody heap to one side of the snake. It hadn't eaten her. Was that a sign of respect, affection, dumb luck?

The cobra pushed towards us, belly scales clenching and unclenching. It made a dry, whispering sound against the ring's floor.

He was right; it didn't matter how the thing had gotten into the country. It was here now. "How are we going to stop it?"

He smiled wide enough to flash fangs. Maybe it was the "we." "If you could disable its mouth, I think we could deal with it."

The snake's body was thicker than a telephone pole. I shook my head. "If you say so."

"Can you injure the mouth?"

I nodded. "If silver bullets work on it, yeah."

"My little marksman," he said.

"Can the sarcasm," I said.

He nodded. "If you are going to try to shoot it, I would hurry, ma petite . Once it wades into my people, it will be too late." His face was unreadable. I couldn't tell if he wanted me to do it, or not.

I turned and started walking across the ring. The cobra stopped moving forward. It waited, like a swaying tower. It stood there, if something without legs could stand, and waited for me, whiplike tongue flicking out, tasting the air. Tasting me.

Jean-Claude was suddenly beside me. I hadn't heard him come, hadn't felt him come. Just another mind trick. I had other things to worry about right now.

He spoke, low and urgent; I think only I heard. "I will do my best to protect you, ma petite ."

"You were doing a great job up in your office."

He stopped walking. I didn't.

"I know you are afraid of it, Anita. Your fear crawls through my belly," he called, soft and faint as wind.

I whispered back, not sure he would even be able to hear me. "Stay the fuck out of my mind."

The cobra watched me. I held the Browning in a two-handed grip, pointed at the thing's head. I thought I was out of striking distance, but I wasn't sure. How far away is safe distance from a snake that's bigger than a Mack truck? Two states away, three? I was close enough to see the snake's flat black eyes, empty as a doll's.

Jean-Claude's words blew through my mind like flower petals. I could even have sworn I smelled flowers. His voice had never held the scent of perfume before. "Force it to follow you, and give us its back before you shoot."

The pulse in my neck was beating so hard, it hurt to breathe. My mouth was so dry I couldn't swallow right. I began to move, ever so slowly, away from the vampires and shapeshifters. The snake's head followed me, as it had followed the snake charmer. If it started to strike, I'd shoot it, but if it would just keep moving with me, I'd give Jean-Claude a chance at its back.

Of course, silver bullets might not hurt it. In fact, the thing was so damn big, the ammo I had in the Browning might not do more than irritate it. I felt like I was trapped in one of those monster movies where the giant slime monster keeps coming no matter how much you shoot it. I hoped that was just a Hollywood invention.

If the bullets didn't hurt it, I was going to die. I flashed on the image of the man's legs kicking as they went down. The lump was still visible in the snake's body, like it had fed on a really big rat.

The tongue flicked out and I gasped, swallowing a scream. God, Anita, control yourself. It's just a snake. A giant man-eating cobra snake, but still only a snake. Yeah, right.

Every hair on my body stood at attention. The power that I'd felt the snake charmer calling up was still here. It wasn't enough that the thing was poisonous and had teeth big enough to spear me with. It had to be magic, too. Great, just great.

The smell of flowers was thicker, closer. It hadn't been Jean-Claude at all. The cobra was filling the air with perfume. Snakes don't smell like flowers. They smell musty, and once you know what they smell like, you never forget it. Nothing with fur ever smelled like that. A vampire's coffin smells a bit like snakes.

The cobra turned its giant head with me. "Come on, just a little farther," I was speaking to the snake. Which is pretty stupid, since they're deaf. The smell of flowers was thick and sweet. I shuffled around the ring, and the snake shadowed me. Maybe it was habit. I was small and had long, dark hair, though not nearly as long as the dead snake charmer. Maybe the beastie wanted someone to follow?

"Come on, pretty girl, come to mama," I whispered so low my lips barely moved. Just me and the snake and my voice. I didn't dare look across the ring at Jean-Claude. Nothing mattered but my feet shuffling over the ground, the snake's movements, the gun in my hands. It was like some kind of dance.

The cobra parted its mouth, tongue flicking, giving me a glimpse of scythelike fangs. Cobras have fixed fangs, not retractable like a rattlesnake's. Nice to know I remembered some of my herpetology. Though I bet Dr. Greenburg had never seen anything like this.