Antoine stamped his feet and chanted, “Oshún.”

The other vampires and chalices in the pavilion sprang to the floor and picked up the chant. Their orange and red auras pulsed in time to the music. They shimmied and writhed as if they were Pentecostal snake handlers. Breasts and buttocks quivered like so much flesh Jell-O.

This was one party I couldn’t sit out. I downed the last of the mojito, jumped from the bench, and joined the dancing. Chalices pawed at my shirt and tossed it aside.

I swung my arms and kicked with spastic abandon, doing the Chicano version of a frog-in-the-blender dance. I wasn’t sure of the point to all this but it was a great party.

The wall of palm fronds began to shake. The music picked up speed. The chanting went faster and faster.

“Oshún. Oshún.”

With my eyes closed, I shouted, “Oshún,” over and over, enjoying myself until I realized that the music had stopped and I was the only one still chanting.

I opened my eyes.

The other dancers stood frozen in place. Their auras shimmered like a collection of neon lamps.

The wall of palm fronds before us had split apart. Carmen (who else?) glared at me from between the fronds. Her gaze burned through the eye slits of an elaborate feathered headdress.

A dozen cowrie-shell and glass-bead necklaces looped across her naked torso. Gold bells on her bracelets and anklets tinkled softly. A brightly colored loincloth dangled between her thighs.

In one upturned hand she carried a glass jar the size of a coffee cup. She swung her arm in a small circle, the torch lights refracting through the glass jar into rainbow bursts of jewellike colors.

The music started again, jumping back to the same loud tempo as a moment ago. Carmen dipped left and right in exaggerated postures, with the jar as the focal point of her movements. Her breasts trembled beneath the layers of cowrie shells and glass beads.

Vampires somersaulted in gravity-defying leaps. Chalices wailed as if speaking in tongues, threw themselves to the floor, and bounded back up.

The music became louder, the dancing more frantic, and the atmosphere more charged with hedonistic frenzy. Jolie and a couple of chalices stood hunched over, hands on their knees, and twirled their hair while ululating like Arab witches. The fragrance of pheromones was as thick as the smoke.

I didn’t know how well this shindig kept to Santeria traditions but I was having a hell of a time. And I still had my pants on.

We stamped our feet, faster and faster, and just as the beat couldn’t get any more rapid-I was ready this time-we all stomped once. The music stopped. The silence seemed as deafening as had the music. Heaving, glistening bodies surrounded me, the body paint mottled by sweat.

I found myself standing directly before Carmen.

She faced me, the glass jar raised in offering. “Felix Gomez, Her Majesty Oshún channels me to summon you.”

Carmen pushed the jar in front of my face. “Behold the secret to our protection from the sun. Oshún has given us this wonder, the Florida chartreuse-pine spider.”

My head cleared slightly. This is what all the music and theater was about? I took the jar and held it up to the light of the tiki torches. Inside the jar scurried a small, bright green spider the size of my thumbnail. “Powerful medicine?” I fought to keep the sarcasm out of my question.

“Very powerful,” Carmen answered reverently.

“Quite a show. The last time I bought aspirin at Walgreens, they did nothing like this.” I tapped the jar. The spider reared back. “Where did you find this critter?”

“In the trash outside the kitchen,” Jolie answered.

Carmen cleared her throat. “Oshún’s blessings are everywhere.”

“Is it poisonous?” I asked.

“Of course.” Carmen removed her headdress and handed it to a chalice. “But to us vampires, the venom in its tiny fangs is magic. One bite from this spider and our flesh is made new. We get color.” Carmen lifted one side of her loincloth and flashed a sliver of pale flesh. “See, tan lines.”

It was an exciting glimpse of white skin against a brown leg. I looked with admiration at the spider. “One bite? That’s all?”

The little spider seemed to study me in return. Its tiny eyes sparkled like grains of sand.

A bite of its minuscule fangs and I could again enjoy the caress of the sun upon my naked skin. No more slathering on the sunblock? I could walk among the humans without a mask of Dermablend?

“What have I got to lose?”

Carmen gave a twinkling smile. “Good. Give me the spider and hold out your arm.”

I returned the jar and extended my left arm.

Carmen removed the lid and upturned the jar on my forearm. The spider dropped onto my skin and stretched its tiny legs. I got a creepy tickle. I kept my arm steady to refrain from giving an embarrassing shiver.

Antoine moved behind me, wrapped his strong arms around my torso, and pinned my right arm to my side. Carmen and Jolie grabbed my other arm by the wrist and pulled hard.

“What the hell?” I tried to jerk free but the other vampires held tight.

I stared in panic at the spider. “I thought this wasn’t going to hurt.”

Carmen laughed. “What gave you that impression? Actually, it’s going to hurt like a motherfucker.”

Consciousness slowly returned. I felt weak and spent, like a castaway sailor surviving a storm. I opened my eyes and found myself on a bed in one of the cabins. Our concert to Oshún echoed softly in my head and faded to silence. Judging by the angle of the sunlight streaming through the window, I figured it to be early afternoon.

A chalice crowded the bed. She slept on her side, her smooth back toward me. She was naked, as was I. A bedsheet covered our legs.

Red and blue blotches from bite marks dotted her back and along her neck under the edge of her short brown hair. The bruises looked as if someone had gone at her with a ball-peen hammer. As painful as the bruises looked, in reality the chalices wore them proudly, like hickeys.

Carmen, modestly clad in a T-shirt and black shorts, her hair tied into a frizzy ponytail, came through the front door. “Felix, you’re awake. Welcome back to the land of the undead.”

I sat up and clutched my very sore abdomen. “What did you guys do while I was sick?” The words rasped from my throat. “Use my belly for kickboxing practice?”

Carmen tapped her foot against a metal wastebasket by the bedpost. Maroon muck clung to the plastic-bag liner. “It’s from all your heaving.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Two nights.”

“No wonder I feel like I’ve crawled back from the world’s worst bender,” I muttered.

“It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

I pointed to the chalice. “And her?”

“The adaptation process makes you crazy with hunger. Chalices fight for the honor of providing sustenance.”

“What a sport.” I kissed the chalice’s shoulder.

She snored. The bedsheet slipped from her hip and exposed the back of her thighs. Bruises and puncture marks trailed between her legs. More hickeys.

I noticed rows of scratches along the sides of my back and peeled the long, narrow scabs. I also had deep bite marks on my shoulders. Apparently, the adaptation process involved a lot of jungle sex as well as fanging.

“Quite the smorgasbord we both had. Too bad I can’t remember a damn thing.”

Carmen motioned that I get up. I swung my legs off the bed and stood. I felt woozy. She gave my nude body the once-over.

I said, “Sorry, but at the moment I can only get my flag to fly at half-mast.” Normally anemic and translucent, my skin was an opaque hue of mestizo beige. The spider bite on my forearm was a fading blemish. “How did you find out about the pine spider?”

“From Antoine,” Carmen replied. “It’s a Seminole vampire legend. At least, they claim it was a legend.”