Joe could croon out a tune himself, like no other. He was a slim African American with a voice like silk. Joe always welcomed DeFeo with his “special” drink, and it was always on the house. Once, DeFeo had managed to take care of a serious problem for Joe—an off-the-books job, so to speak—and though DeFeo assured Joe that it had been nothing, the old man was still grateful.

“I’ll stick around a bit then,” DeFeo said. He was still pondering a way to pin somethingon Cramer and his band of whacked-out believers.

“You got time to stick around?” Joe asked. He sounded edgy. “I thought you just dropped in on your way to work.”

DeFeo frowned. “Sure. I’m here for the drinks and the music. Same as last week.”

“Yeah, but last week, we didn’t have thishappening in the city.” Joe said, pulling out his phone and hitting the touch screen to bring up a recent news report.

Before he even read the report, DeFeo leaned back, stunned that such a picture had gotten to the media andthat the media was showing it.

He was seeing the body of a woman, so mutilated that he couldn’t be sure what parts the remnants of her clothing were covering. He didn’t need to ask Joe where she had been found; he recognized the Masonic tomb in a nearby cemetery.

It made the blood on the Montville tomb seem like child’s play.

He stood, gulping down the drink Joe had given him, and said hoarsely, “I guess I’m not staying.”

As he spoke, his phone began to vibrate in his shirt pocket. He glanced down. Yes, he was being called in. His usual connection, a lieutenant from homicide, was the caller.

“I’m on my way,” he said, before Lieutenant Anderson could speak.

“Quickly,” Anderson ordered, knowing from DeFeo’s tone that he had heard the news.

DeFeo hung up, nodded at Joe, and hurried out.

“DRINK THE BLOOD,and you will be whole, and the strength of the true essence of life will fill your body and your being, and you will be one with the Brotherhood,” Austin said, lifting the fake-jewel-encrusted chalice high above Adriana Morgan’s head.

It was such rot. And, of course, he knew it.

But Austin had spent his junior high and high school years in pure misery. He was the skinny kid who had acne. He had spent his afternoons playing computer games while the jocks were out on the football field—cornering all the girls. The jocks were cruel. Several times, they’d tossed his tray of food on him at the cafeteria. They’d thrown him in the Dumpster at school, along with all the refuse from the bathrooms.

Then, Austin had found the way. Well, hisway. And it had all happened by accident. They’d been about to throw him into Mr. Johnston’s water sprinklers one day when he had actually found the nerve to fight back—verbally, at least. He’d cursed them, telling them that all the demon dogs from hell would come after them. By happenstance, Mr. Johnston’s giant Rottweiler, Juju, had come running out of the house at that moment. Austin had played with Juju since he’d been a puppy, and Juju took offense at Austin’s mistreatment. Billy Trent, quarterback, missed the next three games because Juju took a nice piece of flesh right off Billy Trent’s big muscled butt. And the story spread—and suddenly, Austin knew how to bring up all the powers of Satan himself.

It worked. He liked it. So he used his computer game time to study cults, world religions, and superstitions. He came up with the Brotherhood. Cool. That, too, worked. Who would have ever figured that he, geeky Austin Cramer, would have women throwing themselves at him? It helped that he grew another five inches and put on a little bit of muscle. At heart, however, he was still geeky Austin Cramer.

Adriana Morgan was his newest recruit, and she was beyond beautiful.

He had seen her once before, right here, in this cemetery, mourning a loved one; he was sure of that, since she’d had flowers with her.

It had been instant love for him. Or lust. No, he was in lust and in love.

She had mile-long hair, and it tumbled down her back in sleek blond tresses that shone in the sunlight, and in the moonlight. She had huge, dark blue eyes and a figure that should have graced a Victoria’s Secret catalog.

She looked up at him adoringly, took the chalice, and drank. Pig’s blood. It was always his choice. His Uncle Stu managed a slaughterhouse, and the blood was easy to come by. Adriana sipped the blood, and he drew her to her feet. “Now, my dear, you cast the remains in the cup on the side of the tomb, and you ask the power within to be your strength so that you may live your life seeking pleasure where you will, as is your human, carnal, and animalistic right. Tonight you will fast and cleanse, and tomorrow begin your life in the Brotherhood, living as you will!”

He’d taken a chance coming here again tonight at midnight—he’d just indoctrinated a girl last night, Angie Sewell, and he might have returned to find that the blood from the previous night was still on the tomb. But he had gambled well. A Montville was a PI who worked in and around the Vieux Carré. He seemed to like working a graveyard shift, so he wasn’t around to catch anyone in the action, and frankly, the cops thought his obsession with the old family tomb was a bit much. They had tried now and then to catch Austin in the act, but they’d never thought to just stake out the cemetery. Of course, they thought he had to crawl over the ten-foot wall to get into the place—dumb bastards never realized that he’d come in the daylight and found time to make a putty impression of the lock on the gate, and therefore had a key.

Adriana was worth the risk. It felt as if he had coveted her forever. And now . . . now he had to force himself to remember that everything had an agenda, and he couldn’t freak out and beg her just to let him kiss her lush lips, entangle himself in the scent of hair, lie with her naked.

Get a grip,he warned himself.

Adriana splashed the blood on the tomb and repeated the words as he had told her. Just as she did so, the clouds that had been covering the moon drifted past, and the full orb made the cemetery glow with an eerie light.

Austin looked up. Hell, somebody loved him, he thought, laughing inwardly. Not. The law of physics had simply sent a breeze, and the clouds had moved.

Adriana turned to him, and his knees almost turned to jelly. “I’m one with you! I’m one with the Brotherhood!”

He drew her against him and felt the fantastic warmth of her body and the richness of her full breasts. He drew away quickly, damning himself for the ritual cleansing he had given to this rite. Tomorrow night, she’d be his.

He heard a sound: a cell phone buzzing. She stepped back, looking at him apologetically. “I’d put it on silent. I’m so sorry. I haven’t ruined anything, have I?” She fumbled with the black cape she was wearing, found her phone in the pocket of her form-fitting jeans, glanced at it, and quickly shoved it back.

“No. Though I thought I told you not to have it on you?” He was irritated. She had arrived late to her night of confirmation into his flock, and now—she had the damned cell phone on her!

“I’m sorry—I’m on call. At the hospital.” She was an RN. “I have to go to work.”

“Of course.” He never encouraged any of his “followers” to quit their day jobs; keeping up the mansion was a costly task, and he’d also acquired some expensive tastes since he turned his experience with Juju into his life’s work. He loved hundred-year-old tequila and aged Cognac, and a Havana cigar now and then, as well.

Austin set his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t forget; this is your one night of abstinence. No men, no food. The blood you drank will cleanse your body of the past; it will cleanse your soul of what you believed to have been the sins of your past, and it will allow you to enter your new world where life is what you crave it to be, filled with earthly, sensual, and erotic pleasures.”