While ethnological material as used in this book is not intended to meet scholarly and scientific standards, the author wishes to acknowledge information derived from publications of Willard W. Hill, Leland C. Wyman, Mary C. Wheelwright, Father Berard Haile, Clyde Kluckhohn, and Washington Matthews; and the advice and information provided by his own friends among the Navajo people.　Chapter 1　　Luis Horseman leaned the flat stone very carefully against the pi?on twig, adjusted its balance exactly and then cautiously withdrew his hand. The twig bent, but held. Horseman rocked back on his heels and surveyed the deadfall. He should have put a little more blood on the twig, he thought, but it mi　

I stood in line, as patient as the other taxpayers, my filled out forms and my cash gripped body in my hand. Cash, money, the old fashioned green folding stuff. A local custom that I intended to make expensive to the local customers. I was scratching under the artificial beard, which itched abominably, when the man before me stepped out of the way and I was at the window. My finger stuck in the glue and I had a job freeing it without pulling the beard off as well."e, e, pass it over," the aging, hatchet-faced, bitter and shrewish female official said, hand extended impatiently."On the contrary," I said, letting the papers and banknotes fall away to disclose the immense .75 recoilless pistol　

　　I am a vampire. Blood does not bother me. I like blood. Even seeing my own blood does not frighten me. But what my blood can do to others-to the whole world for that matter-terrifies me. Once God made me take a vow to create no more vampires. Once I believed in God. But my belief, like my vow, has been shattered too many times in my long life. I am Alisa Perne, the now-forgotten Sita, child of a demon. I am the oldest living creature on earth.　　I awake in a living room smelling of death. I watch as my blood trickles through a thin plastic tube into the arm of Special Agent Joel Drake, FBI. He now lives as a vampire instead of the human being he was when he closed his eyes. I have broken m　

　FRIDAY, 11 JULY 1975　FRONT PAGE　DIPLOMATS SAID TO BE LINKED WITH FUGITIVE TERRORIST KNOWN AS CARLOS　Paris, 10 July - France expelled three high-ranking Cuban diplomats today in connection with the world-wide search for a man called Carlos, who is believed to be an important link in an international terrorist network.　The suspect, whose real name is thought to be Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez, is being sought in the killing of two French counter-intelligence agents and a Lebanese informer at a Latin Quarter apartment on 27 June.　The three killings have led the police here and in Britain to what they feel is the trail of a major network of international terrorist agents. In the search for Carlos af　

　　The drug-induced sleep wore off into nothingness, and the girl began the agonizing struggle back to consciousness. A dim and hazy light greeted her slowly opening eyes while a disgusting, putrid stench invaded her nostrils. She was nude, her bare back pressed flat against a damp, yellow, slime-coated wall. It was unreal, an impossibility, she tried to tell herself upon awakening. It had to be some kind of horrifying nightmare. Then suddenly, before she had a chance to fight the panic mushrooming inside her, the yellow slime on the floor rose and began working up the thighs of her defenseless body.　　Terrified beyond all reason, she began screaming screaming insanely as the abomination craw　

Dreams and AwakeningsWHY IS IT forbidden to write down specific knowledge of the magics? Perhaps because we all fear that such knowledge would fall into the hands of one not worthy to use it. Certainly there has always been a system of apprenticeship to ensure that specific knowledge of magic is passed only to those trained and judged worthy of such knowledge. While this seems a laudable attempt to protect us from unworthy practitioners of arcane lore, it ignores the fact that the magics are not derived from this specific knowledge. The predilection for a certain type of magic is either inborn or lacking. For instance, the ability for the magics known as the Skill is tied closely to 　

　 Revelation 21:9　　1　　NIGHT FELL CLEAN and cold in Dublin, and wind moaned beyond my room as if a million pipes played the air. Gusts shook old windowpanes and sounded like spirits rushing past as I rearranged pillows one more time, finally resting on my back in a snarl of Irish linen. But sleep would not touch me, and images from the day returned. I saw bodies without limbs or heads, and sat up, sweating.　I switched on lamps, and the Shelbourne Hotel was suddenly around me in a warm glow of rich old woods and deep red plaids. I put on a robe, my eyes lingering on the phone by my fitfully-slept-in bed. It was almost two A.M. In Richmond, Virginia, it would be five hours earlier, and 　

　　Introduction　　Only prejudice, and a trick of the Mercator projection, prevents us from recognizing the enormity of the African continent. Covering nearly twelve million square miles, Africa is almost as large as North America and Europe bined. It is nearly twice the size of South America. As we mistake its dimensions, we also mistake its essential nature: the Dark Continent is mostly hot desert and open grassy plains.　In fact, Africa is called the Dark Continent for one reason only: the vast equatorial rain forests of its central region. This is the drainage basin of the Congo River, and one-tenth of the continent is given over to it-a million and a half square miles of silent, damp, dark　

　　ACKNOWLEDGMENTS　　 There are a lot of people to thank for helping me bring this one home. It was a devil of a book to write, for a host of reasons. For one thing, I began writing it the week before my father passed away, and inevitably the long shadow of that event dimmed the joy of writing, at least for the first six months or so, slowing it to a crawl.　 Paradoxically, even as my production of useable text diminished, I could feel the scale of the story I wanted to tell getting bigger. What had originally begun life as an idea for a short, satiric stab at Hollywood began to blossom into something larger, lusher and stranger: a fantasia on Hollywood both in its not-so-innocent youth and in　

　　1　　 mander James D. Swanson of the U.S. Navy was short, plump and crowding forty. He had jet-black hair topping a pink, cherubic face, and with the deep permanent creases of laughter lines radiating from his eyes and curving around his mouth, he was a dead ringer for the cheerful, happy-golucky extrovert who is the life and soul of the party where the guests park their brains along with their hats and coats. That, anyway, was how he struck me at first glance, but on the reasonable assumption that I might very likely find some other qualities in the man picked to mand the latest and most powerful nuclear submarine afloat I took a second and closer look at him and this time I saw what I sho　

　　　　"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."　　Dr. Johnson　　PART ONE　　　　We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive... ." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?" Then it was quiet again. My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest, to facil　

　　Acknowledgements　Because, in some instances, I met many of the real people in positions which, of necessity, are in this novel, I wish to state that none of the characters drawn here in any way resemble their real-life counterparts who, without exception, were extremely helpful to me.　I would like to thank:　Dr Gita Natarajan, Associate Medical Examiner, City of New York　Lieutenant Jim Doyle, mander, Village Police, West Hampton Beach　and, especially:　Dr Michael Baden, former Chief Medical Examiner, City of New York　Thanks to the numerous individuals who assisted me with translations, and to my father, who proofed the manuscripts.　Special thanks to Ruth and Arthur for invaluable R&R in Sha