When the room steadied, she looked down at her bloody, naked body and wanted to retch. What did they do to her?

She'd deal with that later. Right now she had to get out of here and back to the church. But where was here} She knew from the signs on the wall that she was in a Post Office. But how did she find the church once she got out?

First things first, she told herself. Get out of this undead nest, then worry about finding your way back.

Still holding the wall, she edged toward the doors. She looked longingly at the clothes on the corpses of the dead vampires, but their rot was already seeping through the fabric. She'd rather be naked.

She spotted a clock on the wall. It read 3:12. It couldn't be that late. Then she noticed the second hand was frozen at the half-minute mark. An electric clock, and the power had been off for a long, long time.

Lacey pushed through the doors and the cool night air hit her, sending a cold tremor through her body. She kept moving, padding across the moonlit concrete to the surrounding shadows. She needed some clothes, and not just for warmth; couldn't turn up in front of the people in the church, especially her Uncle Joe, looking like this. She had to find a house, go through one of the closets—

"It's you!" cried a voice behind her. "How did you get away?"

Lacey turned and stared at the figure advancing toward her from the other side of the street. The bottle blonde from the boardwalk, dressed in lowrider jeans and a cutaway denim jacket. Her boots thudded on the pavement. Lacey saw a flash in her right hand, heard a clink, and realized she'd just flipped open a knife. The stainless steel blade gleamed in the moonlight.

Lacey said nothing. Her brain seemed sluggish. All she could think was, Not now ... I can't handle this now.

"Guess it doesn't matter how," the Vichy woman said with a throaty laugh as she reached the grass and kept coming. "I'm just glad you did. Because we got a score to settle, you and me."

Lacey tried to remember some of the defense moves she'd learned in her martial arts classes and couldn't come up with one. So she started backing away.

"You can run but you can't hide," the blonde sing-songed. "I don't care how much they want you alive, you ain't walkin away this time."

She was closing in. Lacey held up her hands. "No, wait..."

"No waiting. Looks like a few of my friends had a party with you, now it's my turn. I'm gonna cut you, girl... cut you good!"

With that the blonde lunged forward with a vicious, face-high slash, and Lacey found her limbs responding on their own. She didn't need to remember the moves. Hour upon hour of practice had programmed them into her nervous system. Her right leg shot back and stiffened, her left knee bent, her hands darted forward, grabbing the blonde's knife arm at the wrist and elbow, pushing it aside, twisting it, using the woman's own weight and momentum against her to bring her down.

Her Vichy earring flashed near Lacey's face and sudden visions of similar earrings dangling over her while her three captors—

Rage detonated in Lacey. Gritting her teeth she gave an extra twist to the falling woman's arm and was rewarded by a scream of pain as bones ground together, ligaments and tendons stretched, snapped. The woman screamed again, louder. She'd be drawing a crowd soon. Lacey's hand flashed forward, landing a two-knuckle punch on her larynx. With a crunch of cartilage the screaming cut off, replaced by strangled noises as the blonde began to kick and writhe, clutching at her throat with her still-functioning left hand.

Lacey picked up the knife from the grass and stepped back, looking around. Was anyone else coming after her? She and the blonde were alone in the shadows. She watched her struggles, waiting for them to run their course.

"So," Lacey said. "You were gonna cut me, huh? Cut me good. I don't think so."

She checked the knife blade: tanto shaped with the front half of the cutting edge beveled and the rear half saw-toothed. Wicked. If Ms. Vichy had had her way, this blade would be jutting from Lacey's chest about now.

The choking sounds faded, the kicking and writhing ebbed to twisting and twitching. With a final spasm the hand clutching at her throat fell away and she lay limp and still.

Lacey waited another minute, then dropped to her knees beside the dead woman. Mastering her revulsion, she began unbuttoning her cutaway top . . .

CAROLE . . .

Sister Carole trudged through the inky blackness along the street, hugging the curb, hurrying through the moonlit sections between the shadows of the trees, towing her red wagon behind her. She'd loaded it with her Bible, her rosary, her holy water, the blasting caps, her few remaining bombs, and other essentials.