Serge sighed and dipped a finger in his coffee. "I was afraid there would be."
This time he was the one who snapped his translucent fingers, which made coffee fly off his wet finger. When he got the waitress's attention, he pointed down toward his cup, commanding, refill. His fingers were freezing. Even in south Florida. It was what he hated most about being undead - the chill, the everlasting chill of the damned grave, like eternal Siberia. It was what he missed the most about blood - his own blood, surging, coursing, pumping, pulsing hot corpuscles that had kept his appendages as warm as a human woman's breast, right before she died in his arms.
"We should go," Pasha urged him.
Pasha didn't have the same problem with being cold all the time, which didn't seem fair to Serge since, of the two of them, he thought that Pasha had by far the colder heart.
"You slurped kids years before I did," Serge said, in an aggrieved tone.
"What the hell does that have to do with going?"
"Where?"
"The North Pole."
"Are you nuts? It's cold at the North Pole."
"Oh, come on, admit it, you miss the furs we used to wear."
Serge glanced down at his cotton running suit, the warmest he could dress in south Florida without drawing too much attention to himself. He wore long underwear beneath it, where nobody could see. It was true that he did long for the fur-trimmed caps, the ermine capes, the sable robes of his human youth. What a picture they'd made dashing through the snow! How very Dr. Zhivago they'd been. How toasty warm he'd felt under all those layers of thick white wolf fur . . .
"Where would we get the clothes?"
"We'll stop in Lapland."
"How would we find him?"
"We'll follow the red drops on the snow."
Pasha grinned, so that Serge couldn't tell if he meant it.
"Let's go get us some of that endless supply of red juice," Pasha urged his cousin, finally finding an argument that convinced even Serge. Going out for groceries only once a year sounded even easier than chasing overeaters.
THE NORTH POLE
"Africa," Nicholas informed the children, the ones whom human beings thought were elves. "This year we're going to concentrate on Africa. We need to convert more of those heathens into believing in me."
One of the little tykes piped up, "I don't like Africa."
"Of course you don't like it," Nicholas said, heartily. He had to practice "hearty," as it didn't come naturally to his personality, which tended more toward dour and homicidal. He also had to work on "jolly." "Old" was no problem, "fat" could be taken care of with a stuffed costume. He didn't even make a stab at "Saint," of course. Even an imitation of "Saint" was out of the question for him, like turkey and dressing and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. He made an effort to smile at the clutch of pale children sitting on the floor in front of him, but judging from the way they all scooted back, his attempt came out looking more like a maniacal grimace. "You don't like it because of what happened to Donder and Blitzen last year."
The little vampires shuddered.
It took a lot, Nicholas knew, to make a baby vampire shudder.
Thinking about the dead reindeers nearly gave him the creeps, too.
Nearly. Because a tinge of admiration also crept into his feelings.
Disemboweling a reindeer on the run! Now that took real talent. If he weren't so furious at the Wild Dogs of Africa for doing it, he'd have wanted to pat their ugly heads and praise them, "Good doggies, smart doggies!"
"Why can't you just kill them?" a pale tyke demanded.
"Because they're cousins to our friends the werewolves," Nicholas explained with exaggerated cheerfulness, the way he thought kindergarten teachers talked to their charges. "And you know what our friends the werewolves do when they're mad, don't you, boys and girls?"
Again, the baby vampires shuddered.
Baby vampires didn't like to be disemboweled any more than reindeer did.
"But what if they kill Dasher or Prancer?" a pretty little girl asked him.
It wasn't that the wee vampires were concerned about the fate of the animals, Nicholas well knew. They were concerned about their own fates, selfish little bloodsuckers. If he lost too many reindeer, it would take him forever to get home with their treats.
"I won't allow that to happen," he growled.
One brave toddler challenged, "How?"
He didn't yet know, but he wasn't telling them that. He had to figure out a way to destroy the wild dogs without incurring the inconvenient wrath of the werewolves. They weren't numerous in Africa, but all it took was one to spread the word all over the bloody world.
"You let me worry about the reindeer," he warned them, so sternly that they all inched back again. "You just worry about wrapping all those damned gifts."
The baby vampires groaned.
ZIMBABWE, AFRICA
Under the almost-full moon, Ingrid Andersen's long, curly red hair gleamed as if the gods themselves were shining a spotlight on her. If so, they must have had a hard time keeping up with the bouncing spot of red, because it was moving fast in the Land Rover driven by her assistant wildlife biologist, Damian Mansfeld.
"Slow down," Ingrid commanded. Instantly obeying her, he braked, propelling both of their bodies forward until their seat belts stopped them. "There's the park entrance."
He couldn't even see it, but he trusted her to know.
When she said, "Turn. Now," he turned. Now.
She had the slightest hint of an accent that might have come from her native Sweden, though privately Damian thought it was unlike any Scandinavian accent he had ever heard. When he'd asked her about it once, she'd reeled off a slew of Swedish phrases, as if that proved something. Because she was his boss, and because she could stare with yellow eyes that looked as level and challenging as the Serengeti Plain, he didn't ask a second time.
They bounced off the road that went from Bulawayo to Victoria Falls, and bounced onto the dirt road leading into Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park, where many of the world's endangered creatures roamed. Even in the park, the animals weren't safe. They were threatened by each other, the weather, and - the most dangerous predators - poachers and paramilitary thugs who liked to kill elephants for sport and salable body parts.
In the endless dark of the African night, illuminated only by the eerie moon with its flat shadows, Damian worked up the courage to protest, "It's 14,600 square kilometers, Ingrid. How are we going to find them?" He didn't add his most pressing question, as he slammed down on the accelerator again: And why do we have to do this on Christmas Eve?