"They won't," I answered. Nine heads swiveled in my direction. I tried to cover myself with the towel as best as I could. I was a little self-conscious, especially with all of the thick red scar tissue on my chest and back. "They're like a protective detail. The Cursed One is their principal. They're guarding him. Wherever he goes, they go."

"Yeah, about that. I've been meaning to ask, how do we know you aren't just bloody nuts?" Priest asked. "No offense intended."

"None taken. To be honest, I don't know. But the seven coffins is a pretty good indicator."

"Fair enough," he answered.

"What about this Cursed One? Do we have anything on record about that?" Milo asked.

"Negative. I can't find anything. Lots of things with curses, but not that match this one. Nothing comes up in a search, and nothing under Lord Machado. No entries about anything wearing a suit of armor either. I've got a bunch of folks hitting the books back at the compound looking for something. There might be something in the old archives that hasn't been scanned in yet." MHI kept meticulous records of all known monster encounters, and also drew upon a massive library of information gathered from around the world. The stuff that we dealt with did not just pop up during a Google search.

"Maybe if we had a better description it might help," Julie said coldly. She was still pretty mad at me.

"Sorry, I was incorporeal at the time."

"Machado is a Portagee last name. It means ax. Like the kind that an executioner would use," Sam told us. His useful information was a bit of a surprise. His teammates regarded him strangely. The cowboy spent a lot more time busting heads than he did studying monster history. "What? I had a master chief with that last name. He thought the ax thing was pretty cool."

"We're listening to the local police bands. If we're lucky somebody will see something and call it in; if we're unlucky, somebody is going to end up as lunch. So we are also listening for any missing persons reports. This is Boone's turf so he's trying to contact some of the locals who might be first in line for information."

"First in line?" Holly queried.

"Cops, coroners, reporters. In this case, I'm going to contact hookers, pimps, and drug dealers. Also some backwoods hillfolk that I've dealt with before. When vampires feed, they will usually go after the underbelly of society. They keep off the radar that way."

"How often do they need to feed?" Trip asked.

"Unknown. The usual low-level vamps that we deal with seem to do it every chance they get, with probably a minimum of about once a month. I know that the Feds have captured a few in the past and done testing on them, even starved a few, but they don't share that kind of info with us," Julie said.