"It's the vault," James said.
"What vault?"
"The burial vault. They put the coffin inside it so it doesn't get crushed if the ground collapses. Get out and hand me the crowbar."
Phil climbed out of the hole and gave him the crowbar. He could see the vault now. It was made of unfinished concrete and he guessed that it was just a rectangular box with a lid.
James was prying the lid off with the crowbar.
"There," James said, with an explosive grunt as he lifted the lid and slid it, by degrees, behind the concrete box. That was why the hole was so wide, to accommodate the lid on one side and James on the other.
And now, looking straight down into the hole, Phil could see the casket. A huge spray of slightly crushed yellow roses was on top.
James was breathing hard, but Phil didn't think it was with exertion. His own lungs felt as if they were being squeezed flat, and his heart was thudding hard enough to shake his body.
"Oh, God," he said quietly and with no particular emphasis.
James looked up. "Yeah. This is it." He pushed the roses down toward the foot of the casket. Then, in what seemed like slow motion to Phillip, he began unfastening latches on the casket's side.
When they were unfastened, he paused for just an instant, both hands flat on the smooth surface of the casket. Then he lifted the upper panel, and Phillip could see what was inside.
CHAPTER 12
Poppy was lying there on the white velvet lining, eyes shut.
She looked very pale and strangely beautiful-but was she dead?
"Wake up," James said. He put his hand on hers. Phillip had the feeling that he was calling with his mind as well as his voice.
There was an agonizingly long minute while nothing happened.
James put his other hand under Poppy's neck, lifting her just slightly. "Poppy, it's time.
Wake up. Wake up."
Poppy's eyelashes fluttered.
Something jarred violently in Phillip. He wanted to give a yell of victory and pound the grass. He also wanted to run way.
Finally he just collapsed by the graveside, his knees giving out altogether.
"Come on, Poppy. Get up. We have to go." James was speaking in a gentle, insistent voice, as if he were talking to someone coming out of anesthesia.
Which was exactly how Poppy looked. As Phil watched with fascination and awe and dread, she blinked and rolled her head a little, then opened her eyes. She shut them again almost immediately, but James went on talking to her, and the next time she opened them they stayed open.
Then, with James urging her gently, she sat up. "Poppy, " Phil said. An involuntary outburst. His chest was swelling, burning.
Poppy looked up, then squinted and turned immediately from the beam of the flashlight. She looked annoyed.
"Come on," James said, helping her out of the open half of the casket. It wasn't hard; Poppy was small. With James holding her arm, she stood on the closed half of the casket, and Phil reached into the hole and pulled her up.
Then, with something like a convulsion, he hugged her.
When he pulled back, she blinked at him. A slight frown puckered her forehead. She licked her index finger and drew the wet finger across his cheek.
"You're filthy," she said.
She could talk. She didn't have red eyes and a chalky face. She was really alive.
Weak with relief, Phil hugged her again. "Oh, God, Poppy, you're okay. You're okay."
He barely noticed that she wasn't hugging him back.
James scrambled out of the hole. "How do you feel, Poppy?"
he said. Not a politeness. A quiet, probing question.
Poppy looked at him, and then at Phillip. "I feel ... fine."
"That's good," James said, still watching her as if she were a six-hundred-pound schizophrenic gorilla.
"I feel ... hungry," Poppy said, in the same pleasant, musical voice she'd used before.
Phil blinked.
"Why don't you come over here, Phil?" James said, making a gesture behind him.
Phil was beginning to feel very uneasy. Poppy was ... could she be smelling him? Not loud, wet sniffs, but the delicate little sniffs of a cat. She was nosing around his shoulder.
"Phil, I think you should come around over here," James said, with more emphasis. But what happened next happened too quickly for Phil even to start moving.
Delicate hands clenched like steel around his biceps. Poppy smiled at him with very sharp teeth, then darted like a striking cobra for his throat.
I'm going to die, Phil thought with a curious calm.
He couldn't fight her. But her first strike missed. The sharp teeth grazed his throat like two burning pokers.
"No, you don't," James said. He looped an arm around Poppy's waist, lifting her off Phil.
Poppy gave a disappointed wail. As Phil struggled to his feet, she watched him the way a cat watches an interesting insect.
Never taking her eyes off him, not even when James spoke to her.
"That's your brother, Phil. Your twin brother. Remember?"
Poppy just stared at Phil with hugely dilated pupils. Phil realized that she looked not only pale and beautiful but dazed and starving.
"My brother? One of our kind?" Poppy said, sounding puzzled.
Her nostrils quivered and her lips parted. "He doesn't smell like it."
"No, he's,not one of our kind, but he's not for biting, either.
You're going to have to wait just a little while to feed." To Phillip, he said, "Let's get this hole filled in, fast."
Phillip couldn't move at first. Poppy was still watching him in that dreamy but intense way. She stood there in the darkness in her best white dress, supple as a lily, with her hair falling around her face. And she looked at him with the eyes of a jaguar.