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if his heart is destroyed. The heart that keeps his accursed body supplied with human blood. What of his companion, the Frankenstein Monster?”
    “Professor Stevens—” she began, then stopped. Her eyes lowered, though she avoided looking at the corpse. “The late Professor Stevens set him afire on the wharf. His body fell into the sea.”
    “Then the Monster, too, may still be undead.”
    Undead, Joan thought. Dead for centuries. She was accustomed to absolutes like someone being cold dead on the train tracks. Stone dead in a barrel of carp. Dead as a doornail in the plates of a printing press. What this man was saying was unbelievable.
    Yet so was the transformation she had just witnessed. And she had witnessed it. That hadn’t been a hallucination.
    “I came from Europe to destroy Dracula and the Monster but I failed,” Talbot said with disgust. He half-turned toward the laboratory. “All I accomplished was killing more innocent people.”
    The man fell silent. He did not attempt to introduce himself, nor did he ask anything about the man he’d just slaughtered. Except for his one shamed outburst, everything he’d said was about the monsters. His manner only added to the surrealness of what had transpired in here. Waves crashed in the distance. Somewhere off the Florida coast a foghorn sounded. They were Joan’s only contact with the familiar and she concentrated hard on them.
    “Who are you?” Joan asked. “And what—what in God’s name did I just see happen to you?”
    “You don’t know?” the man asked.
    Joan shook her head.
    “But you know about Count Dracula and the Monster.”
    “Not very much,” she said. “And what I know and what I believe are two very different things.”
    “Believe,” the man admonished. “You’ll live longer.”
    The flat conviction in his voice startled her. He wasn’t like the liars and con artists she’d encountered over the years. He wasn’t trying to defend himself. He was trying to protect her.
    The man started walking away from the body. As he circled around, Joan stole a quick look into the foyer—just to make sure she knew where the front door was.
    “Don’t worry,” the man said softly. “I’m not like the creature I become. I’m not going to hurt you.”
    “Then why don’t you just stay where you are and talk?”
    “I wanted to get away from—from what I’ve done,” he said. “So you wouldn’t have to look at it.”
    Joan flushed. “Oh,” she said. “I see. I’m sorry.”
    When the man stopped he was standing to her left, the same distance from her as he was before. He drew his shoulders back and bowed his head slighty. “My name is Lawrence Stewart Talbot. As for what happened to me—” He opened the top buttons of his shirt and exposed the left side of his chest. “Do you see this scar?”
    Joan looked at his pale, beefy, hairless breast. There was a ruddy cross-hatching of scars over the heart. “I see it.”
    “That’s the sign of the pentagram,” said Talbot. “Six years ago I was bitten by a wolf. Only he wasn’t an ordinary wolf. He was a werewolf, a man who becomes a wolf whenever the moon is full. Now there’s a curse upon me. During every full moon I become a wolf. I’m forced to kill.”
    “Forced? By whom?”
    “By some inner beast,” Talbot said. “Yet killing my victims is a mercy.”
    Joan glanced at Professor Stevens then looked away with disgust.
    “I know that sounds horrible,” Talbot admitted. “But if I bite someone who doesn’t die, then they become a werewolf.”
    “I see,” she said. “Just like catching a cold.”
    “Please,” Talbot said. “Don’t make light of the curse, Miss Raymond.”
    “How did you know my name?”
    “Professor Stevens told me. You’re an insurance investigator. He and I were searching for you before the full moon caused my hideous transformation.” He lowered his head. “I didn’t want it to end this way. I’d hoped the two of you could get safely away