She stopped licking his blood and drew back. But as she did so she swayed dizzily. Foggily she realized it was not him but herself that was lightheaded. It was the marijuana, the cannabis toxin. She had been breathing the smoke since she entered the room, and now she had been ingesting it with his blood, in a form that had already been metabolized by his body.

She was of course far more sensitive to it than he was. And she was losing control. As she reeled away from him, Rankine stood up and took her in his arms. She was powerless to resist. "Ah, Mama Damballah," he said, "You are mine now! It is Rankine's turn."

As Dema's influence faded and he regained control of himself, Rankine sank back into the dream, and Dema was drawn helplessly back into it with him. Once again she was the Jamaican woman, naked body caked with white clay. Rankine lifted her in his arms and carried her to a bed. The frame was rough bamboo, the mattress fresh green hay. He laid her on it, and tied her hands and feet to the corners of the frame with ropes of hemp. Dema remained helpless, her cannabis-clouded mind half believing she was the Jamaican woman. Rankine stood back, and began dancing again. From somewhere the sound of the drum resumed.

Rankine grabbed another chicken, and bit its neck as before. He began spraying mouthfuls of blood over the corners of the bamboo frame, over the ropes that bound her hands and feet, and over her clay-whitened body. He danced around and around the bed, now spreading blood over his own naked torso. His eyes returned to her body again and again. He seemed to be working himself up to a peak of ritual passion, preparing himself for the appropriate moment.

The part of Dema's mind that was still herself struggled against the illusion. Gradually she pushed back the drug-induced fog and recovered awareness of the room. When she did, she found that here, too, she was bound to a bed.

When Dema's shaman power failed, Rankine had regained his control and was able to act in both realities. Here he had bound her hands and feet to the corners of a metal bed frame, not with hemp rope but with steel handcuffs. She had less chance of escape here than in the dream world. Rankine stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at her and softly tapping out the rhythm of his dream dance on the drum. When he saw her eyes on him, Rankine spoke to her. She could not tell which world was more real to him. She was not sure it mattered.

"Damballah Mama, come to give Rankine joy! Welcome to Rankine's place." He put the drum aside and stepped closer to the bed.

Dema was furious with herself for getting into this situation. She tried to summon her shaman dream, but the marijuana was still fogging her mind. Rankine got onto the bed and straddled her legs. He pushed the hem of her dress above her thighs.

Dema fiercely willed the fog to dissipate, to bring her mind back to its normal clarity. She had some success, but still the shaman power would not come. Rankine stroked her thighs with his hands, and said, "Damballah Loa, Rankine has mighty pleasure to give to you. You will thank Rankine, and bless him with your bounty."

These words had the sound of a ritual invocation, intended to secure spiritual cooperation and future good will and protection from the Loa he supposed was present in her body. But the physical act Rankine had in mind did not strike Dema as the essence of spirituality. As he began to open his trousers, she tried again to will herself into the shaman dream. But still it would not come.

Then it was as if Sedna spoke to her. "You cannot force the dream to come. You must relax and open yourself to it. Let it happen, believe it will happen, and it will."

Of course! Against all she knew, she had allowed herself to approach the edge of panic. That had never been the way of the shaman. Rankine had leaned forward, and his hands were next to her shoulders, his face close to hers. She looked up into his eyes, and mentally relaxed.

Instantly the snake dream came. Her hands and feet were gone, and she was free of the handcuffs. She whipped long coils around Rankine's body and held him bound, as helpless now as she had been a moment before. Rankine's eyes widened in utter startlement. Even in his drug dream this was hard for him to encompass.

Without releasing her coils, she dream-shifted her head from snake form back to the face of the Lamia, with its cloud of white hair. She looked Rankine in the eyes, and summoned the shaman dream. Once more inside his mind, she returned him to the jungle scene. Only this time he was the one lying spread-eagled on the rude bed. She made her arms and hands appear, and tied his hands and feet to the bamboo frame with the same hemp ropes he had used on her.

Rising on her tail coils and looking down at him, she said, "It is here you belong, Rankine, here in the islands, not in the big city. Here the Loa spirits will be good to you. In the city, the Lamia will bring you down, very far down. The Lamia does not lightly permit the evil-doer to spill the blood of the innocent."

She backed out of the dream, leaving him deep within it. In the real world, she had bound his hands and feet to the bedposts with the handcuffs. Dema retrieved her dress and slipped it over her head. As it dropped down over her tail coils she dreamed her body back to full human shape. She looked down at Rankine. His eyes were open, but vacant. He had some things to work through before he would come out of the dream.

Dema left the way she had come in, down the back stairs and out the service entrance to her car. She was quite sure that, once again, no one had noticed her. Back in the car, she shifted from the pallor of the Lamia to her normal coloring, and smiled.

As she drove away, she thought of the Damballah woman, body smeared with white clay, snakes coiling around her arms. She wondered at the convergence, the similarity of this aspect of the Loa tradition to the legends of the Lamia. Perhaps, she thought, one of her own ancestral sisters had found her way to Africa in a past age, and the Damballah was an echo of her story. Maybe Sedna would know. She decided to stop at home to change her clothes before going back to the office, and maybe take the time to tell Sedna about this latest strange adventure.