Bobbie was thinking about the boy's hands. They had been covered with cuts and bruises, in the characteristic pattern of defense wounds. She was quite sure he had not died in a construction accident; he had been attacked, and he had held up his bands against his attacker. "Where is this island they've come from?" she asked.

"In the ocean. Perhaps a hundred, hundred and twenty miles offshore," "Pretty far for a resort," she said.

Manuel watched the helicopter. "I hope they never come back."

Well, she thought, at least she had pictures. But when she turned back to the table, she saw that her camera was gone.

The rain finally stopped later that night. Alone in the bedroom behind the clinic, Bobbie thumbed through her tattered paperback Spanish dictionary. The boy had said "raptor," and, despite Manuel's protests, she suspected it was a Spanish word. Sure enough, she found it in her dictionary. It meant "ravisher" or "abductor."

That gave her pause. The sense of the word was suspiciously close to the meaning of hupia. Of course she did not believe in the superstition. And no ghost had cut those hands. What had the boy been trying to tell her?

From the next room, she heard groans. One of the village women was in the first stage of labor, and Elena Morales, the local midwife, was attending her. Bobbie went into the clinic room and gestured to Elena to step outside for a moment.

"Elena…"

"Si, doctor?"

"Do you know what is a raptor?"

Elena was gray-haired and sixty, a strong woman with a practical, no-nonsense air. In the night, beneath the stars, she frowned and said, "Raptor?"

"Yes, You know this word?"

" Si." Elena nodded. "It means… a person who comes in the night and takes away a child."

"A kidnapper?"

"Yes."

"A hupia?"

Her whole manner changed. "Do not say this word, doctor."

"Why not?"

"Do not speak of hupia now," Elena said firmly, nodding her head toward the groans of the laboring woman. "It is not wise to say this word now.

"But does a raptor bite and cut his victims?"

"Bite and cut?" Elena said, puzzled. "No, doctor. Nothing like this. A raptor is a man who takes a new baby." She seemed irritated by the conversation, impatient to end it. Elena started back toward the clinic. "I will call to you when she is ready, doctor. I think one hour more, perhaps two."

Bobbie looked at the stars, and listened to the peaceful lapping of the surf at the shore. In the darkness she saw the shadows of the fishing boats anchored offshore. The whole scene was quiet, so normal, she felt foolish to be talking of vampires and kidnapped babies.

Bobbie went back to her room, remembering again that Manuel had insisted it was not a Spanish word. Out of curiosity, she looked in the little English dictionary, and to her surprise she found the word there, too:

raptor \ n [deriv. of L. raptor plunderer, fr. Raptus]: bird of prey.