But Weyland finds himself falling in love with Floria (which would spell utter doom for a vampire)-and despite all his efforts to protect himself, this weakness becomes even more pronounced when he takes up residence at a New Mexico college in the novel's final sequence. So the vampire must escape, and, in the third (and best) episode, he desperately tries to save his identity through psychoanalysis with Dr. Section two: a nutty but terribly earnest occultist imprisons the ailing vampire and plans to throw an occult world-festival with Weyland as centerpiece.

And when Weyland, blood-lusting against his better judgment, makes a vampiric play for hearty Katya herself, she shoots him-and wounded Weyland jumps into his Mercedes Benz, driving off to Manhattan to recuperate.

But, in the first of the novel's four tapestry-like mythic episodes, middle-aged Katya de Groot (a South African hunter) sees right through the vampire's facade: she knows he is feeding on his dream subjects. Edward Lewis Weyland, or at least that's the human persona the vampire (the only one in the world) has so studiously assembled: he's professor of anthropology at the Cayslin Center (with its famed dream-research lab), where he maintains a bland, remote exterior so he can ''feed'' without fuss. From the author of superior science fiction (Motherlines, 1978)-a superior, grandly detailed vampire story that takes the torment of its monstrous hero very seriously indeed.

The vampire tapestry