Vampire$

Chapter 9

“Until when?” Annabelle asked. Cat saw her face. It looked pale.

“Until…” began Jack, suddenly looking past them across the room to the bar, “a few minutes ago.”

Everyone turned to follow his gaze. Davette recognized the young man standing up from his stool at the corner of the bar, had noticed that old WWII leather flying jacket when they had come in.

But I never would have guessed just by looking at him.

And then she thought, still watching the man approach them; But now that I’ve been told…

Yes. Yes, it’s him. He’s the one who did that.

Felix stopped beside their booth and stared down at Jack Crow. His voice was a harsh bitter crackle.

“Come to bust me at last, Crow?”

Jack’s smile was grim. “It’s worse than that.”

Felix barely nodded. “It would be.”

Chapter 10

Felix led the way up some back stairs to a small one-bedroom apartment and office with a huge picture window of one-way glass overlooking the bar. Felix sat down at his desk with his back to that window, chain-smoking and listening with stony silence as Jack spoke the tale of Vampire$ Inc.

His only discernible reactions came from his face, already thin, which seemed to stretch into a death mask’s gauntness, and from his eyes, already piercing, which became uncomfortable to meet.

Watching him all the while — for no one could take eyes from his steaming intensity — Annabelle could not pin down her feelings. She recognized Felix easily from Jack’s story. The laugh lines were there from the happy drunk who climbed Mexican trees.

And so was the helpless acuity of a man vised so tight he’d had to gun down four friends and a stranger at a kitchen table for a principle.

Eerie, she thought. I don’t know whether to run screaming into the night or pull him into my lap and cuddle him until he can sleep.

Something else bothered her. His few looks away from Jack were at Davette. Everyone else he had dismissed with his first glance. But his face, that rock face, kept coming back to the young journalist. His face did soften, Annabelle thought, when he did this. But damn well not enough for Annabelle.

Not nearly enough.

When Jack had finished, all were quiet for several seconds. Then Felix reached forward and stubbed out his last cigarette. He spoke in a harsh, rasping, bitter voice:

“Get out.”

“Take your band of merry men and your fairy tales and your” — he glanced briefly, painfully, at Davette — “your… siren… and any other reasons you’ve got to get me to do more killing and get the fuck out!”

Team Crow, save for Jack, sat in collective stunned silence. It was absolutely the very last reaction they had expected.

No one had ever turned them down before.

Carl Joplin opened his mouth to speak, to protest, but Felix stood up quickly, cutting him off.

“Now!” he thundered.

They left. Without anyone saying a word, they left, Felix by then standing in the center of the room glaring ferociously at them as they went.

Save for their limo, the street was all but deserted. Jack tapped lightly on the glass and the dozing driver scrambled out to open doors. But for a moment no one moved to get in. They just stood there looking at the night.

“Well,” offered Carl at last, “he was pretty weird for us anyway.”

Jack looked at him and laughed. “Are you kidding, Joplin?” He laughed again. “The man is ours!”

All eyed him warily.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, O Great Leader,” said Carl. “But wasn’t that a ‘no’ he gave us?”

“I’ll correct you,” added Cat. He turned to Jack. “It was, in fact, about the firmest goddamn ‘no’ I’ve ever heard.”

The other three, Annabelle, Davette, Adam, nodded without speaking.

Jack laughed again.

“He’s ours, I tell you. You know what he’ll do? Next time I see him—”

“You’re going to see him again?” asked Annabelle.

“You think that’s wise?” added Davette.

Jack grinned. “Got to. He doesn’t know how to reach us. Anyway, next time I put it to him he’ll demand something outrageous. Money, probably. A hundred grand or the like.” He nodded to the driver who walked around and got behind the wheel. He waved the others into the car. “I’ll agree, we’ll shake hands, and then he’s in. C’mon.”

They obeyed. Reluctantly, suspiciously. When they had all gotten situated, Cat finally spoke up for the rest.

“Bwana? Are you sure we’re all talking about the same dude?”

Everyone smiled.

“How,” Annabelle wanted to know, “can you be so sure, dear? I mean about the money and the rest. Why didn’t he just ask for it tonight?”

He smiled warmly at her. “He was bluffing tonight. Hoping we’d all go away. When it doesn’t work — which he knows damn well it won’t — he’ll just make it tougher on me out of spite. He needs the money as an excuse to give in to himself.”

Everybody thought about that for a second.

Finally, Cat asked, “Are you sure we’re talking about the same dude?”

“Let me tell you something, old buddy,” replied Jack before anyone else could speak. “More than you, more than me, that man was made to do this job.”

He paused, sighed. “Poor bastard.” He looked at the driver. “Hit it.”

If anyone noticed Davette’s furious blushing or triphammer heartbeat they didn’t say anything. Thank God! she thought. Because she couldn’t explain it either. But Lord, what a tug…

Thirty minutes later Felix still stood as he had when they had gone, stiff and silent in the middle of the room.

Why can’t I cry? he thought. And then he thought: I should be allowed to cry.

It isn’t fair.

He had doubted not one word Jack Crow had told him.

That a world existed where vampires really lived was no surprise at all. A world of evil incarnate gnawing men only made sense.

What surprised him was how long it had taken for that world to finally find him and drag him inside.

It’s not fair, he thought. I wanted to do something real.

Lord; but she was beautiful.

Jack Crow, lying sleepy-drunk in the huge bed of the suite’s master bedroom, felt oddly content.

He felt for Felix. He really did. But no more than he did for himself or for Cat. And besides, he’d really meant it when he’d said Felix was made for the job.

Funny, he’d thought of Felix a lot in the years since Mexico but almost never in terms of the killing. It was as if that part of Felix, that killing part, had been kept under the surface. Or in his dreams. Or something.

He rolled over on his side and scrunched his pillow better. He loved these pillows. Not the usual hard-as-a-rock hotel pillows. Made to last a lifetime and probably float until help came. “Ladies and gentlemen, should we experience turbulence and the hotel begin to sink, your flotation device is found under your bedspread…”

Ha. Yep, Felix was the right move. Silver bullets was the right move. And for the first time he was able to think back to the night of the massacre with something less than bone-grinding anguish, something more than impotent horror. Now it was something like: Gotcha, bastards. Gotcha! Right where I — And then he remembered for the first time… No, not the first time. He’d always remembered that. But he’d never thought of it, never really seen it, but it had happened, not once but three times. God! Three times it had done it. Three times! Three times!

The fiend roaring out of the motel and them jammed in the sheriff’s truck — Three times…

And hauling ass down the highway leaving David and Anthony and the priest and the slaughtered whores and it had come down the highway after them — Three times..

And it had caught them, actually caught them, and leapt onto the goddamned truck and then had done it again before it smashed through the back windshield and he’d blown that hole in its face.

Three times.

The vampire had called his name three times.

Jack Crow sat up in bed and his face was pale in the dark and he trembled and sweated and was as scared as he’d ever been in his life.

The vampire had known his name.

It had known him.

It knew me. Hell! It… It.

It knows me. It’s still alive!

His eyes darted to the curtained window.

Does it know where I am?

And he sat there, for hours, trying to think how such a thing could be and what it meant and… and.

And I don’t even have my crossbow. It’s at the house.

But even if I did, what difference would it make? It’s night.

It’s night and dark and you can’t kill them at night anyway.

At least, no one ever has.

But what if it comes for me right now? What if it comes for all of us? Cat! And Annabelle! Oh, God! Annabelle.

He started to get up and race into the other rooms and gather everyone up and they could run, get out of the hotel and — And what? And go where? With what plan? He lay back down in the bed and did an amazing thing, something only one of his breed could have done. He thought: I’m tired and drunk and I will not think about this now. Fuck it.

Then he rolled back over on his side and went to sleep.

And the next morning, right on cue, the phone finally rang.

Chapter 11

Cat was having a very weird day.

He sat there in the bishop’s office between Father Adam and Jack and decided their new client, who was a Mrs. Tammy Hughes and who was also the mayor of Cleburne, Texas, was just a little too cheerful for this tale she had to tell.

And that was pretty weird.

Then there was the tale itself, all about half-formed goons (they couldn’t be full vampires yet from her peeling-cheek description) stomping around the downtown Cleburne square chewing on people. The local police had tried to help, emptying magnum after magnum into those decomposing husks, and the goons had noticed it — roaring and spinning in pain — but had not stopped feeding. The only injuries were to the victims, who were dragged brutally away into an abandoned department store warehouse across from the county courthouse. The cops had cordoned the area off.

And that was pretty weird, too. Cat had never heard of ’em being that obvious before. And besides, where was the master vampire during all of this? It was almost as if they were trying to advertise.

Naw. That was too weird.

And then of course there was Jack, who looked like hell and acted worse. Cat thought he hadn’t slept the night before, and knew damn well something was bothering him, but when he tried to get to it, Jack told him to leave him alone.

And that was weirdest of all.

Cat glanced casually to his side and eyed Jack once more. He really looks awful sitting there with his neck crammed down in his shoulders and his throat pulsing hard. He looks like… I dunno. Like he’s…

Scared.

Holy shit! What’s going down here?

All Adam felt was admiration at Jack’s full and complete concentration. He didn’t read Jack’s fear, couldn’t have through the haze of his own.

Here I go at last, he thought.

Jack listened to the rest and then got them out of there and back to the suite at the Adolphus. He didn’t speak during the drive and didn’t answer questions. He glanced occasionally at the rest of the team while Cat relayed what had happened in the bishop’s office but he looked away when they looked back.

It was a trap. And he didn’t know how to tell them. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t…

He didn’t know.

He excused himself about the time they got down to making plans for the job in Cleburne the next morning. He couldn’t think, couldn’t focus, couldn’t face them. He went to the bathroom and closed the door and lit a cigarette and just sat there and feared.

Three years at this. Three years and eighteen straight pits wiped clean. All of it dangerous. All of it bloody. All of it awful. And certain death hanging around all along.

But now it’s not a matter of blowing up buildings in broad daylight. Now it’s a matter of staying alive through the next night anywhere in the world.

Because if they know me, they can find me.

Shit.

And if they know me and find me they can set me up tn Cleburne, Texas, and that’s exactly what they’ve done and there’s not one thing in the world I can do about it.

Because we still have to go. It’s what we do. It’s where the vampires are.

I wonder if—

There was a tap-tap-tap on the bathroom door and be heard Cat’s voice saying it was the mayor on the phone and did Jack want to take the call? Jack frowned. Hell, he didn’t even know the mayor. What was his name? Goldblatt, or something? And then he realized the mayor Cat meant. Her, that Cleburne mayor. Calling him. Knowing where to call.

He got up and dropped his cigarette in the bowl and flushed it because he didn’t want the rest of them to know he was only in there to be a chickenshit and then he strolled into the main living room of the suite with all eyes on him and picked up the receiver.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Crow?” asked that same too-country voice.

“Yes.”

“Mr. Crow, I hate to disturb you at home. Or at your hotel, I mean. Or do you live there?”

So. You wanna know where I live do you?

“I live here.”

“Oh. Well, I should think you’d want to live with the rest of your employees. Your team, is it?”

“We all live here.”

“I see.”

“Miz Hughes, did you call for a reason?”

“Oh, yes. It’s about your check for $50,000…”

“What about it? I told you we don’t work without half up front.”

“Oh, I know, I know. I understand. I wasn’t complaining. You’ll get your check tonight as we agreed.”

“Then what’s the point?”

“Well, I just thought that I could bring it over instead of using a messenger.”

“Okay. Come on over.”

“Oh. Well, I couldn’t do it right now. I’ve got some… well, some shopping to do in town first. I so rarely get to come to Dallas. But being a man I don’t think you’d understand. Anyway, I just wondered if you were going to be there when I finished so I could give you the check personally.”

“When would that be?”

“Oh, I don’t know. About nine o’clock?”

“Would that be all right?”

What Jack wanted to say was:

Let’s get this straight, bitch. First you wanna know where we’re gonna be after sundown because, while there are ghouls slaughtering your citizens in your courthouse square every night, you’re gonna take the time to pick up some pantyhose?

Right.

But what he said was: “We’ll be here,” and the both of them hung up with the mayor adding how anxious she was to meet the rest of the team.

There was a mirror on the wall over the table holding the phone and Jack Crow stared at his reflection in it, stared at it good and hard until some things fell away and some others came clear to him again.

“Asshole,” he whispered angrily at the face.

It was time to be a leader. So do some leader-type shit for a change, you whining bastard!

Rock and roll!

He spun around and there they all were, his team, watching and waiting and wondering what was going on.

He didn’t tell them — this was his burden, godammit!

He gave them orders instead.

Get out. Get all the stuff you can carry easily and walk out of the hotel. Don’t check out or in any way hint that you’re not coming back soon. Women, take the limo.

Gents, I want you all to…

“Carl? What’s the range on that detector? Can you put the sensor in one spot and have it ring or whatever someplace else?”

Carl shrugged. “If it’s not too far.”

“How about from this room to a truck parked down on the street?”

“Sure. I… Hey! What’s going on?”

“Shaddup. Annabelle, take Davette and go to the Seven-Eleven on, I dunno, Mockingbird and Central, and get the number of the last pay phone in the row and start calling it after sundown every half hour. Don’t stop moving except to do that. Adam? You go with them. Make sure they call from a different spot each time. In fact, you do the calling. Don’t let them outta the car and don’t let the driver stop the motor. You hear?”

Adam nodded. “Yessir.”

“All right. Let’s go, folks. Now. The rest of us have got weapons to collect.”

No one moved. Then Annabelle stood up and faced him.

“Jack, I want to know what’s going on!” Her voice sounded frightened.

Jack regarded her calmly. “I don’t blame you. Get moving.”

“But I…”

“Woman! This is not a debate! Move!”

They moved.

At a quarter to nine their Chevy Suburban slid silently to the downtown curb. Cat was at the wheel. Jack sat beside him in the front seat, the crossbow between them. In the back seat Carl sat fiddling with his gadget.

Jack rolled his window down and began to chain-smoke and told the others to shut the fuck up until he said otherwise. They shut up.

At 8:54, on the dot, the detector went off like a fire bell. Carl and Cat jumped about a foot apiece. Jack just nodded to himself, a grim smile on his face.

“What,” asked Cat, staring up at the hotel, “does all this mean?”

Jack Crow took his eyes from the building and faced him.

“Rock and roll. Same as always. Only more so. Hit it.”

They made their connection at the phone outside the Seven-Eleven. Crow told Adam where to meet them, hung up, got back into the Suburban, and ordered Cat to drive to the Antwar Saloon.

Cat did so. But nervously, with difficulty. For he found it hard to take his eyes from Jack Crow, whose silently roaring presence filled the cab.

Jack stomped through the saloon doors with Cat and Carl trailing him. He hushed the waitress who tried to bar their ascent to Felix’s apartment. They found him at his desk beside the widow overlooking the bar. He had seen them coming.

Now he rose, frowning. “Look, Crow. I—”

“Cut the shit, Felix!” snapped Crow, striding toward him.

“But I—”

Jack’s fist slamming onto the desktop sounded like a thunderclap. It made the lamp jump.

“I said cut the shit! There’s no time!”

And it was suddenly very quiet. Slowly, Crow sat down in the visitor’s chair. Just as slowly, Felix sat down in his own. They both lit cigarettes.

Then Jack leaned forward and told Felix what was what. In a calm, deliberate tone he explained about having to go to Cleburne, Texas, in the morning to fight vampires who not only knew they were coming but had arranged the trap just for them. Cat and Carl, standing by the door, exchanged pale glances.

“What do you mean it’s a trap?” Cat interrupted.

Jack didn’t bother to turn around. “Think back, Cherry. He called my name when he chased the truck.”

Cat blinked, thought back, went suddenly more pale.

“My God,” he whispered, almost to himself.

Felix listened without a sound, looking tight and grim and dark through the smoke, as Jack finished his monologue.

Jack was quiet for several seconds after he’d finished. Then he leaned backward in his chair and held out his hand. After a second Carl reached into a pocket and brought out a slim wooden box. Jack took the box without looking at Carl. He flipped the lid open and slid the box across the smooth desktop.

The silver bullets gleamed brightly in the light from the lamp.

“You still use a Browning nine-millimeter?” he asked gently.

Felix was staring at the bullets. He nodded. Then he looked up at Crow. “But I don’t own one,” he added hopefully.

Jack smiled. He snapped his fingers above his head. Cat stepped forward carrying a canvas bag. From inside he took and unwrapped from cloth three automatics and laid them heavily on the wood-grained desktop.

Then he stepped back.

Felix stared at the guns. He rose slowly, put his hands in his pockets, and stepped over to the window and gazed blankly down. No one spoke, watching him.

“I want fifty thousand,” he said after a while.

“Done.”

Felix nodded, looking miserable. Then he stepped to his phone and picked up the receiver. He pushed a button. Faintly, they heard the buzz of the phone at the bar below.

“Where? Felix. You’ll have to take over for a couple of days. Yes. Yes… No, I’m fine. Fine.”

Felix hung up. He stared through the window a few seconds longer. Then he lit a cigarette and put his free hand back in his pocket. When he turned back to them he said, “I meant it about the fifty grand.”

Jack Crow’s laugh was strong and loud and pure. He jumped to his feet and clapped his hands.

“I oughta charge you!” He stepped to the center of the room and raised his fist into the air. “Don’t you feel it? You’re about to go fight evil. Real live goddamned evil. The real stuff. You get to fight for the good side. How many people ever get a chance to do that?” He laughed again, strode to Felix, and shook his fist under his face. “Don’t you feel it?”

Felix stared at him in amazement. He laughed shortly, shook his head.

Damned if I don’t, he thought with astonishment. A little.

“Well, I do!” cried Cat from behind them. And he found himself grinning wildly. The Return of Jack Crow, he thought to himself, starring Jack Crow.

He turned to Carl.

“Rock and roll!”

Carl smiled crazily back. “Rock and roll,” he echoed.

Felix peered incredulously at the other three. “I must be crazy!”

Jack laughed again. “You really think that?”

Felix didn’t answer. But he really did think that. He shook his bead again. This time they didn’t even need that girl, he thought.

And then he thought: I wonder what her name is?

He looked at Crow & Co., still bright and vibrant and ready.

I wonder if I’ll live long enough to find out?

Chapter 12

When he saw Jack Crow striding across the courthouse square — coming to get him — Felix turned and bent his head to light a cigarette and hide his screaming fear.

Crow was wearing full-length chain mail that covered everything from the soles of his boots to the top of his head with just the oval for his face left exposed. Around his waist was a thick black utility belt. Across his chest was a great white cross.

He does look like a crusader, thought Felix. Even if the chain mail was some high-tech plastic instead of steel and even if the cross was an electric halogen spotlight.

A crusader… I’ve got to get away from this man.

He had actually started to turn and walk away, when he remembered. He had taken the money. He had signed up. He was in.

They had him.

And all those periodic nightmares throughout his young life, thirty years of them, wrapped tight around his brain.

There had been no pattern to their details. Always a different setting and always a different enemy. But the endings were identical. Too many of them coming at him too fast, overwhelming him, besieging him in some claustrophobic no-exit room or with his back to some crumbling cliff or steaming quicksand or…

Or whatever. No way out. Too much evil. Coming too fast.

He would awake screaming with the feel of evil still ripping at his throat. And he would stay up all night drinking and trembling and trying to convince himself it was only a dream.

But he had always known better somehow. Always.

And now he looked down at his own little crusader outfit and he knew the dream had come to him at last and he knew he was going to die and he had never known such utter paralyzing terror.

He had thought he could handle it. It was his time, so what? Everybody dies, right? Right? Be cool. Stoic. That’s a good word.

Stoic for shit.

He turned back to face Crow, who stopped a step away and stood and eyed him carefully.

“All set?” he asked.

Felix just stared. What the hell does he expect me to say?

Crow read the look, nodded, dropped his eyes. Then he turned and looked across the street at the shuttered building that was their target.

“Okay,” said Crow, still eyeing the building, “we’ll be going in in a few minutes.”

He paused a moment, then looked Felix in the eye. “Right?”

Felix wanted to spit. Instead he sighed and nodded.

Crow strode over to where Joplin and Cat stood talking to the chief of police and some others on the courthouse steps.

The courthouse steps.

Not even a hundred yards, thought Felix. More like seventy. Or fifty.

And he turned around and around, sweeping over the empty setting where only a handful of people, most of them uniformed, remained inside the police cordon. The shops were all closed up. There was no traffic on the streets. And it was quiet.

And none of that mattered. This place still looked just like what it had always been: the safest place in the world.

Felix had spent most of his life in cities. But he had been brought up in a place just like this one and he knew what it was. It was the place the small-town world came together to buy and sell and laugh and joke and record deeds and vote and pay fines and see each other again today just like the days before and the days to come and it was safe, dammit! Safe! Maybe boring and maybe (certainly) provincial and maybe a lot of other things. But safe is what it was first.

Felix stared at the flagpole atop the courthouse building. As a boy he had been taught to walk toward that if he got lost from his parents while shopping. Taught to go there and go to the front steps and sit down and wait and not cry — don’t worry — Mother and Daddy would soon come to find him and “you’ll be safe there, son.”

During the last three nights at least six people had been slaughtered there in full view of the police, dragged screaming and pleading into the only abandoned building by hulking drooling ghouls. Usually the monsters howled when the worthless bullets and shotgun pellets slammed into them. Sometimes they didn’t. But they never stopped, except to turn and hiss, their new yellow-gray fangs glistening red in the squad cars’ whirling lights.

The only policemen to go in there after them were still in there.

Felix finished his cigarette and dropped the butt onto the sidewalk and flattened it with a chain-mailed boot and then stood there bent over and staring until the last mote of glowing coal went out.

He sat in the motorhome, at the little table in the motorhome, a cigarette burning in the ashtray next to his chain-mailed elbow, an untouched plastic glass of ice tea next to that, while Cat, also in chain mail, paced clinking back and forth amid the weapons, speaking with his hands and trying to…

Trying to what? Felix wondered idly, as if from a great distance, suddenly realizing that he had been so preoccupied with his own sense of dread and impending doom that he had not really been listening at all. He had nodded a few times when that felt polite, but he could not imagine, quite frankly, what Cat could possibly have to say that mattered. Except…

Except to say they had decided to call it off.

Felix drew out of his horror just far enough to find if that was it.

It wasn’t. It was… Well, now, Felix wasn’t absolutely sure what it was. But it seemed that Cat was trying to convince him that vampires were real so he wouldn’t be shocked or something when he saw them. Something about the difference between knowing something was so in your mind and feeling it was so in your gut.

Or something. It sounded to Felix like the standard lecture to new recruits and that was okay by him. As long as he was sitting in this motorhome getting a lecture he wasn’t stepping into that building across the street. He wasn’t in danger. He wasn’t fighting monsters or being ripped apart by their fangs, which Felix had no trouble whatsoever believing in from his brain to his gut to his trembling fingers raising a cigarette to his lips.

So he just watched Cat pacing and talking and he looked about the trailer at the simple little meaningless items he might never see again after an hour, a bottle of scotch with the label torn, a fast-food carry-out sack, a cheap ballpoint pen with its cap all chewed up poking out of a rent in the carpet under the driver’s seat, and he stared at these things, reveled in these things, rather than think about what was about to happen.

Anything but that.

I-don’t-want-to-die-here he mouthed silently without realizing it.

About then Cat wrapped up his agitated presentation with a rousing clap of his hands.

“Okay?” he asked Felix excitedly.

Felix, who had no notion what the question was about, looked the other man in the eye.

“Okay,” he replied dully.

Carl Joplin opened the outer door of the motorhome and stuck his head inside.

“Father Adam’s ready,” he said.

Cat nodded to him. “Okay,” he said.

Carl nodded in return and disappeared again, closing the door behind him.

Felix looked questioningly at Cat.

“Mass,” Cat explained.

Felix nodded. “Oh.”

Felix believed.

He knelt in the courthouse parking lot with the others while Adam, high-mass robes covering his own chain mail, conducted the service and he believed.

In God. In Jesus. In the vampires waiting across the road. In ’most everything around him. He believed the police standing over there in that little group were not going to help them. He believed the crew standing beside their ambulance were not going to save him. He believed this was all a trap, as Jack Crow had told him.

He believed he was going to die.

He even believed in their gear. He figured the chain mail would slow ’em down. A little. And be believed Holy Blessed silver bullets might slow ’em down. A little. And when Carl had ringed the buildings with his little detectors and turned them on, Felix believed the instant clanging alarm was, in fact, caused by the presence of vampires within the building. He believed his radio headset would enable Carl Joplin to hear his death shrieks.

He even believed in the Plan. At least, that it was a good Plan. And he turned his unseeing eyes away from the young priest and focused once more on the electric winch with its huge spool of cable and decided once again that Jack had had an inspired idea here.

Forbidden by the city powers to destroy a downtown building with explosives, which is what he would have preferred, Jack Crow had given up on the idea of trying to kill the goons while they were in the building itself. Too dark in there. Too many teeth. Too much to go wrong too fast.

No. Jack’s plan was to get them outside, where the sunlight would do the work, and that’s where the winch came in. Jack was going to fire that massive crossbow through a ghoul’s chest, wait a second for the barbs to get lodged tight, then holler on the radio for Carl Joplin to start the winch pulling that long cable attached to the crossbow bolt, and with it the ghoul, right through the front doors of the building into the sunlight to burn.

Then Adam was to grab the cable and bring it back inside to attach it to another one of Jack’s bolts. It was Cat’s job to keep the monsters off Jack in the meantime. Felix was supposed to back up Cat.

Felix believed it was a good Plan.

He didn’t believe it was going to work.

And he caught himself mouthing those words again.

Then the mass was over. They stood. It was time.

“Rock and roll!” barked Jack fiercely.

Felix stared at him. Then he took his position beside the others. He took several deep breaths, heard the others do the same. There was a brief distraction when some new cop type, a young redheaded man wearing a different kind of uniform, appeared beside the other cops and began arguing loudly with them.

Too late, thought Felix. Nothing that could be said or argued or written out or screamed was going to stop this thing.

Jack gave the signal and the four men stepped through the doorway into the dark.

Cooler in here, he thought before the stench hit him and he thought God — my God, what is that awful… Oh my God is that them? Is that the vampires? And he started to reach down and turn on the halogen cross so he could see, see what was making that awful smell, but then he remembered they weren’t supposed to turn on their crosses because that would drive the monsters back and they wanted them coming, coming at them, for chrissakes, and Felix thought of that idea and wondered if Jack Crow was completely and totally insane — Let’s get the hell out of here!

And then the lanterns came on beside him, one in Jack’s hand and one in Adam’s. Jack moved off to the right to place his and Felix heard his hard voice calmly instructing the priest to place his lantern farther to the left to give a wider range of view and everything seemed to be whizzing around Felix, his ears thumping and throbbing with his pulse and the slightest sound amplified in that cavernous dusty cement floor with the walls all torn out before remodeling and only the fifty-year-old support posts left spaced every dozen paces like a checkerboard and… Oh, yes! There in the dust in front of him he saw the sliding footprints going this way and that and crossing back over one another.

Oh, yeah. Somebody’s been walking around in here. A lot of somebodies. A lot of somethings…

Damn-damn-damn, he couldn’t seem to get set, couldn’t seem to get placed, like he was always leaning backward ready to run but he wasn’t going to run, was he? So why not just get set and placed or at least reach down and get your weapon in your hand…?

But he couldn’t even do that. He knew he was wearing guns but he couldn’t remember exactly where they were on his body and the notion of taking his eyes off the shadows for even a split second to find them, and having some fiend bolt at him slavering from out of the dark while he was looking down…

No. He couldn’t move.

He was frozen, staring wildly into the darkness, gasping dry-mouthed and waiting to die.

Then BEEP… and Felix jumped a foot in the air before he remembered it was the vampire detector Joplin had given them to take inside. The others had bells on them but Joplin had converted this one to have one of those smug little electronic BEEPS.

“Cat!” growled Crow harshly in Felix’s headset. “Turn that down.”

“Right, bwana” was the calm reply and in the corner of one eye Felix saw the blond silhouette in the right-side lantern bend to work the controls.

“More, dammit!” snarled Crow.

“‘More’ it is,” replied Cat in the same tone. Beep… Beep… Beep…

“How’s that?” asked Cat.

“It’s okay,” said Crow.

Beep… Beep… Beep… Felix hated it.

Beep… Beep… Beep…

Felix hated it because he knew what it meant.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The faster it beeped the closer came those.

Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep

“Okay, sports fans,” whispered Cat, peering into the darkness directly in front of him, “here we go.”

She was fresh from the grave and slivers of skin peeled and curled at the corners of eyes glowing a red so bloody and deep they seemed almost black. Not yet a full vampire, but no longer a corpse — and totally unaware of self. She was no longer a she either, Felix knew. She was just a thirst-thing and he could by God feel her smelling the blood pulsing in their veins. And she came at them, came at them and it seemed she moved so damned fast though he knew it was just a lurching, dragging, walk.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

“Cat,” ordered Jack calmly, stepping in front of her and raising his crossbow, “shut that damned thing off.”

“Yes, bwana,” replied Cat serenely and in a moment all was quiet.

Except for the sound of the creature dragging itself on grave-rotted feet toward Jack.

And then the deep THONG of the crossbow and the awful punching crunch as the massive arrow split the woman’s chest cavity and cracked out her back.

The impact drove her backward several feet, arms flung outstretched, but somehow she remained upright.

Felix stared in horror. My God! The damn thing splitting her is as big as she is and it didn’t even knock her down!

And for just an instant some deep adult in him was outraged, offended at such defiance. And he saw himself drawing and firing and plunging silver bullets into her throat — But he couldn’t move. He was gone. He couldn’t handle this.

He just stood and stared and trembled as the woman thirst-thing reacted to the agony of impalement with maniacal frenzy, her eyes bugging, her mouth barking shrieks and howls, her vile matted hair whipping thin cuts into her moldering cheeks. Something oozed thickly from the wound. But even in the uncertain light Felix could tell it wasn’t blood. The only blood came from the red flecks that spat forth from the howling, crumpled mouth.

“Hit it, Carl,” ordered Jack into his radio headset.

The cable attached to the arrow went instantly taut. The woman, still howling and warping in pain, fell forward onto the dusty cement as the cable began to drag her writhing toward the exit. She didn’t want to go. She fought the shaft of the huge arrow, she scratched sparks on the concrete floor. She howled and spat some more. But she went.

“Adam,” chided Crow gently, “you want to get the door now?”

The young priest unfroze himself from the sight, nodded, and all but tripped over himself in his hurry to obey.

She went to something beyond hideous when the sunlight struck her. Felix had never heard anything like those screams, had never seen anything like that blurred, vibrating frenzy.

And that fire, those bursting flames that erupted from deep inside her skin as if they were being blown outward by some fierce vindicatory pressure. The flames didn’t look real. They looked like dozens of tiny acetylene torches rocketing out of her.

The cable was relentless as it dragged her through the double doors of the building, across the sidewalk, and into the street. Felix hadn’t realized he was following her until he saw the others closing in to stare.

They were all there. The cops. The local powers. That mayor, Tammy Something, was there. They had left their police barricades and their whispering cliques and everything else and rushed forward to stare.

The screams abruptly ceased, so suddenly it made every-one jump. And then the flame itself began to shrink, as if curling its fuel into a little circle. The thing in the flame was no longer recognizable as anything but a roaring blue-and-white fire. There came a loud hissing sound, as though gas was escaping.

Then sparks. Then a loud pop.

Then the flame was gone. Everything was gone save for a foot-wide circle of ashes.

And still nobody moved. They just stared.

“Supernatural,” said Jack Crow gently from just behind Felix.

Felix turned and looked at him.

Crow was smiling grimly. “Supernatural,” he said again in the same gentle tone. “Supernatural. Not of this earth.” He stepped over to the circle of ashes and looked down. “Evil. Satanic.” He looked at Felix, then kicked the ashes with his boot. “Damned, Felix. Big Time Evil.” He kicked at the ashes again. They were extremely fine and they scattered easily in the soft breeze. Crow lit a cigarette and stared some more at Felix before speaking in that same easy tone:

“But we can kill ’em, Felix. We can kill ’em. We just killed this one and we’re about to go back in there and kill the rest.” Crow looked past Felix. “Right, people?” he called.

“Right, bwana!”

“Yes, sir!”

“Hell, yes!” sang out from behind Felix, from Cat, Adam, and Carl Joplin respectively.

Felix turned around to see them all watching him just as: “Go get ’em!” sounded out from an unknown source.

It was the redhead Felix had noticed earlier arguing with the other policemen, the one wearing a different type of uniform. He stood there holding his fist in the air like a cheerleader.

Team Crow stared blankly at him. They were used to being alone. The last thing in the world they expected was local support. The redhead took their stares as hostility — or worse, scorn. His face turned as red as his hair.

Jack saved him. “Who the hell are you?”

The redhead pulled himself up straight. “Deputy Kirk Thompson, sir.”

Crow smiled. The kid — he couldn’t have been over twenty-five — had managed to give the impression he had saluted without actually doing it.

“Who called the sheriff’s department?” asked Crow.

The deputy seemed confused. “No one had to, sir. This courthouse is our headquarters. Nobody called the sheriff,” he added meaningfully, looking around at the locals who were watching. “And I think he’s going to want to know why when he comes back.”

Jack grinned. “Could be. Hang around, deputy. We’ll talk later.”

“Yes, sir. Is there anything I can do now?”

Jack frowned. Where was this kid yesterday so he would at least have had a chance to train him? Or get him some chain mail anyway. No. He might need him after all, shorthanded as they were. But stupid, criminal, to risk him now.

He shook his head. “Not right now,” he told the deputy. “Though I’d appreciate it if you’d stick close to Carl there.” And he gestured toward Joplin, who still stood beside his winch.

“Yeah, come over here, deputy,” said Joplin with a knowing look to Crow. “We’ll talk a bit.”

Crow started back to his team but stopped. The spectators, the policemen, and the mayor’s people were still standing there watching. Some still hadn’t taken their eyes off the pile of ashes at Jack’s feet. Some looked a little stunned. The mayor’s party looked scared.

Scared we’ll lose or scared we’ll win? he wondered to himself.

But he had no time for them.

“Something I can do for you?” he asked harshly.

No one replied or even met his eyes. Instead they faded back to the sidewalk across the street under the courthouse. The policemen went back to their barricades, looking uncertain and uneasy.

Crow felt the urge to go talk to those cops, to find out what the mayor had told them, to get them on his side, to.

But his team was waiting. This was no time to take a time out and have them lose their edge. He picked up another arrow for the crossbow and joined Cat, Adam, and Felix, who stood by the curb in front of the target.

“Okay, people,” he said, kneeling down to arm his weapon, “huddle up.”

And so he set about firing them up to go in again. He made his voice strong and confident and, as always, sounding that way to others made it seem that way to himself. He made a change in the Plan. They were originally supposed to wait inside while Adam fetched out another cable and loaded crossbow, but Felix had led them all outside, staring at the dying monster. Crow made a joke about Felix changing the schedule, but while the others smiled, Felix didn’t even seem to get it.

Felix didn’t seem to be getting much of anything, come to think of it. And while Crow sounded strong and confident for the others and himself, a gnawing fear tried to grow in him that Felix wasn’t going to cut it. He was just going to stand there in a petrified daze and if something went wrong and they needed his gun… Or worse, somebody would have to save him and while they were worrying about Felix they wouldn’t be worrying about themselves and…

No, dammit! No! Felix will come out of it. Felix will come through. He will. He will. After a couple of kills, after he sees the fiends aren’t invincible, he’ll be all right. He will. He will!

He must.

And with that Jack Crow stopped worrying about it and concentrated instead on psyching everyone else up. He did a good job. By the time they re-entered the building and got set up between their lanterns and had the detector going Beep-Beep-Beep again, they were ready. And by the time the second goon appeared, a spindly middle-aged man with his throat still jaggedly gashed from his murder, Crow just knew they could pull this off.

And at first it was just the little things that started to go wrong.

Chapter 13

First the cable to the crossbow fouled. Jack had just lifted the weapon and prepared to fire when he realized he had no slack. He called Joplin on the radio to find the trouble and then stood there with the others, waiting for a reply, as the second fiend lumbered slowly toward them.

It had almost reached the left lantern when Joplin called back that he knew where the trouble was, that the cable had snagged in the doorjamb, that he would have to open the door to fix it. Jack sighed and cursed, then ordered the others back to the doorway.

He had to call Felix’s name twice. The man seemed to be mesmerized by the sight of the ragged tissue on the goon’s neck.

So they all faded back to the door and stood there, intermittently blinded by periodic bursts of harsh Texas sunlight, as Joplin fiddled with the door.

The repair took five minutes.

It made sense to keep the detector on, standing there blind as they were. But it was unlikely anything would attack them in that glare of sunlight either. And by the time the detector had gone from BEEP-BEEP-BEEP to beep… beep… beep, showing the second monster had retreated, Jack couldn’t stand that sound anymore. He reached over to the machine in Cat’s hands and snapped it off with an angry flourish.

“All set,” announced Joplin, sticking his head inside.

“Good news,” replied Cat wryly. “Now maybe you can fix this.”

And he held up the detector to show where Jack had broken the switch off.

So they had to stand there blind some more while Joplin, wearing a miner’s light on his head, replaced the toggle switch with a paper clip and wire.

That took another five minutes.

Jack was not in a good mood by the time they had resumed their stations behind the two lanterns. The delays had lost them their stride. His team looked jumpy-except for Felix, who looked paralyzed — and he wasn’t feeling so hot either.

And he couldn’t stand that goddamned beeping.

But the detector was doing its job. The beeps got closer and closer just as before, and when they reached the previous interval, the goon reappeared, this time from the right side. Cat’s side.

“Okay, people,” ordered Jack, lifting the crossbow, “get set.”

It was about then that the right-side lantern began to flicker.

“Shit!” hissed Jack and he lowered the crossbow and stared with the rest of the team as the light blinked on and off. The only movement was from the goon. It was now only twenty feet away. And coming steadily.

Jack didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to fight in the dark. But he didn’t want to have to start everything up again. And besides, dammit, this was just a little short one!

“Cat!” he barked angrily. “Fix that light!”

Cat, whose mechanical ineptitude was legendary, just stared back and said, “How?”

“I don’t know, dammit! Fiddle with it.”

Cat hesitated. The goon was now only fifteen feet away.

“And hurry!” snarled Jack.

Cat nodded. “Right!” And he rushed forward and bent down over the flickering lantern.

“Well?” demanded Crow a few seconds later. The goon was now only a dozen feet — six shuffling steps — away. And whenever the lamp would flicker, it would seem to disappear completely. It was unnerving.

“Well?” repeated Jack, louder than before.

“I don’t believe it,” replied Cat excitedly.

“What?” cried Jack, concerned.

“I think I can fix it!”

“Huh?” replied Jack dully, still staring at the shuffling monster coming closer.

“I really think I can. It’s just the bulb, I think.”

The goon was now less than ten feet away. Only it didn’t really seem to be moving toward Cat. More toward Jack, who stood in the center of the formation.

But no. Too tight. Too close.

“Cat!, Bring the light over here and fix it.”

“No. Just a sec. I’ve got it.”

“Cat! Get over here!”

“Would you shut up a minute? I know I can… Yeah. Here. I’ve got it!”

And the lantern went completely dark.

“Cat!”

No answer.

“Cat! What are you doing?” yelled Adam, who had managed to be quiet until now.

But still, no answer.

“Adam! Hit your chest lamp. That’ll..

“That’ll drive ’em away, bwana!” snapped Cat, sounding. irritated.

“Cat!” yelled Crow, relieved. “Come on…”

“Quiet, dammit! I’ve got it fixed. Here!”

And the light came on and the monster’s gnarled hand closed on Cat’s throat and the gray teeth came flashing down and Cat yelled, “Jesus!” and tried to pull away but the monster had him and Jack jerked the crossbow into aim and fired from the hip and the great arrow cracked into its chest and it shrieked and vibrated and jolted into the air but it still held Cat, who flopped and jounced about in its grip like a rag doll and Jack called out for Adam and Felix to come and help because he knew Cat would never survive that pounding.

Adam was already on his way, rushing forward with his pike in his hand, calling out, “Cat! Cat!” But he never made it. He was only a few strides away when the monster leapt and howled once more and the long cable warped through the air like a jump rope and cracked Adam full force on his left temple, spinning him upside down through the air and smashing him hard onto the dusty cement.

Jack saw Adam move out of the corner of his eye and knew he was all right, just stunned, but that didn’t matter now. Adam couldn’t help them.

“Felix!” cried Jack. “Felix!”

But Felix just stood there unmoving, staring at the sight, not even acknowledging Jack’s voice.

When Jack reached them, Cat was barely conscious. He doubted the vampire was even aware of its prey as it lurched and cried in the agony of impalement. But it still held Cat, tossing him this way and that in its pain. Jack had no idea how to get Cat loose.

He took a deep breath and threw himself forward, tackling them both to the floor.

It made it worse. The vampire might have forgotten it held Cat, but it sure as hell noticed Jack. It hissed and spat and struck fangs at him like a snake. Only Cat’s grip on its jagged throat kept the gray teeth from Jack’s face. And when one of the gnarled hands loosed itself from Cat to grab at him, Jack had about half a second of triumph before he felt that awesome vise-grip on his arm. And he punched and kicked at the monster to free himself but he was as helpless as Cat, who, crazily, still held on to the light.

“Felix!” hollered Jack desperately. “FELIX!” as the three of them bounced and crashed and hissed and punched, with the lantern throwing shadows through the dust.

There was a sharp tug as the winch came on and began to drag them toward the doorway. At first Jack was delighted — the sunlight would kill it — and then he remembered how it would die and how hot those flames would be.

“No!” he cried into his headset. “Carl! Turn it off! You’ll burn us alive!”

The cable went immediately slack.

“Felix!” cried Jack desperately. “FELIX!”

The monster began twisting and spitting at them again.

“Cat!” yelled Crow. “Drop that damn light!”

“Huh?” muttered Cat. Then “Oh… yeah!”

And he finally released the lantern so he could use both hands and the light bounced and clanked loudly on the cement and began to roll away from them, over and over, spilling light into the dust, before it was kicked back toward them by the shoe of a six-foot-four-inch black man who had been killed while working the graveyard shift at the Texaco station.

The man still wore his uniform. It still bore his name, “Roy,” on the little patch above his left breast pocket.

But he didn’t care. He didn’t care what he wore. He didn’t care that he was “Roy.” He cared only for the smell of living, pumping blood.

The half dozen others looming behind him out of the darkness felt the same way.

The first man to see the horde appear was Adam, sprawled stunned and bleeding on the edge of the light from the other lantern. Still unable to do much more than stumble, he could only moan, “Sweet blessed Jesus! Jack! Look out!”

Jack saw them. He saw — what was it? — six, seven, eight of them? Coming for them, shuffling at them and he couldn’t get loose from this little squirt he had already shot, much less save Cat, much less do anything about the others.

“FELIX!!” he screamed and then, in his panic, went into a frenzy of his own.

He grabbed one end of the huge arrow already piercing the monster and began to work it fiercely back and forth in the wound. The monster howled and spat and writhed some more and its gnarled hands began clutching and opening spasmodically and during one of the openings Cat came loose for just a second and Jack kicked his friend brutally to safety with a chain-mailed boot to the chest.

But it still had him, the little spitting fiend still had him and he could see the others shuffling closer, could hear the sound of their dry dead feet in the dust, could almost feel their gnarled hands and gray fangs…

“FELIXGODDAMMIT!” he wailed and grabbed the little monster and rolled over and over and flung it, with every ounce of fear he had, away from him.

There was the sound of chain mail popping, fabric and flesh ripping, and Jack Crow was free.

When he lurched triumphantly to his feet, Roy was there, face to rotting face. Roy hissed. His great black hands closed on Jack’s throat.

Jack was helpless and knew it and he hit the switch for his chest cross and the halogen light was blinding to both of them and painful to the vampire. It arched and shrieked from the agony of the cross of light, steam already rising from the surface of its dead skin.

It saved Jack’s life when it threw the light, and Jack, away from its body.

Jack smacked the concrete floor chest first and the halogen bulbs exploded into dusty darkness beneath him and suddenly all was as it had been only he had no light and no hope and Felix would not move and that’s when Deputy Kirk Thompson, terrified by the sounds he had heard on Joplin’s radio, burst into the cavernous darkness with his .44 magnum in hand.

He took one incredulous look then, pure hero type, braced his feet wide, supported his right, shooting, hand with his left, and began to fire. He was a sharpshooter. His first two hollowpoints struck Roy full in the chest. The next one struck the little impaled one, the thrashing one, in the left side of the head. The third shot blew a hole in the shoulder of an old woman, already lame, who had managed to drag herself within one more step of Adam without the young priest having yet seen her.

It was excellent shooting. The shots were dead-on accurate, spaced no more than a half second apart, and worthless against the undead.

They did have some effect. The vampires roared and jerked, the old woman after Adam was flung back briefly out of range, all eyes were turned to the deputy…

All eyes… Felix’s eyes.

My God, thought Jack, staring at his gunman, he made a move!

And then Team Crow saw him start to draw.

Chapter 14

Felix’s first two shots, like the deputy’s, struck Roy. But while Kirk’s hit Roy’s chest, Felix’s slammed into his forehead. And while Kirk’s were .44 magnum hollowpoints, they were only lead. Felix’s were nine-millimeter silver blessed by the Vicar of Christ on Earth and they tore half-inch-wide holes through the skull. Roy shrieked and smacked his hands over the wounds and fell writhing to the cement.

But Felix didn’t see this. By the time Roy had fallen, Felix had already shot the old woman behind Adam twice, in the throat and the chest, had shot the small one on the crossbow once, in the stomach, and had put one shot each in the next three ghouls to emerge from the shadows: a high school teacher still wearing his shattered glasses, a middle-aged mother of three reported missing for two weeks, and a young drug dealer who waited too late one night to make a buy.

They were goons, still. All of them. Too recently dead to have thoughts or ideas or notions or sense of self. But they had always known hunger.

And now they remembered pain.

Searing, irredeemable agony shot through their wounds, wounds that would never heal. For a moment, the monsters forgot their prey, forgot the smell of blood, forgot their thirst. They thought only of the pain.

Felix strode forward during that instant, ejecting the clip with his right hand and snapping in a second with his left.

Then he worked a cartridge into the chamber, making all three actions appear, somehow, to be a single motion.

Like a robot, thought Cat at the time. Like a machine.

Felix paused in the center of the area lit by the two lanterns and briefly surveyed the tormented creatures surrounding him. Then he shot them some more. When the second clip was emptied and the third had replaced it, he stepped over to Cat.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice calm and unhurried.

And oddly kind, thought Cat, staring into those dead eyes.

Cat nodded.

“Can you get up and move?” asked Felix in the same tone.

Cat nodded again.

“Then let’s do it,” suggested the gunman, holding out a hand to help. “Let’s get out of here.”

Cat took the hand and pulled himself up. He still felt wobbly alter the pounding he had taken. But he was all right. Beside them Adam, who had been following it all, was also rising. The wound at his temple had stopped bleeding.

“C’mon, everybody,” called Felix in Jack’s direction. “Let’s move.”

Then he started firing again and for the next few seconds there were only the explosive sounds from his weapon and the raucous misery of his victims. The goons who had managed to drag themselves upright after the first two volleys were sent back to the floor, screaming and writhing and pounding at their wounds.

None approached the Team and only one other appeared from the shadows, a middle-aged man wearing farmer’s overalls and a jagged gash from his left ear to left shoulder.

Felix shot him three times, twice in the chest, once in the head. He fell shrieking to the floor like the rest.

Jack, staring as transfixed as the others at this incredible display of cool destruction, managed to gather himself and everyone else up and get them toward the door while Felix guarded their rear, emptying clip after clip into the monsters.

“Okay, Felix!” he called as the door came open and the sunlight flooded the chamber. “Come along.”

Felix was in the middle of reloading. He paused, looked at his boss, nodded, and trotted toward the sunlight.

A few seconds later all of them, Jack, Cat, Adam, Felix, and the young deputy were standing in the sunlight beside Carl’s winch. And amazingly, none were seriously hurt.

Incredible, thought Jack. Five minutes ago I thought we were all dead. And then, like everyone else, he just stood and stared at the gunman for a while.

Felix didn’t seem to notice. He sat down on a curb and lit a cigarette and stared at a spot on the street between his feet.

Carl watched them watching Felix awhile.

“What happened?” he asked at last.

Jack looked at him, thought a minute. “Silver bullets,” he replied.

Carl smiled. “They worked?”

Cat nodded toward Felix. “They worked for him.”

“Did they kill ’em?” asked Carl excitedly.

The gunman surprised them all by answering.

“No,” he replied firmly, looking at Carl. “They didn’t kill them.”

“Well, no,” conceded Jack after a moment. “But they sure as shit got their attention.”

And everyone who had been there laughed.

Except Felix.

“It hurts them, Carl,” added Adam excitedly. “It really hurts them!”

“It sure did that,” added the deputy, shaking his head and putting his own pistol back in its holster.

“That reminds me,” said Jack Crow, “thanks, deputy. What’s your name again?”

“Kirk Thompson. Only I didn’t do much.”

Cat smiled. “We’ll get you some silver bullets.”

Kirk looked at the others. “Are they silver? Really silver?”

“Blessed by Holy Mother Church,” replied Adam.

“Reckon I could use some at that,” smiled the deputy.

“We could all use ’em,” Jack Crow said brusquely, “and we all will.” He lit a cigarette and announced a decision. “Carl, get everybody that goes inside a gun with silver bullets. And you, Adam, are gonna tote the extra crossbow if you’re still sure you can handle one.”

“I’d be happy to demonstrate,” offered the priest confidently.

Jack gave him a wry smile. “I’ll take your word for it, padre.” Then he turned to the others. “This is the new deal: Cat, you’re on the far right to do the detecting. Adam, you stand inside Cat next to me with the other crossbow. Then it’ll be me and then Felix on my left. Cat, you tell us when they’re coming. Felix’ll hold ’em off until I can shoot one, with Adam backing me up. Then we go straight out the door, with Felix holding the rest of ’em off until we can get to the sunlight. Nobody else shoots unless Felix or I tells them to.”

He looked at the gunman, still sitting on the curb staring between his boots.

“That okay with you, Felix?”

Felix looked at him, nodded dully. “I’d like some more light,” he said calmly.

“We got more light, Carl?”

“I think there’s one or two in the motorhome. I’ll have to look.”

Jack shook his head. “We’ll look. C’mon, Felix, let’s… Hey! Hit the winch.”

All turned and followed Jack’s gaze to the cable running from the winch to the warehouse door.

“It’s stopped moving!” noticed Carl.

Jack tossed his cigarette angrily to the street. “Hell, yes, it’s stopped moving. Did you expect the damn thing to stay caught forever while we stood around yappin’?”

But it hadn’t gotten loose. Carl’s winch dragged out the crossbow bolt still tangled in the monster’s clothing. But the monster was dust.

“We killed it!” cried Cat, amazed. “Indoors! Without sunlight!”

“Yeah,” muttered Jack.

“I don’t understand,” said the deputy. “You’ve never done this before? In the movies, they always…”

“Forget the movies,” growled Jack. “They don’t change into bats or wolves, either.”

“But stakes do kill them,” offered Adam.

“Yeah,” replied Jack, lighting another cigarette. He walked over and shifted the dusty clothes with a chain-mailed boot. “You know, we knew the stakes hurt ’em. I guess we just never managed to keep one on one long enough. Before, they always tore loose if we didn’t get ’em out and burning pretty quick.”

“That,” suggested Cat with a smile toward Felix, “was before the Lone Ranger, here.”

Felix eyed him blankly. “Could be,” he said at last.

Jack laughed. “Damn well ‘could be,’ gunman. Those bullets keep ’em too miserable to get loose until it’s too late.” He walked a fast circle around the dusty clothes, surveying them from all sides. Then he stopped and stared at the locals, still too scared to approach.

“Ha!” he said at last, clapping his hands together and smiling. “C’mon, Felix! Let’s see about your light.”

“Hey, Cat,” snarled Carl suddenly, reaching down for the first-aid kit at his feet, “did you know you and the padre are bleeding?”

Cat grinned. “We assumed so. We were so popular.”

“All right, dammit!” snarled Carl after he had tended their minor wounds, “what the hell happened in there?”

Cat and Adam exchanged a look. “Well,” began Cat, “first Felix froze.”

And then they told Carl about Cat fixing the light and about the little fiend wrapping him up and about Adam getting whipped by the cable and then about Jack getting Cat loose just in time for the wave of ghouls and then Kirk came in and…

“And then Felix saved us,” he added with a smile. “And here we are.”

Carl snarled. “I thought you said Felix froze.”

Cat shrugged. “He unfroze.”

“And that’s all it took?”

“You should have seen him.”

“Pretty good?”

Cat looked at him. “More than ‘pretty good.’ You ever see a spaghetti western?”

“That good?”

Cat and Adam exchanged another look. “Better,” they replied in unison.

Carl lit a cigarette and looked at them thoughtfully. “Fast draw?”

Adam shook his head. “More like a fast shot.”

Cat nodded. “Like a goddamn machine gun.”

“Hmm,” muttered Carl to himself. “Did he aim?”

Cat stared at him. “Did he what?”

Adam spoke up. “I know what Carl means. No. He didn’t. He just sort of… pointed?”

Carl grinned and nodded. “I knew it! Only uses one hand, too, right?”

Adam nodded.

Carl laughed. “I knew it,” be repeated. “It’s why he uses that tiny gun. It’s the heaviest thing he can use with one hand.” He stood and carried the first-aid kit back to his chair by the winch controls. “We got ourselves a gunman.”

Jack Crow hadn’t given a damn about the light. He had just wanted to get Felix alone. Oh, he went through the motions, finding two lanterns in their storage chest in the motorhome’s bedroom. And he made sure they both worked, replacing the battery in one.

And then he got ready to talk.

Only, sitting there at the table with Felix blankly across from him, he didn’t really know what to say. Or ask.

Finally, “You all right?” he blurted, too loudly.

Felix didn’t startle. He just raised his eyes and looked at him.

“I mean,” Jack amended, “are you ready to go back in?”

Felix’s voice was soft. “Sure.”

Jack still wasn’t satisfied. “What woke you up in there?”

Felix thought a moment. “I’m not sure. The deputy’s gun, I think.”

And they were quiet for a while.

“Think it’ll happen to you again?” asked Crow gently.

Felix’s smile was so sad it hurt Jack to look at it as he said, “No. That part’s over.”

“Okay,” replied Jack gruffly. Because he didn’t know what else to say.

Chapter 15

At the last minute they decided to go with flares instead of more lanterns. Lanterns were a more steady light, but they couldn’t figure out a safe way to carry them as far into the darkness as Felix wanted.

Only they didn’t have any flares and they weren’t at all sure the local cops would give them any.

Deputy Kirk Thompson was sure.

“I’ll get your flares,” he said ominously and walked over to a patrol car.

They couldn’t hear what he said to them. But they got the tone.

And they got their flares. The deputy had three dozen delivered to them within five minutes.

“So,” said Jack Crow as they assembled before the warehouse once more. “We’re all set. Rock and roll!”

And as he led the Team inside he thought: Please, Felix! Don’t fold on us again!

He didn’t. Felix was, if anything, more impressive the second time. He was cool and calm and deadly accurate, and the closest monster to them was the one Jack picked to crossbow, Roy.

Roy was as big and strong as he looked. But not as strong as the winch. Not with Felix continually, mercilessly, shooting him. By the time he’d been dragged to the sunlight, Roy had forgotten all about the stake through his chest. And then it was too late.

They waited five minutes and went in again and got another, as easily as the last. Then they did it again. And again and again and again. The crowd watching them began to grow as their success continued, some of the policemen going so far as to actually stand just behind Carl’s winch to watch.

Carl ignored them. So did the others.

They always followed the same procedure. Jack led them in, then they fanned out on either side of him into position. Felix would light a flare, toss it way into the shadows at the edge of their lanterns, and begin to shoot everything that moved but the one Jack had picked to stake. After Jack made his shot, the others would fade back toward the door while Felix kept the rest at bay. They would all exit with the burning vampire. Then a sip of something cool, a quick puff on a cigarette, and back they’d go.

And then the vampires began to change.

There were only a handful left, most of them shot several times, and they weren’t moving much. Some weren’t even on their feet. Not dead, not nearly dead, but hurting.

And waking up.

It was the pain, decided Adam. The pain was shocking them back into consciousness after the zombie-limbo of death. Whatever, they were no longer the same. And their eyes were no longer just the blank thirst-stare. They were alert. And angry.

They found this out on their sixth trip inside the building. It started off just like the other times, Crow in first, followed by the others fanning to either side of him. There were no goons in sight, which wasn’t especially unusual. But Cat’s detector showed nothing approaching and that was strange.

Felix tossed a flare anyway, flinging it with a long side arm to avoid the low ceiling.

It landed on a vampire.

It was a young woman in her early thirties. She was wearing boots, blue jeans, and a black sweatshirt advertising “ZZ Top’s North American Tour.” Felix remembered that sweatshirt. He had put at least three silver bullets through it that day.

The woman had been lying there in the dust, unmoving, when the flare landed on her chest. She sprang to her feet, yelping and brushing wildly at the flame flickering from her sweatshirt. Then, once she was free of the fire, she stopped.

And looked at them.

And then she felt the bullet holes in her chest.

And then she looked right at Felix. Right at the gunman.

And then she let out an awful shrieking cry, like a satanic infant’s tantrum, and ran straight at Felix, the source of her anguish.

Felix shot her twice more, without thinking. Both bullets struck her high in the chest, flipping her over backward. After she hit, she lay still.

“Good Lord,” whispered Cat harshly, “I think you killed her!”

“Does anybody remember how many shots it took?” asked Adam. “Felix?”

“Hold it, goddamniit! Cat! Anything else coming?”

Cat bent over his detector. “Not yet,” he replied.

“Okay, then,” Jack announced. “We can afford to wait a bit to see if she’s really…”

She wasn’t. The second wailing was even worse than the first. And her scrambling headlong charge for the gunman was even quicker. Felix’s startled third shot was from the hip. It struck her in the left thigh and she cartwheeled forward onto her shoulder…

Then leapt back to her feet and came at him again, right at him, shrieking that shriek, and bounding on that shattered left thigh.

Their eyes had met before Felix managed to shoot her again, this time in the exact center of her pulsing throat.

She slammed backward into the dust, writhing and flinging that mad baby’s cry all around her.

Jack made a quick decision. He stepped over in front of Felix and raised the crossbow.

“That tears it,” he barked gruffly. “We’re taking this one.”

And they did. When next she rose, Jack’s crossbow almost folded her in half.

But it held and the cable held and a few seconds later they were watching her burn just as all the rest had.

No one moved after the fire was out. They just stood there.

“She knew you,” cat said at last, looking at Felix. “She knew you were the one who’d hurt her.”

Felix took a long puff on his cigarette, nodded.

“Yes,” added Adam. “They are definitely waking up.”

“Let ’em,” snarled Jack Crow. He fixed the Team with a frosty stare. “It’s too late for ’em. We just stay a little tighter, work a little faster, be a little more careful. We still got ’em.”

They were right. From then on, every ghoul Felix had previously shot would scream that insane wail and rush him as soon as they saw him. There was no doubt they recognized him. No doubt they hated him.

But Jack Crow was also right. It was too late. The system worked. It worked on zombies or vampires or any combination of the two. Felix’s shooting was too quick. Jack’s crossbow was too accurate.

The only trouble spot came toward the end. They were getting tired, with some four hours at it by then, and due for a mistake. The mistake was Felix’s, and it was a beauty he dropped his gun during a charge.

First he slipped, in that awfully gooey stuff the monsters used for blood. It was a clear, viscous, odorless mucus that had been pouring from the wounds onto the cement and Felix made the mistake of stepping in it as he spun to shoot the third of the trio, which had rushed screaming out of the flare’s light toward them. When he went down, Felix’s right hand went out instinctively to catch himself and it went into another puddle of the junk and the pistol squirted out of his grip like a bar of soap.

Jack had already made his shot, the vampire already wriggling on the huge arrow, when it happened. He frantically fished for the pistol on his belt. Cat did the same and had actually managed to draw his pistol before Adam, calm and cool, stepped forward and fired his crossbow through the last monster’s chest. It dropped like meat on a spit.

Seconds later they were out watching another fire while Carl toweled the clinging mess from Felix’s hand and gun and everyone else exchanged proud grins with the young priest. It had been his only chance for action in hours and he had been flawless.

They felt good.

Nothing else even slowed them down. And only one thing actually frightened them again: going down into the basement.

The detectors said there were no more inside. Jack Crow believed them. They had already killed twenty-four and that was something like the third highest number Jack had ever seen in one place.

But they were still going to have to go down there and see for themselves.

And while they were sitting there trying to figure out the best way of going about it an old man wearing a faded pastor’s collar started across the street toward them. They had noticed him before and ignored him. Just another one of the local biggies come to oversee.

But as he got closer, they could tell this was no bigshot. The knees to his slacks were worn through. The lining of his jacket was hanging loose on one side. And he looked like he hadn’t shaved that white beard in a week.

He began to walk faster and faster as be approached them. He was carrying a piece of pipe in one hand, holding it in front of him like an offering. Jack had stood up to introduce himself, had even stuck out his hand to be shaken, in fact, when the old man swung the pipe at his head.

Jack half ducked but the pipe still banged him good on his left shoulder before glancing hard against his ear. Blood splattered from his ear and he reeled from the stunning ringing in his head and if he’d been alone the old man might have finished him off.

But he wasn’t alone. The old man was down hard on the street with the deputy handcuffing him within three seconds. The next minutes were spent bandaging up Jack’s ear and screaming at the local cops for an explanation as to just who in the hell let this crazy old fart in here, anyway?

That’s just Old Vic, they were told.

Who?

Old Vic Jennings. He’s just a crazy old coot lives down there by the railroad tracks. He’s an Englishman. Uh, ya’ll don’t wanna press charges or nothing, do you?

Jack stood up and pointed to the bandage covering the left side of his head. “I sure as Hell do!”

The cops looked back and forth between each other, shrugged, and tried to explain that “there’s kinda somewhat of a problem with that.”

Oh, really? Team Crow asked.

Jack looked down at Old Vic, who seemed delighted with all the attention. He was grinning a satisfied death’s-head grin at Jack. The two men exchanged silent looks while the Team heard the song and dance about being able to arrest him, okay! We can arrest him easy. Only they couldn’t put ’im in the jail on account of the jail being closed because of two prisoners we got down there got AIDS and we don’t wanna risk no epidemic thing.

Jack was listening as he stared at the old man’s grin and tried to keep from grinning back. He asked one question:

By whose order was the jail closed?

The mayor, he was told.

Jack nodded, told them to take the old man away anywhere they wanted — to the Hood County Jail, if necessary — but keep him away from Team Crow.

“Because,” he added, “we’ll be finished here in another hour and I don’t want anything to screw it up. Dig?”

They dug. They hauled Old Vic, still grinning, to a squad car. He had never, Jack suddenly realized, said a single word.

Didn’t have to, thought Jack, finally letting himself smile. He got what he wanted, attention, without it.

Thirty minutes later, Jack and his gunman were ready to hit the warehouse basement. Just the two of them.

Jack had fussed and fretted over the choice but he couldn’t think of another way to do it. He had to go; he was in charge. Felix had to go; he was too good. But what about backup?

Well, what about it? They were going after master vampires, the ones in charge, the ones who’d created the goons in the first place, and if they came across them in that narrow stairwell anything that was going to happen would crack too fast for anyone to stop it. Jack didn’t believe the masters were down there — they were in that goddamned jail — but if they were they might very well wipe out the entire Team. This way there’d at least be somebody left to do it the old-fashioned way, with plastique.

And besides, he wasn’t sure he wanted a lot of trigger-happy well-meaners shooting off pistols and crossbows past his head.

No. Just him and Felix would go down, with both halogen crosses blazing from their chests. Felix first.

Crow felt the last part deserved an explanation but Felix didn’t need one. Felix didn’t even raise an eyebrow. Gunman first made sense to him too. Then Jack tried to explain about master vampires, the real live movie types that could throw cars and move so fast they literally blurred, but he didn’t think he had the gunman’s attention.

“You’re saying they’re worse, right?” Felix interrupted at last, sounding irritated and bored.

Jack just nodded.

Felix nodded in turn. “I figured that,” he whispered harshly. “Now let’s get on with it!”

They did.

The rich, rotten-sweet smell of death and decay rose up to them from the dark basement stairs through the harsh smoky halogen beams. Jack nodded one last time to Cat and Adam, who would wait there on the first-floor battleground for them. Then he touched Felix on the shoulder and the gunman started down the steps. There was no trouble on the way down, save for their occasional starts and jumps at some imagined movement at the edges of the shadows. The detector never beeped, their radios retained clear and crisp reception.

But it scared the hell out of both of them.

The stairwell was too goddamned narrow and the shadows too goddamned dark and the smell grew so strong they felt they could lean against it and their boots sounded harsh and rasping on the dusty steps and they couldn’t help but notice the scores of other footprints besides their own. The basement was worse.

It was a crypt. Nine bodies in all — six townspeople and the three policemen who had gone inside to save them. Their bodies were rank and swollen, unevenly, grotesquely bloated. And there were maggots. Thousands of maggots swarming in the chests.

“How could they rise up after that?” gasped Felix, staring at the maggots.

Jack shook his head. “I don’t know. But they do. Every time. Unless we do this right.” He put down his crossbow and reached back for the ax strapped across his shoulders.. “Or unless I do, rather. You don’t have to do anything. But pay attention to what I do. Okay?”

Felix nodded, moving over against a bare wall.

Jack steeled himself. Get hard, dammit! he screamed inwardly. But it didn’t work. It didn’t help. Not even the hatred of the vampires made it any easier. It never did.

But he did it. He chopped the heads off and put them in one pile and then he dragged the torsos into another heap’ and then he poured gasoline on both piles and set them alight.:

They burned like dry, dead leaves.

Jack and Felix hunkered down in one corner underneath the cloud of smoke to breathe.

“Sometimes the fires go out,” offered Jack by way of explanation.

After that they didn’t talk for several minutes. They just sat there and watched the flames that burned so brightly and so angrily, flames that never would have appeared over normal corpses.

Only here, thought Jack, and he sneaked a look at his companion. He couldn’t see much in the uncertain light, but… there! There was the glimmer of tears! And only after he had seen Felix’s could Jack bear to lift a hand and wipe away his own.

How can this sicken me so much, he thought as he always thought, and still break my heart at the same time?

And then he stood up to retrieve a blazing skull that had rolled away from the flames. He eased it gently back into the fire with the head of his ax.

Eventually the flames did their work and Jack was able to get up and spread the ashes and then the two of them walked back up the stairwell that seemed not frightening at all now, only sad and lonely and forever and ever empty.

Outside in the sunshine, Madame Mayor had already begun the celebration. She had a table set upon the sidewalk in front of the courthouse. On it was a white tablecloth and a large silver ice bucket holding a magnum of champagne. All the city father types stood around her as she began some little speech about the gallantry and bravery of Team Crow.

Jack’s inclination was to insert that bottle of champagne, cork and all, into a certain place in her body. But he was smart enough to control his anger. Even smart enough to signal to his troops to play along. And so they all stood there on that sidewalk while somebody began to pour and they all drank and they all smiled and they all pretended not to notice that too-strident cheery tone the mayor was pumping out.

That’s a terrified woman, Jack thought behind his grin. What if we win? Or, hell, what if we lose? Either way she’s had it.

But he just kept smiling until he had a chance to interrupt graciously and inform the audience of Team Crow’s desire to rest and get cleaned up and change clothes and all that before the dinner in their honor.

Fine they all said. That’s just fine! Good idea! ’Cause ya’ll are gonna need your rest for the shebang we’re hitting ya with tonight! And we got just the place for ya!

And with that they escorted Team Crow the two blocks through the early afternoon sun to the William Willis Inn, the finest hotel in town. Through the lobby door and past the desk to an ancient elevator that required three trips to accommodate all the hangers-on to the top floor and the presidential suite, where food and drink and a cashier’s check were waiting.

It took another fifteen minutes before Cat could usher out the last of the instantly drunk partyers, and then only by promising they’d be down soon.

Then he locked the door behind them.

Then he went to the window and joined the rest of the Team.

And then they went out the window and down the fire escape and into Deputy Thompson’s patrol car waiting in the alley. They hunkered down in the back seat until they were outside the city limits. Twenty minutes later they made their, rendezvous with Annabelle and Davette at a trailer court thirty miles away.

Then they sat down and ate the food the women had ready while Jack Crow curled their hair with his plan to enter the police station, subdue whatever cops were on duty there, go downstairs into the basement where the cells were, and, without a trace of sunlight to aid them, slay however many master vampires were down there waiting for the night to come.

“It’s three thirty,” he announced. “Five more hours of, daylight. We gotta do it right. And we gotta do it now. Questions?”

There were one or two.

But Jack didn’t seem to care. He leaned back in the room’s faded and moth-eaten easy chair and smoked cigarettes and let them rant for some time.

Then he grinned, leaned forward, and said, “Relax. I’ve got a Plan.”

Cat eyed him sourly, disgusted. “Think you can give us a hint, O Great Leader?”

Jack laughed. “Sure. Remember the flare Felix bounced on that woman?”

Cat was still suspicious. “Yes…” he replied cautiously. “It didn’t hurt her a bit.”

“Didn’t harm her maybe. But it did hurt her.”

“So,” replied Jack easily, turning to the deputy, you know where we can get some thermite?”

Chapter 16

Somehow, in all the comings and goings through the three rooms the team had rented in the trailer court, Davette ended up alone in the same room with Felix.

And she didn’t think she was up to it.

It was only the third time she’d seen the man. The first she remembered quite well. He had called her a “siren,” while boring shivering holes in her with his angry eyes. The second time was again at his saloon office. By the time she had arrived accompanying Annabelle and Adam, Felix was sitting behind his desk examining Jack’s check for $50,000 and studiously ignoring her. And that had been as bad, somehow, as being stared at.

But this time was the worst of all. Because this time she knew what he’d just done. She had sat there beside Annabelle while Cat patiently related the events of the day. There was no time to do a hypnotic total recall — the Team was on again in two more hours — but Cat was a natural storyteller, wise in his use of detail. Besides listening raptly, Davette noticed, Annabelle kept a small tape recorder going as he spoke.

And that had gotten to her, reminding her of just how incredibly dangerous their line of work was. They had to make records now because it was entirely possible that every single man on the Team could be dead by sunset and someone had to be able to pass on what they had learned so far.

But what had really gotten to her was the story itself. The Felix part of the story. The lightning-fast, deadly accurate, cold-calm-killer part of the story.

“He saved our lives, Annie,” Cat had said with quiet sincerity, carefully looking her in the eye. “We’d all be dead without him, sure as hell.”

And Annabelle had smiled that knowing smile she had and asked him gently, “Then you’re happy with him, Cherry?”

He had smiled back and softly replied, “Got to be.”

Davette hadn’t been at all sure what that had meant. But she was sure of one thing: Felix was not happy.

He hadn’t actually said so. He hadn’t actually said much of anything, now that she thought about it. But she could read it. And so could everyone else. He moved slowly about the edges of their chaotic planning. He did answer when asked a specific question or even when asked for an opinion on some aspect of Jack’s Plan. And his answers were concise and to the point. But he wasn’t really with them.

“Are you all right?” people kept asking him and he kept saying he was. But he didn’t look it. He looked stunned. Almost dazed.

But no one pursued this, because Jack Crow did not.

And now he sat there in the dusty easy chair in the corner of that musty room cleaning his weapons. He had newspaper spread out on a lumpy ottoman and the parts of his pistols spread out on that and the only sounds were the rustle of the newsprint and the precision snicks and clicks of well-oiled firearms.

At the far corner of the room, Davette stood in the little kitchenette where they’d cooked the Team’s lunch. She had offered to tidy up but that had been awhile back when the room was filled with people and now she didn’t know if she was still there because she wanted td stay or was just frightened to walk past Felix to get out.

So she stayed there in the corner, cleaning and recleaning like some rabid housewife on speed, sneaking constant glances at him and feeling like a complete idiot until she couldn’t stand it anymore and just made herself stop, just stop and stand there with her hands on the edge of the sink and stare out that grimy window and catch her breath.

She said things like: What’s the matter with me? and Get yourself together, and it worked a bit. She was almost calm when she felt the silence and turned around and he was just sitting there staring into space.

Then he looked up, caught her watching him, and smiled.

It made her fumble a bit. But she managed a: “Can I get you something?”

He glanced at his empty glass, reached for it. “Some more ice water?” he asked.

“No!” she almost shrieked. And then, more calmly, “I’ll get it.”

And as she walked toward him she cursed herself for the way she was acting and wondered if anything in the world could make her stop behaving like such a fool and then she reached for his glass and saw his face and it all went away.

My God! she thought, seeing those tired, tired eyes, he looks terrible!

He did. He looked beaten, blasted, worn down, worn out. He looked like a man who had just decided to commit suicide.

It wasn’t until she had taken his glass and walked back to refill it that she realized that that was exactly what had happened when he had decided to join Team Crow and she knew suddenly what he was thinking about and why he looked the way he did and her butterflies went away and something else, warmer, more solid, replaced them.

But she didn’t speak. She just gave him his full glass and sat down at the tiny little built-in breakfast table and sipped her cold coffee and for several moments that’s all that happened in the room — the two of them sitting and sipping in silence.

And there’s nothing I can say to change it, she kept thinking.

Adam, wearing full priestly regalia, appeared at the connecting door to the next room.

He always looks ten years older dressed like that, she thought.

“Felix?” he called quietly. “Would you like to take confession?”

The gunman looked up, a quizzical expression on his face, and replied, to the others’ total surprise, “Yeah. I would.”

Felix put his cigarette out in the ashtray and stood up. “How does it work?”

Adam smiled, held out a beckoning, robed arm. “It’s easy.”

Less than five minutes later, Felix came strolling briskly back into the room alone. He stopped, looked around the room, at Davette, at his chair, at his guns. Then he walked over and picked up his glass of ice water and drained it down.

Adam appeared behind him in the doorway looking mournful.

“I’m sorry, Adam,” said Felix when he saw him.

But Adam just shook his head to say it was all right. And when Felix turned away from him to light a cigarette, the young priest made the sign of the cross to his back. Then, with a sad smile for Davette, Adam left.

Felix surprised her by sitting across from her at the tiny breakfast table. He seemed to feel the need to explain to her and she could see him start to speak several times before he finally shrugged, laughed a rueful silent laugh, and said, “I wasn’t having any fun.”

She smiled at him and blushed to the roots of her light-blond hair. And so they sat there for several more moments, she feeling foolish and excited and infinitely sad and he feeling… what? Numb, she supposed. He certainly looked numb the few times she braved a glance.

After the dozenth dry sip, she realized she must look pretty odd drinking from an empty cup. She got up and went over to the kitchenette for another refill. When she turned back around, he was gone.

Two hours and forty minutes later, they hit the Johnson County Jail.

Jack’s Plan was based on Felix’s flares. Or rather, what they had done to that woman wearing the ZZ Top sweatshirt.

“Of course it didn’t kill her,” he explained patiently to a doubtful Cat. “But it sure as hell got her attention. And remember, while she was frantically brushing those sparks off, she wasn’t attacking anyone.”

Carl had frowned. “So?”

Jack smiled slyly. “So what else — for just a few seconds, mind you — takes their minds off feeding?”

Of course, no one knew. Not for sure. But everyone — even Felix — had an idea or three. But it was Carl Joplin who really brought it home.

“I read somewhere,” he offered calmly, “that a pig’s blood is a lot like a man’s.”

Thirty minutes later, they had a serious list of goodies.

But Jack wanted something else; he wanted some form of official sanction. He was willing to go without it — the job had to be done and done right now — but he wanted the effort made.

He and the deputy went to the telephone and started tracing down the sheriff. It took several minutes, several calls, and some patching through by radio before the deputy put his hand over the mouthpiece to whisper, “I’ve got him.”

Jack reached for the phone. Deputy Thompson pulled it out of his reach.

“Mr. Crow, I don’t wanna insult you. But I think you’d better let me handle this.”

Jack thought a moment, nodded. “I’ll be right outside when he wants to talk to me.”

The deputy barely smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Fifteen anxious minutes later the deputy came out of the room smiling. He’d gotten everything the Team needed for the job — except the sheriff.

“Sorry, Mr. Crow,” offered Deputy Thompson. “But there’s just no way he can get there before four P.M.”

Crow lit a cigarette. “It’ll have to do.” He turned to the rest of the Team, gathered in chairs around the crowded sitting room. “Okay, sports fans, we’re on. Rock and roll.”

“Rock and roll!” echoed back at him.

And then everybody went shopping.

Cat, ever bold, directed the driver of the limo to downtown Cleburne, only four blocks off the main square, to Prather’s Feed & Seed. He escorted Annabelle and Davette inside and commenced to buy poison for rats, mice, fleas, ticks, fire ants, and coyotes — all together some five pounds of the stuff. Then he chose, from an impressive display of pet supplies, a thirty-gallon aquarium. He declined the offers of gravel, plants, starter guppies, and angelfish. He did buy, for reasons only another Cat would understand, an aerator in the form of a happy-faced salvage diver with bright red boots.

“I always wanted one,” was his only response to the women’s puzzled looks.

Kirk drove Jack and Felix to Wal-mart. There they bought two five-gallon gasoline cans and two funnels, three of the largest fire extinguishers available, and two packets of balloons in various colors.

They filled up both gas cans at the next-door Exxon station.

Carl and Adam drove the Blazer to a local slaughterhouse that specialized in preparing game meats but agreed to the killing and draining of the six pigs in the back pen. When the owner found out they weren’t interested in the carcasses — just the blood — he assumed they were Satan worshippers. A devout Baptist, he then doubled the price as a matter of principle. The technician and the Catholic priest exchanged tired looks between them. Then they paid up without a word and drove away with the blood.

The three groups met, an hour and a half later, in the empty driveway of the sheriff’s empty home, where Jack lost no time cutting the women loose.

“Get out of here, Annie,” Jack told her firmly. “Get out of this county. You still have your gun?”

Annabelle nodded nervously and clutched her purse more tightly.

“Okay,” said Crow. He looked over at the uniformed limo driver, looking out-of-place and worried.

“Fire that guy,” Jack ordered her. “Have him take you to a car-rental place… Or better, have him take you to the airport. Then take a taxi to the car-rental place. Make him think you’re leaving town.”

Annabelle frowned. “I don’t think he knows anything that’s going on. Or cares, for that matter.”

Jack smiled grimly. “I don’t either. But do it, anyway. Right?”

She nodded. “Right.”

“Okay. Move.”

She started to go, stopped. She put a hand to his cheek.

“Be careful, dear,” she said softly.

Jack stared a second. Annabelle had never done that before.

But then he shook it off and the smile be chose was wry and he replied, “First chance I get.”

And Annabelle smiled back and herded in the silent Davette with a look and then, without another word, the ladies and the limo drove away.

There was a moment — not a long one — when the men simply stood there and watched the car drive off.

“Okay, people,” said Jack quietly, “let’s saddle up.”

And he walked over to the Blazer and pulled out his own chain mail and started putting it on. The other inside warriors — Cat, Adam, and Felix — did the same. Carl and Deputy Thompson stood and watched them. No one spoke.

Jack did a quick check to see that the four were buttoned up right, then nodded to Deputy Thompson, who produced a key from a hiding place deep in his holster. Then he went over to what looked to the others like a garden storage shed beside the sheriffs garage.

Except that it took two dead bolts and a combination to open its four-inch-thick fire door. From inside, the deputy produced one case, twenty-count, CS (Military) Type tear-gas grenades and seven gas masks. Carl, Jack, and the deputy showed Cat and Felix how to adjust the masks and how to pull the pins on the grenades. When everybody seemed to have a mask strapped to fit, they got in the vehicles, with the patrol car in the lead, and headed back for downtown Clebume, Texas.

When they got to the Johnson County Jail, there were three police cars and six uniformed officers, complete with shotguns, flak jackets, and riot gear, waiting for them.

“Dammit!” hissed Jack Crow when he saw them. “How the hell did they know?”

“They didn’t,” offered the deputy from beside him. “I had to tell them.”

At first Crow couldn’t speak. When at last be tried, the deputy wouldn’t let him.

“Hold it, Mr. Crow!” Kirk snapped. And then, more calmly: “Before you say anything, let me talk. There’s nothing wrong with the Cleburne Police. They aren’t corrupt. They aren’t cowards. And they aren’t stupid. People being killed by monsters in their town square and they can’t do anything to stop it — and then the mayor hires somebody who can and then their chief tells them not to help out. Don’t you think they know there’s something strange going on?”

He paused a moment, took a breath. Crow sat silent. Waiting.

“Now,” the deputy continued, “I know these six men well. And they know me and…”

“Are you saying they’re on our side?” piped Cat from the back seat.

“Nossir!” hissed the deputy, eyeing Jack Crow. “They don’t know you. As far as they could tell, you might be the cause of all this!”

“Then whose side,” asked Jack quietly, “are they on?”

The deputy smiled. “Mine.”

Jack grinned. “Good enough. They’ll watch our backs while we go inside?”

“They will.”

“Do they know what we’re about to try?”

“Yes.”

“Do they know what has to be done if we can’t cut it?”

“They know.”

“Okay, deputy. Let’s do it.”

The Team piled warily out of the three vehicles at Jack’s signal and stood on the sidewalk in front of the jail assembling their equipment. The police said nothing to anyone except the deputy and that was so low no one else heard what was said.

But they didn’t try to arrest anyone. Or even slow them down. And they did appear to be on guard.

“Looks like we got a break,” whispered Cat to Crow.

Crow nodded. “Looks like,” he whispered back. “Quite a kid, that deputy.

“You’re not thinking about recruiting him, are you bwana?” Cat asked wickedly.

Jack’s face was blank. “Don’t need to. He’ll volunteer. If… you know.”

“Yeah,” growled Cat sourly. “I know. If we live long enough to be volunteered to.”

“Right. Now, Kirk and I will go inside and get the rest of the stuff we need.”

“You want us to start pouring the blood?”

“Wait till we get back. Deputy?”

The deputy stepped away from the two policemen he had spoken to.

“Ready?” asked Jack.

“Ready,” said the deputy. And with a nod to the policemen, went inside and arrested everyone in sight.

There were only four. Two at the booking counter, one in the back sitting behind a desk staring dully at a typewriter, and the last drinking thirstily from the water fountain.

All were pale, dead eyed, weak…

And owned.

It was there in their faces, in their posture, in the resigned, almost relieved, manner in which they stood there and allowed themselves to be handcuffed. The only thing that could be thought of as some form of resistance came from one of the two standing at the booking desk, a pale fair-haired man of about thirty named Dan, who made a frantic lunge for a jury-rigged red button stuck to the wall with masking tape.

Jack snatched the other man’s wrist away from the alarm in midair and felt the bones in Dan’s arm bend under the pressure of his grip. Dan yelped and groaned so sharply, Jack instinctively let loose of him and saw a deep purple bruise in the shape of his gloved fingers already forming on the wrist.

“Good Lord!” whispered Kirk.

Jack looked at him over Dan, who had crumpled to the floor holding his arm. “You see it, too?”

“Hell, yeah, I see it!” cried Kirk. “What the hell’s the matter with him?”

“Offhand, I’d say it was loss of blood.”

It was about then that Dan began to sob.

Soon the other two were also crying, deep tortured heaves that shook their shoulders painfully.

It hurt to watch it. Jack had been planning to get whoever was inside outdoors and into the squad car and out of the way as soon as possible, but this was just too good a chance to let by.

The fact was that Jack had never, in all his battles, actually met someone he knew to be under the influence of vampires. He knew there were always two or three suicides in the places where the Team had done its job. And he figured those were the ones who couldn’t bear to live with the shame of what they’d been made to do.

But he’d never actually seen it. He looked down at the four, now huddled together and weeping. He could feel their shame. They reeked of it. And how they wept! It was the totally unleashed, uninhibited weeping of children, red-eyed, runny-nosed, and moaning.

No. It was too good a chance to pass up. He hated to do it. But he had to question them.

He paused, took a deep breath, and knelt down beside the one he’d grabbed away from the alarm button, Dan. The bruise on his wrist was now multicolored and swelling. He cradled it tenderly on his other forearm.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said tenderly.

But Dan just sobbed some more and shook his head as if to say he deserved it.

Part of Jack wanted to grab this man and shake him, this grown man crying like a baby. But the rest of him knew better. These four really couldn’t help it.

Supernatural.

“How many are down there?” he asked Dan.

Dan looked at him, uncomprehending. “How many?”

“Yeah. Downstairs. In the jail. How many?”

“How many… masters?”

Jack gritted his teeth but managed to keep his tone gentle. “Yeah. How many masters?”

The oldest of the bunch, the guy who had been sitting in front of the typewriter when Jack and the deputy had come through, shook himself and leaned forward. He held up three fingers.

Like a child.

“Three!” he whined.

Damn! thought Jack. He had been prepared for more than one. But goddammit, three?

Damn!

The other slaves began nodding. One of them, the kid who had been drinking from the fountain, held up three of his fingers and nodded fiercely.

And when he did his collar was pulled away from his throat and Jack saw the bite.

The deputy saw it, too, and gasped. Jack reached over to Dan, the closest one to him, and pulled his collar out and there it was.

“Jesus!” whispered Kirk.

It looked like the bit of a spider. But one impossibly large, impossibly vicious. Impossibly thirsty.

The two puncture marks were just over an inch apart, with overlapping black and yellow rings swollen out from their centers. The bites were recent, deep, and horribly infected.

Loss of blood, Jack had said.

Now he thought: loss of soul…

“They’re…” gushed Dan and his gaze was plaintive, with a terrible yearning. “They’re… They’re so beautiful!”

And all four of them began to weep again. Weep and nod and huddle together and Jack couldn’t stand it anymore. He stood up and grabbed two of them by the upper arms and led them outside. The deputy brought out the other two.

Jack said nothing to the wary stares of the six flak-jacketed patrolmen on the sidewalk except: “These men aren’t to be harmed. Just keep ’em out of the way.”

The patrolman who seemed to be their leader glanced first at Deputy Thompson for his nod of confirmation before taking the prisoners in tow and depositing them in the backs of two police cars.

Carl appeared beside Jack. “You were right?” he asked, though it wasn’t really a question.

Jack sighed. “Yeah. They’re in there. Three of ’em, looks like.”

Cat whistled. “Three? Holy shit!”

Felix was there, too. “Is that a lot?” the gunman wanted to know.

“That’s the most so far,” offered Adam from off to one side.

Cat looked sharply at him, then relaxed. “Yeah. I keep forgetting you’re our historian.”

Adam smiled. “Not anymore.”

Cat smiled back. “Guess not.”

“We’ll be back in a second,” Jack informed them, and then he and the deputy went back inside, past the front desk, down a corridor, into another corridor, and down to the end of it to a vault door with a sign on it that said: “Johnson County Sheriff Property Room.” While Kirk went to work on the combination, Jack started to light a cigarette.

“I wouldn’t,” advised the deputy as he swung the vault open.

The chemical stench from inside the property room all but staggered Crow. He looked at the deputy.

“Ether,” Kirk explained. “We get a lot of speed labs in this part of Texas.”

“Oh.”

Kirk was waving the air with his hat. “It usually airs out in a couple of secs,” he explained. It seemed to, anyway. Though Jack wasn’t sure it wasn’t just his sense of smell numbing out.

In any case, they went inside and got to work. The evidence was found in thick, tightly sealed manila envelopes with names and case numbers on the outside. Kirk only read them long enough to see what was inside before tearing them open. Jack emptied one of the envelopes onto the floor and filled it with the stuff the deputy handed him.

They took one hundred and sixty tablets of “purple microdot” and thirty more hits of “Blotter” LSD. They took two and one half ounces of pure, uncut cocaine, three ounces, eighty-four grams, of PCP. They took three grams of raw brown Mexican heroin. They took six ounces, one hundred sixty-eight grams, of milk-white methamphetamine crystal. They took it all outside to where Cat and Carl had the jugs of pig’s blood and the aquarium set up on a little wheeled table. On the grass alongside slumped the various sacks of poison from Prather’s Feed & Seed. The balloons of various colors looked like water balloons now except for the rich smell of gasoline that wafted from them. Next to the balloons were the tear-gas grenades and the gas masks all ready to go.

Jack looked at his watch. Three hours and fifteen minutes to sundown.

“Okay,” he said to Carl, “can you rig the elevator now?”

“Yep,” Carl nodded and picked up his tool box. The two went back inside.

When Carl saw the elevator doors facing the front entrance he stopped and smiled. “My God, that deputy was right. I never would have believed it.”

Jack nodded. “Lucky.”

It was, in fact, incredibly lucky. Team Crow had known the cells were in the basement and they had known the only way to reach them was by a single elevator. But it wasn’t until Deputy Thompson had drawn his little sketch of the jail that they had known the route to the elevator was so short and clear. Crow had cringed at the thought of trying to winch a full-fledged master vampire around corners and up stairs into the sunlight with the damn thing trying to rip the crossbow free every step of the way.

But this was a straight shot. It was less than thirty feet from the elevator door to the sunshine, and the passageway was wide and free of obstacle.

Now all they had to do was get the fiends to get in the elevator.

He joined Carl, who stood fussing over an antique electrical box on the wall beside the elevator doors. He had wires running from the maze to a black metal box with a half dozen toggle switches on top.

Carl looked up from his work. “Okay, I think I’ve got you all set.”

Jack frowned. “You ‘think’ you do?”

Carl shrugged. “Jack, this elevator’s older than I am. I wouldn’t count on it being too responsive.”

“What can I count on?”

“Well, this switch starts it up. This one down. This one stops it. Anywhere. Between floors. Whatever you want. This one opens the doors. This one closes them. Again, anywhere you want.”

Jack nodded. “Okay. Label ’em.”

Carl groaned. “You can’t remember that much?”

Jack looked at him. “I don’t want to have to remember. I want to be able to know.”

Carl sighed. “Yes, bwana,” he said and set about doing it.

Crow went back outside and spoke to Cat, who stood on the jailhouse sidewalk talking to the deputy. A few feet away Felix sat quietly on the curb, smoking.

“I’m off to do my bit,” Jack told Cat. “Wait a few minutes, then start pouring the blood.”

“Right,” said Cat.

Crow looked at the deputy’s patrol car, parked a few steps away.

“Mind if I borrow that a sec?” he asked.

The deputy looked surprised, then shrugged. “Okay,” he offered uncertainly.

Crow nodded, climbed into the car, and pulled away without another word.

“What does he mean by doing ‘his bit’?” Kirk wanted to know.

Cat smiled. “He always goes off just before we move to be alone.”

“To focus his concentration,” finished Kirk, nodding.

Cat’s grin was wry. “Or swallow his fear,” he suggested and then smiled even wider when he saw the deputy’s pale look.

Felix, sitting on the curb smoking his sixty-third cigarette of the day, made no comment. Between his feet he had arranged his last five smokes in a ragged line. He had just stomped out the sixth on the asphalt and added it to the row when Jack Crow suddenly reappeared in the patrol car.

“Something wrong?” asked Cat.

Jack shook his head. He made no attempt to get out of the car, just sat there behind the wheel and stared at Felix.

Eventually, the gunman looked up and met his eyes.

“Get in,” ordered Crow, gesturing toward the front passenger door.

Felix eyed him a beat, then stood up. He started toward the car, stopped, went back, and scattered his row of cigarettes. Then he got in and the two of them drove away.

Jack drove in silence for half a dozen blocks to Cleburne City Park. There was a swimming pool, some tennis courts, three baseball diamonds. Jack parked the patrol car next to a beautifully preserved antique locomotive painted jet black and surrounded by a chain-link fence. He turned off the engine and sat there for several seconds in silence.

Felix lit a cigarette and waited for Crow to speak. Now what? he thought.

At last Jack moved. He lit a smoke of his own, turned on the seat to face Felix, and with a smile said, “You know, Felix, you’re going to die today.”

Felix stared stone at the other man’s smiling eyes. He didn’t know whether to be scared or offended or…

“So am I,” Crow continued. “That’s the way it is. We took on this job and it’s a never-ending goddamned deal and there are too many vampires and not enough of us and they’re gonna get us… so we’re gonna make ’em pay.

“Understand?”

Felix sure as shit did not understand. Any of it. Was this Crow’s idea of some kinda joke or what?

But what it was was Jack Crow’s notion of Style.

“That’s the only thing that counts, Felix. We aren’t gonna get rid of all the evil in the world. We’re not gonna get all the assassins or crack dealers or child molesters.

“And you and I aren’t gonna get all the fucking vampires. Sooner or later, they’re gonna get us. We die, the earth keeps turning, and not trying just means we keep alive just a little longer and there’s a lot more dead people saved from having all their blood ripped out but we still end up dying, Felix, you and me. There’s no way out of that. And the earth will have plenty of turns left that we won’t see no matter how long we live and so some stupid fools look at this and they don’t see any point and that’s because the dumbshits think it’s a matter of keeping score.

“It isn’t, Gunman. The secret isn’t the score or the final result because there ain’t no final anything!

“What there is… is Style.”

There was more of the same. Jack talked some talk about samurai warriors and how they considered themselves dead when they first took up the mantle of service so that nothing could later intimidate them away from their duty.

And there were some other examples and Felix…

Felix said not a word the entire time. He simply sat there staring at Crow, not even smoking, until Jack wound down.

“…just the Style, Felix. Nothing else. So they’re gonna get us. So what? It’s the Style that matters. Follow me?”

And when Felix spoke his voice was a harsh rasping crackle: “Crow, don’t you ever spout that kind of crap at me again! Not ever. Do you hear me?”

And Jack thought, My God, I think the sonuvabitch is gonna shoot me if I don’t agree!

And he said, “Okay, Felix.”

Felix turned away and stared unseeing at the huge black locomotive.

"Now can we go back?”

Jack nodded, started the car, and drove away.

Thinking: Sheeeyit! What did I turn over here?

And then thinking: God, I blew that one. He wasn’t anywhere near ready for that.

A few seconds later Jack sneaked a quick glance to his right. Felix still stared stone.

God! I hope I haven’t frozen up my damned gunman again. We’ve got to have him on this one. We go in there and they come busting up and he doesn’t shoot…?

And then he thought: Fuck it! Nothing I can do about it now. If I blew it, I blew it. Forget it. Shouldn’t have brought him along. Shoulda come out here alone like I always do, so, Okay, forget he’s here, Jack, oh Great Stupid Leader. Forget it. Do your bit. Deep breaths. Deep breaths and forget Felix and go through those pictures, do ’em now, paint those pictures, because if you can’t see it now, if you can’t visualize success now, then you sure as shit won’t know what to do at the split second…

And he began to do it. He steered the car with automatic pilot, seeing not the streets of Cleburne, Texas, through the windshield, but victory.

He set the aquarium filled with pig’s blood in the elevator. Laced with speed and coke and rat poison and all the rest of it. Wouldn’t kill ’em but, like the flare on that goon, it just had to be a little distracting to suddenly come on to twenty or so LSD trips at once. Sure, it would smell funny. The fiends would know there was something wrong with it but they could see it! That’s why he’d had Cat get an aquarium, so they could not only smell the blood, they could see it through the glass. Just too damn tempting to resist. Plunging their rotten fangs into it like bobbing for apples and then all that poison and dope starts hitting ’em and then the elevator takes them up and by the time the doors open they’re gonna be so stoned and sore and weirded out…

The crossbow cable pulls ’em out too fast for ’em to stop it, stoned as they are. The cable is attached to the Blazer because the winch is too slow to take a chance and I’ll just whistle to Carl on the radio and he’ll hit the gas and that fiend will be out of that elevator and through the doors and burning before it knows what hit it.

Sure as hell!

Shit! We might not even need a gunman!

But they did. And right then they didn’t really have one.

Felix, sitting beside the oblivious Jack Crow, had begun to rock and tremble like a molten volcano.

Chapter 17

He sat there on the tailgate of the Blazer and watched them take care of last minute details and he hated everything he saw.

But he did not speak.

He hated the job, of course, and he hated the place and he hated the Plan and he hated the sight of his pair of Brownings lying there beside him waiting to be strapped on and he hated the… earnestness… with which the rest of the Team went about it all.

But mostly he hated the sight of Jack Crow stalking about giving orders and inspiration and knowing this guy in charge was clogged tight with that suicidal half-wit philosophy about… about what? “Everybody’s-got-to-go-sometime-so-how’s-about-right-now?” or some such obscenity.

But he did not speak.

He just hated and smoked and boiled.

He also feared, but he was too angry at Crow to realize that, too furious and disgusted with that crap Crow had spouted at him by the locomotive. Bad enough having to do this shit and probably die doing it, but to have the goddamn boss start jamming this juvenile Code of Half-Ass Karma at him…

As far as Felix could tell, Crow’s philosophical foundations consisted of: “Oh, well, what the Hell!”

But still, the gunman did not speak.

What was the point… The job was on. The war was moments away and they were all going to fight in it, himself included, and nothing Felix could say now was going to stop it or save a fucking soul.

And then he heard it: “Rock and roll!”

And they were going inside.

Past the great glass double doors taped black against the sunlight with even that tiny notch they’d cut for the cable covered with black cardboard flaps and the rest of the inside also dark and cool and dry from the air conditioning — he hadn’t realized how hot it had been outside — but in here it was like a soft, dark tomb with every window taped up to be sure they came out of the elevator and Felix understood why Jack had decided to forget those damn gas masks and that gas because it was already tough enough to see in here even with the spotlights set up at every angle they could think of and all of them, Jack and Cat and Father Adam and Deputy Thompson and even Carl Joplin, gathered in front of the surveillance monitors Carl had set up at a little coffee table in the lobby so that Jack could see them while he worked the elevator and…

And it got very quiet and still with them just standing there for an instant, breathing in that air-conditioned air and watching those dark monitors.

“Hit the lights,” said Jack calmly, “and let’s see what we can see.”

And the lights downstairs in the cells came on — Felix had no idea who flipped the switch, had no idea of the source of any other movements but his own and Jack’s and whoever was standing dead inside of that tiny tunnel which had become his vision — and the cameras swept slowly back and forth showing the rows of bunked cells.

And no one was in them. They were empty.

For just an instant, Felix felt an exquisite thrill of relief until Carl Joplin lifted a chubby finger to one of the screens and pointed to an unmade bunk in the corner.

“There, I think,” he whispered. He moved his finger to another bed beside it, also unmade. “And there.”

Felix stared at the screens, unbelieving, and then back at the others’ faces, glowing in the lights from the screens, and then be looked back at the screens themselves, back at the two unmade bunks, and then he saw those outlines in the mattresses and knew the beds were unmade because someone — or something, goddammit — was still lying in them.

And his fear rose and swirled up his spine.

“I don’t get it,” whispered Kirk. “I mean, I understand it’s vampires and all that. Can’t see ’em in mirrors and stuff. But what about their clothes? We oughta be able to see their clothes! I mean, it’s a scientific fact that…

“Deputy,” said Father Adam, from just off his right shoulder, and Kirk turned around and looked at the priest.

“Deputy,” Adam repeated softly. “‘science’ can be helpful.” He gestured to the screens. “And we use it all that we can. But,” he whispered firmly, looking into the other man’s face, “this isn’t really about ‘science.’”

And the deputy eyed him a beat or two before nodding and looking back to the screens and Felix felt another chill rise and twist within his guts because he hated, absolutely goddamn hated when the priest sounded so sure because he was always, always, right and about then Jack leaned over and around the screens for one last look, at the aquarium, sitting blood-filled and ready inside the elevator.

Then he flipped a switch and the elevator doors closed and they all heard the groaning clunking as the elevator started down. It seemed so loud! It seemed loud enough to wake the—

“There!” cried Carl Joplin, and his stubby finger thumped the screen again and moved away and Felix saw. Streaks, outlines, ephemeral… drifting… but with a purpose, with a pattern and direction and Felix could see them sometimes, really see them when they would move and then pause and for just a brief half second he could see them, see their outlines, see their expressions!

And they were smiling.

“I guess,” offered Cat with a very dry throat, “they smell the blood.”

And just then all turned to the last monitor, the one that showed the inside of the elevator cage, empty save for the bright-red aquarium and just then the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened and the streaks — there were three of them, clearly three, one man and two women — moved down the row of bunks toward the elevator and…

There! In the elevator screen they saw one of them appear and they could all tell, somehow — out of the corners of their eyes, sort of — that it was one of the women.

“Carl!” whispered Jack Crow harshly. “Get outside and get ready.”

“Right,” Carl whispered hard in return and he was gone.

Jack looked at the others.

“Get in position.”

And they all moved back from the screens to somewhere — Felix was too numb to really tell or remember where — the others were somewhere over there to the right of the elevator door somewhere and he and Jack were supposed to stay here on the left.

He thought. He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t…

“How many do you want, bwana?” Cat asked.

Crow looked up at him and his face was hard. “Get to your spot, Cherry.”

Cat hesitated, looked at the screens, looked back at Crow. “It’s just that… you think we can handle more than one?”

Jack eyed him a moment. “Whoever comes up with it. Get moving.”

Cat hesitated again, then nodded and left, the glare of the spotlights glinting brightly off the polished shaft of his pike.

And then, from a desk on the other side of the booking counter, just visible through the huge black grille that rose from the top of the counter to the ceiling, a phone began to ring.

At first they just jumped. Then they turned and looked at it. Then they realized just which phone it was and then…

One of the downstairs screens, the one showing the guard’s station just beyond the wide-open barred gate leading to the elevator, showed a wall phone. The receiver was off the hook and banging in the air and sometimes Felix could see the outlines and sometimes he could not but he knew who it was, knew it was the man.

The vampire was calling them.

“Suspicious sonuvabitch,” muttered Crow but Felix didn’t really hear him. Felix was staring at the other screen, the one showing the open elevator and the aquarium full of blood that appeared to be all but boiling.

“God!” he whispered almost silently.

But Crow heard it and looked and the two of them sat there in silence as the outline-image of her came and went, came and went, as she threw her open mouth at the blood, sloshing it against the glass, and even as a ghost they could see her frenzy, her hunger, her thirst.

Twice, Felix felt sure he could see the fangs.

Jack Crow leaned forward abruptly and closed the elevator door and started it up and growled, “Here we go, troops! Rock and roll.”

But everyone knew, everyone heard the elevator. Everyone knew what was coming up to see them.

And the phone stopped ringing and the screens showed empty quiet cells and within seconds the shrieks of pain and anger began to echo from inside the elevator cage. The poison, the drugs, were getting to her.

“Enjoy, bitch,” muttered Crow and he stood up away from the screens carrying his crossbow.

And that was it, then. That got Felix going at last, that sight of Jack Crow’s muscled hand gripping that crossbow and moving into position and then Felix was moving also, alongside Crow’s left flank and as he did so he noticed Cat up there, climbing atop the elevator cage holding his sack of gasoline-filled balloons and Felix remembered standing there earlier amidst the acetylene sparks when Carl had cut that hole in the top of the elevator car itself so that Cat could… could what?

And Felix’s mind swirled with the remembered thought that Cat was supposed to throw his little water-gas balloons down into that bloody elevator along with a flare! to drive the vampires out into their killing area and that was insane, that was madness and Felix’s thoughts screamed, I’ve got to get away from these people!

But all he did then was draw one of the Brownings and that’s when they began to hear the reverberations from the elevator shaft, the din of pounding and screeching and banging and Felix thought, My God! She’s going to tear that elevator apart!

Then suddenly, quiet. No banging. No horrible echoing screams, just the rumble of the car as it rose the last few feet and stopped.

The elevator door did not open.

And it still didn’t open.

And then it tried, old circuits buzzing audibly and the metal groaning and it wouldn’t open..

And Felix and Jack found themselves over in front of the screens without thinking but there was nothing on them except shattered glass and blood everywhere, on the floors and the walls and they barely glanced at each other before moving back into position, weapons held high, and Crow called out, “Careful, people. Looks like she jammed it shut!”

And then he reached down for his little remote device Joplin had fashioned for him — it was on the floor about fifteen feet from the elevator — and that’s where they were. Felix and Crow standing together, when the elevators doors just blew off their moorings and crashed into them.

The door got Crow first, hitting him flat and flush on his right side and then spinning over his head like a flipping card and smacking Felix a glancing blow on the side of his head and as he went down he saw her streaking out of the elevator through the darkness and the room suddenly filled with dust and then he was flat on his back staring blankly at the glare of an overturned spotlight on the ceiling tiles past the edge of the crumpled elevator doors on top of him.

Then movement in the lights and sounds of shuffling feet and someone called out something to someone else and he lifted himself up, shoving the door off to one side with his gun hand and—

—and she was looking at him.

She was there, standing just in front of the elevator heaving for breath and glaring at him, and he saw her eyes arc and her lips spread back and he heard the hiss and the fangs came out and he knew he was dead, knew it, knew it, but it was so distant, somehow, like happening on a movie screen to someone else.

Should shoot her… Knew he should shoot her and he had the gun in his hand still but he couldn’t remember how to shoot but he raised the pistol anyway and she saw it and came at him, at him, at him.

And Father Adam’s crossbow went off and the huge bolt crunched through her back from just under her left shoulder and punched out through her right breast and she shrieked and leapt high into the air, spinning and shrieking… shrieking…

And then she was gone.

Where? Somewhere. Somewhere to the left maybe? She had moved so fast.

And he felt himself being jerked to his feet and he almost screamed thinking it was her but it was only Jack, standing there with blood on his cheek and looking at him.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

And Felix nodded and looked past him to Father Adam, who stood frozen and pale beside the deputy, holding an empty crossbow and staring at the vampire as she thumped toward him — My God! she could hardly move, she was skewered by that thing and it flopped as she tripped toward him and that clear, thick bile was pumping out around the shaft and the deputy lifted the sharp pike he carried but that wasn’t going to be enough and Felix shouldered Jack to the side and fired, a wild, frightened shot and hit her in the foot of all places, right in the instep of her left foot and she howled and leapt and turned back toward him and he fired again and the bullet seemed to take a chunk off the top of her left shoulder and more of that stuff bubbled out through the fabric of her…

Of her blouse? Of her Mexican peasant blouse, white with beautiful embroidery, and he looked at her at last, saw her as she really was with her deep rich eyes and plaintive whisper of pain…

Don’t you want me? Don’t you desire me and love me and want to take care of me?

And he did! He felt the molten pumping lust and wanted her alive and healthy and soft and tender in his arms…

And he dropped the gun to his side as she came toward him again and he was holding his arms out to receive her when the crossbow bolt jammed through her ribcage caught and she winced and he saw the fangs appear suddenly and he shot her three times through the chest.

And she howled and spat as the silver slugs slammed through her and she went straight down on her back, writhing and howling and spitting as the crossbow bolt twisted and torqued under her weight but then she was up immediately, up and moving, streaking, blurring white as she passed across in front of the elevator and the booking counter was in her way and she had to collide with it and when she did a chunk of formica topping the size of a chessboard all but exploded off of it but didn’t slow her down at all. She bounced off and disappeared down the hallway into the back of the jail by the offices and they heard the slamming and wailing and crashing as she searched for a way out and then there came a tremendous thundering concussion and the lights began to flicker.

“All right,” barked Jack when he saw the light. “Everybody out. Let’s go.”

The sound of his voice, habitually cool and authoritative, brought all of them around somewhat and they started for the door, except Felix who simply stood there and rocketed inside with that sweet exquisite memory of her soft eyes and yearning, tender…

“Felix,” barked Crow, “move your ass!”

Felix looked at him, at his hard face and hated his choices but knew he must obey and…

“Jack!” screamed Father Adam and there she was again, coming at them with the crossbow flopping gruesomely and the fangs out and glittering and Felix shot her again.

And again and again and again, hitting her dead square each time and she slammed back onto the floor with the first concussion but he just kept shooting at her, the bitch, walking right up to her and firing and firing into her and her body warped and arched with each slug and be enjoyed the revenge he was having on the filthy rotten — The automatic clicked empty in his hand and he automatically ejected the clip and reached for another and suddenly realized how goddamned close he’d walked up to her and again their eyes met and she was… hatred and horror and the things she was going to do to him!

And he started running back as she lurched up toward him and the second bolt, the one in Jack’s crossbow, the one with the cable on it, slammed dead center through her chest and saved Felix’s life and even over her wailing Felix could hear Jack barking at Joplin through the radio.

“Carl! Hit it!”

And Carl did, the cable went immediately taut and she was flung past them toward the door but the angle was wrong, she was being jerked around a pillar and as she went past it her suddenly taloned hands reached out and her fingers sunk two inches into the plaster and she just stopped herself.

Which meant she must have stopped the goddamn Blazer, too! And there was this high-pitched ping and distant grinding of metal and the cable went slack and she smiled this ghastly smile at them and then she let got of the pillar and ran past them toward the booking counter and she leapt into the air like a missile and went right fucking through the iron grille above it with an ear-splitting shriek of tearing metal and then there was this hole in the grille and it was all torn loose from its bolts to the counter and there was more dust in the flickering light from where the ceiling had given way too and…

And Felix grabbed Jack Crow by the upper arm and spun him around and screamed, “You didn’t tell me they could do that!”

And Jack jerked angrily free and shouted back just as loud, “I didn’t know!”

And Felix believed him. “Let’s get out of here, then!”

Jack nodded. “Cat! Where are you?”

“Here, bwana,” came the shaky reply from the top of the elevator.

“C’mon, dammit!” ordered Jack, moving toward him. “While she’s out of range!”

Cat nodded, poised briefly at the top of the elevator, then dropped softly, like his namesake, to the floor.

“Everybody all right?” asked Crow to the others, who had gathered around Cat.

Each nodded, but Felix paid no attention. He was still moving toward the front door, toward the sunshine, toward safety, dammit! We’ll count our wounds outside, how ’bout?

But the others still stood there. Not for long — just a few seconds, really. And then the cable that stretched between them, from the front door to the busted grille, began to twitch.

“How much slack,” whispered the deputy, “does she really have?”

When she came bursting back through the grille toward them they all fell backward out of their huddle and Jack went in between Felix and the target and for just an instant the gunman almost fired anyway but he didn’t.

And that gave her the time to lunge at Cat.

Cat fell back on the floor holding the pike out in front of him but it happened too fast — he couldn’t get the sharpened end around toward her in time — and she got him.

Grabbed him around the waist and lifted him high in the air, one of the shafts that bisected her knocking loudly into his face — And Cat was dead and they all knew it.

Dead in front of them.

Dead in between them.

And the cable warped and zinged along the jailhouse floor and went taut and jerked her off her feet through the wooden stake in her chest and she hissed as she flew toward the sunlight, hissed and spat and dropped Cat to reach out and grab the wall along the edge of the wide front door and she did it, she stopped herself again, but her feet flew out from their own momentum and smacked into the blackened glass and the door swung wide, wide open and the sunlight bathed them and exploded her body into deafening, howling, flames.

But she would not let go!

Felix did shoot her. He shot her again and again, but she wouldn’t let go and except for the obvious concussion when a slug struck her body he wouldn’t have believed he was hitting her and outside they could hear the strain of a motor and see her talons flexed into the wall and they knew she could do it again, wreck the cable or another Blazer or something, knew she could get free again.

Knew she was strong enough.

Cat clambered to his feet, planted his left foot, and drove his pike into her flaming back with every ounce of strength and fear he had left and the SCREAMING as it plunged into her, the SCREAMING… and for a half a second they all saw her claws lose their grip and by the time she had held fast again Deputy Thompson had stepped forward and thrown his pike and he was younger and stronger than Cat and when it hit it drove through the back of her flaming head and she SCREAMED that SCREAM again and her hands flew open and she was out the doorway and into the full sunlight and imploding with the flame, dead and gone at last, before the door had a chance to swing shut and cut off their view.

“One down,” muttered Jack.

Felix eyed him a moment, then walked out the door and into the sunshine.

Chapter 18

By the time they were ready to go again, there were only ninety minutes left until sundown.

Not so good, thought Jack Crow. But he kept it to himself along with everything else and hurried them along.

The trouble was, they had had so much to do:

A portable generator for power to their spotlights.

Two extra spotlights to protect those that were smashed.

A new cable.

They had removed what was left of both elevator doors.

They had fixed the front door.

And of course they repaired the walking wounded. Cat’s nose was broken. Jack had sutures on his cheek. Felix had a bandage on the edge of his forehead. And Carl Joplin had damn near lost all his teeth.

He hadn’t lost a one yet. But he should have. Seems the first time he tried dragging the girl out, she had just torn the Blazer’s rear bumper completely off. The second time he had used a police car, actually wrapping the cable around the engine block and getting a much faster start so that he was going almost twenty miles an hour when he ran out of slack.

But she had stopped the police car dead and Carl had gone right through the windshield and his face was cut in what looked like a hundred different places and his lips were split and all his front teeth were loose to the touch. Somehow he had managed to keep his lead foot on the throttle through the whole thing and, therefore, saved their lives.

Or at least kill her, which was what counted.

Cat still managed to bitch at him about being slow and Carl had angrily snarled back that he had changed cars and gotten moving again within thirty goddamn seconds and let’s see Cat do it that fast and Cat had asked him if he knew how far a vampire could move in thirty seconds?

“How far?” he snorted.

“Nobody knows, Joplin,” Cat shot back, “because there’s so many oceans in the way!”

And it was meant to be funny but no one really laughed because they were all going to have to do it again two more times in an hour and a half and…

And nobody thought this was going to work.

Jack knew this, saw it in their faces, and didn’t care, didn’t give a shit because there was no other choice!

So, “Rock and roll,” be barked and got his cast inside again, into the dusty glare of the spolights and the cool dryness Of the air conditioning, which had stayed working all along somehow. While the others got into their positions, Jack walked over and looked at the elevator car. Pig’s blood and broken glass were all over the walls and ceiling. There was a large pool of it on the floor.

Jack had nothing to replace their bait. No more blood. No other aquarium. But he thought, from the memory of her feeding frenzy, that just that pool on the floor would be enough to entice.

Or maybe not, bethought calmly and lit a cigarette. What does it matter?

“We’re all going to die anyway,” he muttered and then caught himself. Did he say that? Hell, did he say that out loud?

And he turned and looked at the others, at Cat clambering back atop the elevator, at the priest with his crossbow and the deputy with his puny pike and at the gunman with his dark thoughts and dark skills and he thought…

He thought: Why are we doing this? Why? This is crazy!

And that scared him most of all because he had never, in all the fears and kills and slaughtered friends, had such thoughts. And he wondered if he was going soft and then another part of his head stepped forward and quietly whispered that anyone can be pushed too far and there is such a thing as too much and for just an instant the desire to quit was so strong he thought he would weep.

But he did not.

Neither did he work it out. Not at all. He just stood there for a few seconds to be sure the tears had stopped welling and then mechanically shoved himself ahead, going through the motions instead of dealing with it and feeling like a cheat whenever he met another’s eyes because he knew they would never try again unless they thought he believed and… Did he?

“Rock and roll!” he muttered angrily one more time, because none of this shit really mattered, because it still had to be tried, because…

Because… well, because “Rock & Roll,” dammit!

And he looked around and made sure everyone was in place and set to go and then he just damn well got on with it.

The screens monitoring the cells were clear of streaks or ghostly movement, which only meant they weren’t moving around down there, so Jack reached forward and flipped a switch to send the elevator down a second time and give ’em something to move for..

There was some creaking and groaning from the battered elevator car but it started down. Without doors on it, all could see it move, see its ceiling pass the floor, see the cables and wires sprouting from the top, see it stop with a truly horrible sound of grinding twisting metal.

And stay stopped, within six inches of the floor.

Jack muttered something under his breath and tried the switch again. The car acted like it wanted to move, sort of shivering in place, but it basically wouldn’t budge. Jack sighed and flipped the switch off.

“You want me to call Carl?” asked Father Adam.

Jack stood up from the screens. “I don’t know. Hold a second.”

“I think,” offered Cat from his perch atop the elevator shaft, “that it’s just stuck on something.”

“Okay,” replied Crow. “Everybody else hold tight.”

He walked around the TV screens, still carrying his crossbow, and went over to have a look. With his free hand he picked up one of the spotlights and took it with him, the cord hissing dryly behind him as he walked.

Cat hopped down to the - floor as Crow got there and pointed down at a corner of the shaft.

“Looks like it’s jamming up in there somehow.”

Crow nodded, put his crossbow down, and lit a cigarette.

“It’s never worked really great,” offered the deputy from just behind him.

Crow turned to the voice and saw that everyone, even Felix, had crowded up behind him to see.

Are we undisciplined? wondered Crow to himself. Or just afraid to be alone?

But he said nothing, just puffed on his cigarette.

It was almost like, he thought idly, Somebody was trying them not to do this.

Well, fuck that!

“Here,” he said to Cat, holding out the spotlight, “hold this.”

Cat took the light, frowning. “What are you gonna do?”

“I’m gonna get this sonuvabitch unstuck,” growled Crow and stepped up to the edge.

What Crow was planning to do was just step on the roof there, on that corner Cat had pointed to, and just sorta hop up and down until he felt something give and then go back to Carl’s little remote control box and try again.

And he’d begun doing that. Stepping out onto the top of the car, bracing himself first on the edge of the doorway and then on the walls of the shaft itself. And the whole assembly groaned and creaked when he stepped on it and he could feel it giving just a little right away and he thought about jumping back out before it fell or something but then it seemed to be more or less stable so he stayed put. But he looked quickly around for something to grab in case the whole damn thing went and as he did his eyes crossed across the hole they’d cut in the roof for Cat to drop his gas balloons and he saw, there on the floor of the elevator car, a brand new hole, a hole that had been torn in the floor, a hole that hadn’t been there five minutes ago, had it?

And then something obscured his view and he saw and recognized the face, that face…

“Oh, my God…”

And the face smiled and said, “Crow” in that voice.

Crow was throwing himself backward out of the shaft to safety when the top of the car blew out and the air was filled with shrapnel and everybody else hit the deck and Jack, still on the floor, grabbed his crossbow out of Cat’s hands and yelled, “Get back! It’s him!”

But it was too late. He had already begun to rise from the hole he had just made and it was really the effortless way he did this that froze them so. The way he simply raised himself with the grip of a single beautiful hand, almost levitating toward them, his power and eyes and smile and terrible beauty so alien but so familiar, so pale but so solid, so horrible but so magnetic.

He wore black leather boots that laced to just below the knee and black ballet tights and a black silk sash and a huge white billowy shirt and he was magnificent and beautiful and scary and ungodly strong and the instant, almost spasmodic, desire to harm him was strong and deep and true but so, somehow, was something just as strong and deep — the itch to do something that would make him smile.

But he was smiling already as he strode casually toward them.

Jack took a step back and raised his crossbow.

He/It smiled more broadly and the white teeth against that pale skin surrounded by the fall of curly jet-black hair and… The headband, Jack thought. He’s wearing a white headband. That means something.

Doesn’t it?

And he raised the crossbow higher.

“Crow,” it said and its voice filled them. “You and your wooden stakes. When you are one of us, we’ll have a big laugh together about them.”

This was looking grim.

“Everybody back,” ordered Crow. “Back away and out.”

But before anyone could move, the voice came once more: “Too late. You’ve let me get too close.”

And he/it took another casual step toward them.

“Get back!” ordered Crow again over his shoulder. “Move it!”

And they started to obey but the vampire took another step and Jack raised the crossbow all the way then, to firing position, and said, “Hold it there.”

And the thing laughed and said, “Are you joking? Why? I’m not one of my women…”

“Stop!” said Jack Crow.

And the thing smiled more and showed the big teeth and said, “Stop me.”

And Jack Crow said, into his radio headset, “Hit it, Joplin!” and fired his massive crossbow at point-blank range.

The vampire caught it. In midair.

And then it took the baseball-bat-sized arrow bolt in both hands and, with a flick of his wrists, like a breadstick, broke it.

And the cable went taught and the piece still connected was zipped out of sight through the door and the vampire laughed again.

“You fools!” it said. “Did you really think you could slay gods and face no penalty?”

And it took the other half of the bolt, the pointed end, and hurled it straight down at its feet and the point disappeared completely out of sight into the floor.

Felix’s gun was in his hand. He raised it.

The vampire turned sharply to him at the motion.

“You point that toy at me and I will, quite literally, rip your spine from your body.”

Felix damn near dropped the pistol to the floor. Just from that voice.

Crow wasn’t finished.

“Lights!” he yelled and keyed his on and there was a brief pause but then every one of them did the same and the halogen crosses burst forth and crisscrossed the wicked form and the thing frowned and winced and took a step back and raised a hand to shield his eyes.

“He doesn’t like it!” announced Crow excitedly.

But the vampire just snorted in derision and said, “Why no, Crow. I don’t like it. But this won’t kill me either.”

And it took a step forward once more.

“Anything else?” it asked and the voice was dry and sarcastic. “Garlic, maybe? Rabbit’s foot?” And it looked straight at Crow. “Well, Pope’s little altar boy. Very well.”

And he started toward Crow and they all saw, in the glare from their lights, the clear liquid seeping from beneath the headband and suddenly Crow understood and, better, so did Felix. The silver-cross wound. The wound that would not heal.

Felix raised his pistol.

“I told you not to do that!” snapped the monster.

“So you did,” replied Felix and fired three times and got him maybe two times? At least once, for sure, for sure, and then Team Crow scattered as one for the exit, for that big broad double door with sunshine beyond it and Felix skidded he took off so fast — had no idea where the monster was, he had practically disappeared he had moved so fast and then Felix felt this rush of air past his cheek and thought, My God, could it be? Could anything move so fast? It couldn’t already be in front of me.

The monster loomed in front of him, glaring pale in the bobbing halogen cross. It reached forward and snatched the pistol from Felix’s hand and, hissing slow and deep and wet, raised the gun in front of Felix’s face and… squeezed it… and crushed it.

Crushed it like it was made of soft chocolate.

And Felix, unarmed and helpless, thought of this hissing thing which could rush thirty feet when he could only make two steps — with a bullet in it. This thing that could crush an automatic revolver.

And he looked into the blood-red eyes and saw the fangs go back and knew he was going to die… when the double doors came open fifteen feet behind the vampire, and from head to heels, he burst immediately into scarlet pulsing flame.

The monster turned instinctively toward the pain, and ice-cold spittle splashed Felix as the monster’s face spun away from him and for just an instant the two of them, the monster and the gunman, saw Carl Joplin large and fat standing holding the doors open, huffing and puffing and then the monster was looking at Felix again and screeching and Felix knew it would kill him as it raced past him into the shadows and he drew and fired his second Browning and the silver bullet made a neat hole in the dead center of the headband and Felix dropped to the floor to avoid those claw/hands that flashed but the monster was already gone in a howling streak of scarlet popping flame, across the floor, all fifty feet of it and slamming into the elevator shaft and down through the hole it had made and out of sight.

And the howling. And the flicker of red flame still hanging in the air and reflected in the elevator shaft.

Then quiet. Quiet. The flame dissipating. Quiet. Still.

Felix looked up from his squat on the floor and saw all the others. They hadn’t managed to move five feet the entire time and now they just stood there and stared at him and he thought: it was me, all me, just killing me, just flashing fangs at me.

Then he thought no more but to run, with all the others, toward the light. And then crouched over hands on knees and panting on the front steps in the sunshine, Jack Crow ordered Carl Joplin to keep those doors open, to prop ’em open if he had to.

Felix and the others, Deputy Thompson and Cat and Father Adam — all of them — nodded when Crow said this. Yes, yes, keep those doors open. Keep that sunlight streaming in. Keep it back, back downstairs. Down in the cells underground and out of reach.

Felix caught his breath and saw the others looking at him. He looked away, dammit, from those slow lucky ones, and back into the jail.

And the others, all of Team Crow, followed his gaze and looked and thought and knew they were thoroughly beaten.

Whipped.

We could never take that guy.

That god?

Chapter 19

Carl didn’t say a word, just gathered them up and herded them over to the motorhome and sat them down in the shade. Iced tea. Cigarettes. More cigarettes.

Finally: “What happened, bwana?” asked Carl Joplin.

Crow looked at him. “Is the plastique ready?”

Carl frowned. “That bad?”

“Carl, I’m not sure that’s going to work.”

“Oh. Well, we may have a little…” Carl stopped as the six policemen appeared.

“Kirk,” said one of them, “we need to talk.”

Kirk looked wearily in their direction, then stood up and joined them. They huddled up several steps away.

“They don’t look happy,” offered Cat.

“I don’t blame them,” replied Carl.

Crow sighed. “Okay. Let’s have it.”

“The Mayor & Co. are back and pissed.”

“How pissed?”

“We’re trapped.”

Father Adam leaned forward. “Define ‘trapped.’”

“Boxed in. Barricaded. Six square blocks of downtown. No in. No out. Just the team and those six cop buddies of the deputy’s. And they’re about to leave.”

“They are?”

“Got to. The chief fired them by radio just about the time y’all went in the second time.”

“But they stuck by us?” asked Father Adam.

Carl shrugged. “They wouldn’t leave without Kirk.”

Cat, remembering the deputy’s javelin-toss of the pike, said, “I don’t blame them.”

They looked up as Kirk came back.

“How does it look, deputy?” Crow asked him.

Kirk and the other policemen exchanged looks before he spoke.

“I think they’re going to try to arrest us in the next few minutes.”

Carl groaned. “Aw, shit!”

The deputy went on. “They’ve got riot gear and tear gas and assault weapons and the rest of it. They’re plenty serious.”

Jack eyed him a moment. “So are we.”

The policeman standing alongside Kirk didn’t like the sound of this.

“Mr. Crow,” said their spokesman, “you see, they got the idea somehow that you’re planning to burn down the jail or something.”

Jack blew a smoke ring. “That’s the plan.”

The policeman snorted. “That tears it! Kirk, you’ve gotta get away from these loonies. They’re gonna get you busted or killed or—”

“I’ve seen a vampire, Wyatt,” snapped the deputy. “And I think he’s right.”

Wyatt snorted again. “Right to blow up the jail?”

“Remember, Wyatt. I’ve seen a vampire. I think they oughta use an atomic bomb on the sonuvabitch.”

And for a few moments no one spoke.

Finally, Wyatt exchanged another look with his fellow officers and spoke. “Okay, Kirk. This is your deal. Do what you gotta do. But they’re not, gonna let you take out the jail — and we ain’t gonna go along with you on the off chance that you’re right.”

Jack Crow nodded. “Understood, officer.”

The cop glanced at Crow. “Mighty nice. But I was talking to the deputy.” He turned back to Kirk. “Kirk, you gotta get away from here. Now. Take these guys with you if you feel you gotta. But get out.

“No,” said Jack but the cop ignored him.

“Get away and regroup. Come back tomorrow, or maybe—”

“No!” barked Crow and stood up. “Look, officer, we can’t leave and come back later. It’ll be dark soon. They’ll be out then. They’ll be free. And these people here will be issuing warrants for our arrest…

“They already have.”

“And outside of this zoo those warrants are going to look real and we’ll go to jail and those beasts will find out where we’re being held and if that place is a tin box like you have here or the Dallas County fucking Jail, they’ll kick their way through the walls like you kick through a picket fence and they’ll carve their way through anybody who tries to stop them and they will kill us!”

Crow stopped abruptly and stared at the other man and breathed hard and mad and for just an instant Cat was afraid the punches would start.

But they didn’t.

Wyatt, the cop, just sighed and shook his head. Then he waved to Kirk, said, “Good luck, buddy,” and then he and the rest of them were into their squad cars and gone.

“Alone at last,” offered Cat.

“Not funny, Cherry,” retorted Jack. “You and Felix and the deputy get off your asses and go see about this barricade business. See how tight the seal is. Maybe we can figure a way of buying some time.” He paused, looked at the sun low in the sky. “What little there is of it.”

“Don’t bother,” replied Kirk. “I know the emergency plans for this city. That seal is real tight.” He eyed Crow defensively. “This really is a fine local department here.”

Crow returned the look. “I believe you,” he replied sincerely.

“So,” said Father Adam, “we’re stymied.”

“Unless you’re willing to start shooting peace officers,” said the deputy.

Felix and Crow traded a glance.

“I don’t shoot people anymore,” said the gunman in a low, firm voice.

“It wasn’t a serious statement,” the deputy assured him quickly.

“Good,” said Felix.

“Why,” Kirk asked quickly, “don’t you just set off the charges now? Before they can stop you?”

Jack shook his head. “It’s more than one boom, deputy. We have to level the whole damn structure before they’ll be driven out. We have to plant charges deep into the rubble usually, before they pop. It takes a while.”

Carl Joplin leaned forward. “And how long you figure they’ll wait, lawman, after they hear that first detonation?”

Kirk frowned. “They won’t.”

Carl nodded. “We got trouble.”

“There must be some way to stop them,” Adam insisted. The priest scanned the others’ faces. “What stops the police?”

“You mean besides higher authority we can’t get to in time?”

“Yes?”

Cigarettes were lit while everybody thought about it. Suddenly Cat laughed.

“What is it?” growled Joplin.

“The media,” Cat piped.

“Huh?”

“We’ll become terrorists!”

The scheme, hatched to complete detail in less than five minutes flat, was pure Cherry Cat. ROTLA, the Republic of Texas Liberation Army, would get on the horn to the Dallas — Fort Worth “media cretins” and describe their situation as a hostage crisis. True, they had no hostages. And the mayor and the chief knew better, but with helicopter Mini-cams less than fifteen minutes away, they just might hesitate a little, even after the first explosion, described to the media “as a symbolic act.”

“We just tell ’em if they don’t meet our demands we’ll blow up a second building, like the courthouse there. Plus kill all the hostages.”

“What demands?” Carl Joplin wanted to know.

“A complete list of our nonnegotiable ten-part program will be broadcast over the fascist police trenches at dawn tomorrow,” replied Cat smoothly and he smiled.

The Team eyed him like he was from Venus.

“I like it!” twanged a deep voice from over Cat’s shoulder.

The man they turned to see was about six feet tall, something under two hundred pounds… and relaxed. Totally and completely at ease, from the hands in his pants pockets to the half smile on his face to the ironic sparkle in his eyes. Felix tried to recall the last time he had seen a man so utterly sure of himself, so completely in control of his world.

And then he remembered — it was the last Texas sheriff he’d met.

“Boss!” cried Kirk happily. “When did you get in?”

“Coupla hours ago.”

“Where have you been?”

“Been sniffing around.”

“For what?”

The sheriff laughed and put a hand on his deputy’s shoulder.

“To see which side of this mess is crazy.”

Jack stepped forward. “What’s the verdict, sheriff? Both?”

The sheriff laughed again. “Pretty much.” He stuck out his hand. “How do you do, Mr. Crow. I’m Richard Hattoy.”

The two shook hands.

“Glad to have you,” said Jack. “You’re just in time to be our first hostage.”

Hattoy grinned. “They said you were a smartass.”

“‘They?’ Who?”

“Far as I can tell, everybody who’s ever met you. Kirk, you’re riding with the last of the cowboys here. Been promoted, decorated, and busted down more times than you’ve had safe sex. And not just the military. CIA, DEA, National Security Agency, Treasury… Crow, can’t you find anybody to put up with you?”

“Not so far,” offered Cat.

Hattoy eyed him. “You’d be—”

“That’s right, sheriff.”

"You’re still following him.”

Cat grinned. “Don’t let his rank fool you. We all drew straws and he got Kimosabe.”

“That make you Tonto?”

Cat shook his head. “Court jester.”

Hattoy looked him up and down. “That figures. Tell me, did you really give up a corporate law practice in Oklahoma City to paint spaceships?”

“It was Edmond, Oklahoma, and I was a science-fiction book-cover illustrator.”

“Okay. What’s the difference?”

Cat shrugged. “A hobbit or two.”

“Uh-huh,” muttered Hattoy and turned to the others. “Enough small talk. Let’s get to it.”

“What’s up?” asked Kirk nervously.

“Relax, deputy. For once you picked right. Mr. Crow checks out with his former associates. Nobody liked him much. And nobody but nobody wants to hire him again — but they do trust him. And he’s got a lot of very important people behind the scenes believing in his vampires.”

“Unofficially, of course,” added Jack.

“Unofficial is being generous, I’d say. But it is a backup, of a sort.”

The sheriff paused, took his hands out of his pockets, and stretched mightily and yawned and they saw the pistol on his back right hip the size of a Buick.

“Okay,” Hattoy went on, “So. There are vampires and you’re their hunter on this continent is the story I get. If that’s so, what’s your problem?”

“The problem is your mayor and your police chief,” said Crow, “and who knows how many others, are doing what the vampires tell them to do.”

“Oh, yeah? Why?”

“They have them under a sort of spell, sheriff,” said Father Adam.

Hattoy eyed the priest unhappily. “A ‘spell’…”

Kirk spoke up. “I don’t know what else you’d call it, Richard. We took two jailers outta here that were about bled to death and crying ’cause it was over.”

“Okay… But is that any reason to blow up my goddamned jail and maybe the whole block with it?”

Crow shook his head. “Not possible, sheriff. The charges are too small. You might lose a next-door window or two.”

Hattoy’s tone was one of withering disgust. “‘A window or two’?” he repeated. “What about fire? Shouldn’t you have fire trucks all over the area?”

Jack Crow was starting to get hot. He didn’t like the change in Hattoy’s tone and he didn’t like his antagonistic manner. Just when he thought he had finally found somebody, dammit, with brains enough to see!

“Yes, sheriff. You’re right about fire trucks. But it wasn’t my idea to seal them out of this area.”

“No. You’re just the one who’s gonna risk a whole city block and maybe a whole downtown by going ahead anyway.”

Jack met his eyes. “Yes.”

“You take a lot on yourself, Crow. You think maybe that’s why you got yourself kicked out of every fucking federal agency in the Congressional Registry?”

And that did it for Jack.

“Two things, sheriff,” he all but barked. “One: you find me a president with enough balls to publicly recognize this nightmare and I’ll be his janitor for life. Two: you could lose a couple of blocks. Or downtown. Or this entire one-horse town as far as I’m concerned and I’m not just real sure anybody this side of the interstate would notice, much less care! I’m not killing people, for crissakes! I’m killing old dead buildings. I’m trying to save the people in this dump. Or maybe you think the ones that died so far are AIDS victims?

“Look. We can kill two master vampires today. But only today. We know where they are. And they can’t move for…” He looked up at the inexorable sun sinking lower and lower. Crow pointed at the horizon. “That’s all the time we’ve got. It’s a chance that won’t come again.

“And it’s a chance I’m fucking well gonna take if you send the marines in here! Risk? Risk? Lemme tell you something, Hattoy:

“Fuck your buildings and fuck your town and fuck your mayor and if you aren’t going to help us — knowing we’re right — just because you’re afraid of a little risk… Well, then, fuck… you… too!”

Dead silence for three long beats.

Then the sheriff said, without taking his eyes off Crow, “I can see why you like him, Kirk. Let’s go.”

Kirk, dumfounded, managed, “Where to?”

“Well, I gotta save this here Jack Crow hero type and then get him outta town… before I have to kick his butt in half for talking to me that way. C’mon.”

And then as they were walking away the sheriff looked at Felix, looked down at his hand, and Felix followed his gaze and only then realized he was carrying the squashed Browning.

“Having a little pistol trouble, boy?” whispered the sheriff and then he was gone.

Felix lifted his hand in front of his face and looked at what was left of the gun. In the sunlight the marks of the monster’s fingers were clear. No machine could have vised like that.

Now when, he wondered, did I find time to pick this up? And when, he wondered next, glancing down at his second pistol back in its holster, did I put this one back?

Hell, he didn’t even remember drawing the second gun.

When, he asked then, is this luck going to run dry?

In the meantime, Carl was arguing with Crow over the sheriff.

“…testing you, Jack. Picture this from his point of view for a second. It’s one thing to call up some old favors and have you checked out. But this is his town. He had to read this face-to-face. And if you hadn’t shown the balls to stand up to him for what you knew you had to do… Well, he probably wondered why you didn’t detonate up front. Probably wondered why you tried to go inside in the first place.”

“So do I,” offered Cat quietly and Carl didn’t like the look that passed briefly between Cat and Crow.

“He was trying to piss you off,” Carl went on quickly. “I’m surprised you didn’t see that one coming.”

Jack lit a cigarette, looked tired. “You’re right.”

Carl’s voice grew gentle. “Rough in there, huh?”

“If you hadn’t opened that door,” replied Jack Crow softly, “or if you had waited just five more minutes to open it, we’d all be dead.”

“Felix,” said Cat. “Show him the gun.”

Felix tossed the lump to Carl and sat down on the curb.

Carl caught it and drew in a sharp breath. “It did this?”

Felix lit a cigarette and nodded without looking up.

Carl shook his head. “Wow,” he muttered softly. “Strong.”

Jack’s voice sounded odd: “Yeah. Strong. Unreal strong. Strong like we never imagined.”

“Something,” muttered Cat, “for you to look forward to.”

“Huh?” asked Carl.

Cat lit a smoke of his own. “Haven’t you heard? Jack’s going to be a vampire.”

“Not funny, Cherry,” growled Jack.

“Not meant to be, buddy,” was the response.

“What is all this?” Carl wanted to know.

“It’s a fact,” drawled Cat. “We just heard from his recruiter.”

“You talked to her?”

“Well, for one thing we mostly just listened and for another thing, it wasn’t her. It was him."

“The man?”

“The man. And I don’t think he came up because he was thirstier than she was, Carl. I think he came up to kill us and take Jack here and make him a vampire.”

Then they told Carl about the exploding elevator.

And about the crossbow.

Carl looked pale. “He actually caught it?”

Jack nodded.

“At what range?”

“Twelve feet.”

Carl stared. “Lord!” he whispered.

“‘Gods’ is the way he put it,” said the previously silent Father Adam. The priest’s voice was hard. “He said they were gods and he said we were fools with wooden stakes. He said Jack was the pope’s altar boy.”

Carl blinked. “Anything else?”

From Cat: “He doesn’t like white crosses — but they can’t kill him. He’s not afraid of… what was it? Garlic? He said he’d break Felix’s back or something if he even pointed a gun at him.”

“What did Felix do?”

“Shot him anyway.”

“Way to go, Felix!” gushed Carl.

And Felix, from his seat on the curb, turned and gave him a dead look.

And then nobody wanted to talk about it anymore.

“Enough of this,” cried Cat suddenly. “What about the sheriff?”

“Yeah,” said Jack, “we better get moving.”

And everyone, save Cat, seemed to move at once.

Cat stared at them. “You seem pretty sure.”

Carl grinned, shrugged. “He said he’d handle it, Cherry.”

Cat frowned. “He’s only one guy.”

Carl grinned some more. “He’s a Texas sheriff.”

“And he has Kirk with him,” added Jack, his own grin faint but still there.

“Great,” drawled Cat dryly. “That makes two of ’em. What are they gonna do? Arrest them?”

Carl stopped what he was doing, said, “Probably.”

“The mayor? The chief of police? All his cops?”

“If he has to. Cat. He’s a Texas sher—”

“I know. I know. You keep saying that. So, he can handle it. Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

And for the most part, that’s just what happened. Team Crow never did get the details. All Kirk would say was some mumbling about the sheriff walking up to the barricades and telling ’em to break it up.

Twenty minutes later the Team had fire trucks and firemen and ambulances and police protection and demolition advisers the chief had brought in originally to stop them and all sorts of experts on local buildings like the jail. They even had structural plans and advice on how to blow it, and Carl and Cat did, in fact, move three of the charges a couple of yards.

Hattoy showed up in time to press the detonator personally, saying, “All my life I’ve wanted to kaboom one of these things.” This was just smoke, of course, to hide his adding another layer of his personal authority on the event in case of future hassle.

They blew it once, twice, three times, in layers. Then they blew the rubble. Then they blew it some more before the female emerged, rocketing upward in a hail of bricks and screeching. She popped on Adam’s side and the priest came through once more, taking only two quick steps on the uneven surface before delivering a clean bisecting shot.

He didn’t appear until a half hour before dusk, a fullthroated scarlet fountain of hatred and fury. His screams were ear-splitting. His flames were supernaturally bright.

But in daylight it didn’t matter. Jack had seen it all before. He did get close enough to recognize the monster who knew his name before punching the crossbow through the burning chest. But there was nothing special about the shot. Or the end.

“When you’re a vampire, Crow…” it had said.

Jack watched the ashes burn all the way down, then whispered, “Not today, little god.”

He stood there awhile, lit and smoked a cigarette before moving. When he finally turned away, toward the Team now milling with the sheriff and his people, the realization struck deep.

My God, that was close.

And then: Why did I try to go inside? I almost killed everyone! What was I trying to do?

Today was three years, three months, and some-odd days of this madness.

Shit.

“Thank God Felix can shoot…”

Chapter 20

Davette wore a khaki blouse and a khaki skirt and a light blue scarf Annabelle had found for her somewhere that highlighted her blond hair and rich golden skin. Felix was, quite simply, unable to look at her.

He was afraid of what he might say to her.

He was afraid of what he might do to her.

He was mostly afraid of the vampires, though, and it didn’t matter if she had just lately come on board and it didn’t matter that she was, technically, still a reporter doing a story — all that had long been forgotten. She was part of Team Crow now, sure-as hell. Team Crow was home.

He was afraid of what he might do for her.

So now, nine hours into a most un-Team-like victory party, he sat in the lone chair in the far corner of what passed for a suite in the cheap motel the ladies had found and did his drinking and chain-smoking alone.

Because Jack Crow was wrong.

This deal would not play anymore. Not like this.

Not with me.

Fuck ’em.

Everyone noticed, of course. They could hardly help it.

When their gunman was planted so hard in that one chair. When he smoked so incessantly, drank so ferociously. When he would brood so hard he seemed to strobe…

Sometimes it seemed that chair of his, that whole corner of the room, really, seemed to corridor away into the distance.

Sooner or later, it was going to get ugly. It had been heading for it since the last pile of ashes.

Felix rode with Cat in the motorhome on the way to the rendezvous with the women. He rode in silence, ignoring what little Cat had to say, until Cat finally turned in the driver’s seat and looked at him.

Is he relieved? Cat wondered. Stunned? Maybe he’s in shock or…

No! he realized suddenly. That’s anger! He’s furious.

And just then Felix had turned and looked at him and those dead eyes had bored deeply for just a moment. Then the gunman climbed out of his seat and disappeared into the back until they reached the motel.

Even for Annabelle, who was used to the endless waiting, this had been a tough one. Her tears of joy were a little brighter this time, her hugs of welcome a little tighter, her voice a little more strident. Davette, on the other hand, seemed possessed by a surreal glow of happiness at their survival. She took turns with Annabelle hugging everyone and blushing furiously when Cat, with a wicked grin, hauled off and gave her a long, wet, sloppy one.

All save Felix. He stood at the edge of it all, nodding curtly to the women and asking for his room key and mumbling something about wanting to take a shower right away.

He got his key and a tense moment before Father Adam announced that he wanted to have special services immediately — while everyone was still sober enough to pray, ha ha.

And Felix took part in this but the way he knelt and rocked and prayed, so fiercely radiating anger and fear… By the time the priest could quickly break it up they all felt sprayed.

Then there was a knock on the door and Sheriff Hattoy and Kirk and a few other deputies appeared for a little celebrating and Jack brought out glasses and their special schnapps and instructed the newcomers on the toast: “Here’s to the great ones…” began Jack.

“There’s damn few of us left!” finished the others and they all downed the schnapps and all, but Felix, laughed and asked for more. The gunman went to his room, taking a bottle of his scotch with him.

They partied without him, while the women desperately tried to whip up enough food fast enough to absorb just enough of the alcohol to make Annabelle’s hypnotic debriefing possible later on. It was going to be close. Even for Team Crow, the boozing was heavy. The sheriff excused himself early. There had been a good reason why he had been late to their troubles, and that reason still existed. He had more work to do. He exchanged a quick private smile with Kirk before leaving his best deputy behind, as everyone had known would happen.

They partied gamely along some more and no one said anything about Felix not being there. And when the food was ready and he called from behind his locked motel room door that he wasn’t hungry, no one said anything about that, either.

But everyone noticed. Everyone, that is, except Jack Crow. Jack refused to notice, thought Cat. Or maybe he’s just too high on Felix to care. Jack perched on the edge of the sink while they ate and, master storyteller that he was, relayed every detail of the miracles his gunman had wrought. Carl had been outside during the fighting and the women hadn’t been there at all and the three of them listened raptly to every word.

About the woman with the stakes in her, streaking and screeching about in the darkness with Felix’s split-second marksmanship on her all the way.

About him, the way he seemed to levitate out of the elevator and stroll so casually toward them, about his catching the fired crossbow bolt, about his looking right at Felix and warning him about the gun.

“And Felix shot him anyway?” Carl asked.

Jack sipped from his wine and nodded. “Three shots. Hit ’im twice that I saw. Then it was just a blur until he grabbed the gun.”

“And crushed it?” Annabelle wanted to know. “Really?”

Jack nodded again. “With one hand. That’s when Carl here opened the door and it turned toward the light for a second. By the time he had turned back around Felix had drawn his other automatic, left-handed, and he shot him right through the center of his goddamned forehead.”

Jack paused, lit a cigarette. “I think he would have killed at least a couple of us if it weren’t for that. Hell, he could do that on his way past us out of the light. But not after that shot.

“Carl, our shooter is everything we could ever have wanted.”

And everything Davette had wanted him to be. She sat there, in the silence that followed, with her eyes welling happy, happy tears. She could not explain her joy, her sense of hope, any more than she could explain, or even fathom, this viselike hold he had on her.

But somehow, because he was so… so wonderful at this, it made it all seem okay. Even the jagged vibrations of his presence.

“Yep,” said Jack Crow, staring deep into his wineglass, “everything we could ever have wanted.”

Then he looked at the smiling Davette and grinned.

“Then how come,” popped Cat from amidst the others’ concerned looks, “we’re not all happy?”

Jack shook his head. “Aw, Cherry, give it a rest. Felix is just…”

“Where is he, Jack?” demanded Annabelle. “Why is he in his room? Even when he’s here, he just… He looked at me like he hated me! Hated us all! He’s not eating. He’s there in his room drinking alone. He…”

“Relax, woman!” Jack snapped. He stood up and towered over them. “Let me tell you kids a thing or two. Felix is…”

Then the door came open and Felix was there, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, scotch bottle in hand. He stepped inside and stopped and looked at them, all of them, for a heavy silent moment, then turned curtly away toward the chair in the corner of the suite and planted himself there and drank some more.

Under Jack’s silent directions, they tried to party anyway. Jack whispered to Annabelle to drop the debriefing for tonight, concentrate on the celebration and the booze.

“Party, babe! You know!” he muttered grinning in her ear.

And they gave it a try, starting with the music. ZZ Top, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Roy Orbison, everyone in their tape library. It helped. They danced and laughed and giggled and drank too much and it went on for hours and hours and early on somebody in the next room complained, a trucker type in a bad sleepy mood, so Jack had the women haul his ass in through the doorway and drink a little drinkie and “Don’t worry about being dressed, stranger,” he insisted, looking down at his bare chest and feet. “We’ll find you a shirt and all the rest of us will take our shoes off! Race!”

And they all laughed and fell to the floor and Annabelle was the first to get her shoes off — in like one half a second. And Cat was the last — it took him three minutes of concentrated effort before he gave up and put his drink down and tried with both hands.

Then it only took him another minute and a half.

The trucker loved it and wanted to know if he could call his buddies who were just down the hail and Jack said, “Hell, yes! Let’s go git ’em!”

And they did go “git” ’em, all five of them. Plus Doris, the blond at the front desk, and her boyfriend Eddy Duane who, Cat felt sure, should have by God learned to play the guitar backward by now. They also gathered in a couple named Henderson, who had come into town for a funeral earlier in the day and said they could use a wake. About an hour later a skinny bald man in his seventies, who was easily six-foot-six, knocked on the door and asked to join the party.

He produced a business card: “Mr. Kite, Layman Activist, The Church of the Sub-Genius.”

“It’s the world’s first industrial Church,” he explained to Father Adam.

“Industrial?” asked the priest.

“Right. We pay taxes and everything,” replied Mr. Kite.

“I’m not sure I understand. What is it you believe in?”

“Everything,” said Mr. Kite with a smile. “But mostly the free-market economy.”

So they all had another drink on that, for the benefit of Mr. Kite.

Felix sat stone still and staring throughout. He didn’t speak, didn’t get up, didn’t acknowledge anyone. There was something so threatening about his somber posture that none of the strangers even tried to approach him. And inquires were put off by Team members.

Only Davette seemed unable to stay away. She got close enough to him to change his ashtray twice. And Annabelle thought she was going to speak to him a few times, almost on impulse. But she didn’t and neither did anyone else.

But Jack seemed happy about it all. Weirdly content in fact. Occasionally the Team would spot him standing off to one side, catching his party breath and grinning at Felix’s back.

Does he know something we don’t know? wondered Cat. Or is he just blind?

By three thirty the party was running out of steam for those with nothing to celebrate. The Hendersons, who had been trying to teach two of the truckers to dance and sing, had finally given up. Their only decent pupil had been a barrel-chested old man with “Pop” on his uniform who had actually learned a few steps of soft shoe in his heavy boots before collapsing from alcohol and years. Once that last person was off his feet, the sleepies began to creep in on all non-Team members. They could have reinvigorated for more fun — Team Crow had its ways. But no one wanted them to stay.

Felix had started talking to himself.

Angrily, forcefully, furiously… but in total silence. His lips moved, his face warped in rage, the words spitting bitterly out, but not one sound came with them.

Jack gave Annabelle a look. She used her deft touch and less than five minutes later the revelers had been poured out and the door locked behind them. Then they stood, Cat and Carl, Annabelle and Davette, Adam and Kirk, and Jack Crow, and watched. It was eerie. The music still played softly. The cheap overhead lights of the motel room reached Felix’s corner only in shadows that played oddly on his working silent face.

Annabelle stood next to Jack. She sounded more concerned than frightened. “Oh, Jack! How much has he had to drink?”

Jack smiled softly down at her. “He’s not drunk.”

“Not drunk? I find that hard to believe.”

Jack shrugged. “Oh, he is drunk. But not drunk drunk. This isn’t booze.”

“What is it?”

Jack paused a moment, thinking.

He seems so confident, Annabelle thought, looking up at him.

“What is it?” she repeated.

“Claustrophobia.”

“What?” Cat whispered suspiciously.

Jack laughed quietly, looked at them all. “C’mon, people. Let’s all have a seat.”

And except for Davette, they did. She stayed fussing idly in the kitchen while the rest of them found a seat on the floor or sprawled on the couches. Jack took the only other easy chair and drew it up to face Felix’s, about six feet directly in front of him.

Felix saw him, knew he was there. His lips went still. But he didn’t look directly at him or anyone else.

“Davette,” Jack called out softly, “turn that off.”

She eyed him nervously, then smiled and stepped over and turned off the music. Very quiet, all of a sudden.

Then Jack leaned forward in his chair, propping his elbows on his knees and smiling pleasantly into his drink.

“Okay…” he said.

It took a couple of beats. Then the gunman’s eyes riveted onto Jack’s. Still staring, Felix took a sip from his bottle, lit a cigarette, leaned back in his chair, and spoke. Drunk as he was, his words were clear. Very cold, like very sharp ice.

But clear.

“You’re out of this, Crow. It’s blown. They know who you are. They know what you do. They know your name.”

“So?”

“So. Change your name, change what you do. Quit. Or every job from now on will be another trap.”

“What about the Team?”

“Same as before. But as the hunters again. Not the hunted.”

Jack grinned and leaned back in his chair. “You think I can do that now?”

Felix’s smile was scary. “One of us can. Now.”

“So that’s it. One of us.”

“That’s it.”

Jack glanced at the others. “If they don’t follow you… Form your own Team?”

Felix looked surprised. He frowned. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

Jack’s voice was hard. “I didn’t think you had.”

“What the hell is…” began Carl angrily.

“Quiet!” snapped Crow without looking at him. Then he relaxed, eyed Felix for a moment.

“Did it ever occur to you that we’ve finally got them on the run?”

Felix sneered. “Ever occur to you that you’re not cutting it anymore?”

Jack held up a hand before any of the others could protest. He lit a cigarette, leaned forward in his chair once more.

“Yes,” he said simply. “Yes it has. I can admit that. Can you admit running out on the job you were born to do?”

“I’m not running out on…”

“Like hell you aren’t!” snapped Jack. He stood up angrily, began to pace back and forth in front of Felix’s chair.

“This is the game, Felix. This is it. I can’t quit because I’m the symbol. They know my name. You can’t because you’re the best there is and that’s the part you don’t like!”

“Bullshit, Crow!”

“Is it? Is it? Hadn’t thought about your own team, had you? Hell, no. If you had thought, which you by God didn’t want to do, you’d have realized they wouldn’t leave me and you would have to do it on your own. But you don’t want to do that. You don’t want to do it at all!”

Felix was out of his chair in a flash.

“You calling me a coward?”

And Davette couldn’t take it anymore. Suddenly she was there, standing beside the two heaving chests, her voice that of a small child, a small doll.

“Don’t…” she whispered, the tears already starting to pour, “… don’t… please, don’t.”

“I don’t know what I’m calling you, Felix!” yelled Crow. “Because I don’t know what the fuck you are!”

Felix’s voice was stone. “Then try something.”

And they all thought the fight would start then and it should have, really. But a piece of Jack was also shouting at him. Leadership, goddammit!

And so he took a breath and backed off a bit and tried again.

“Felix, I can’t quit just because they know my name. Is the next guy gonna do the same? That’s all it takes. They know if they can find out who we are they can run us off? We can’t. We’re it. This is the game!

“Look. I’m sorry if this comes at a bad time in your life, Felix. But it always does, dammit!” And then Crow felt the anger spurt out and he lost it again.

“You’re just gonna have to see if you’re man enough to face it!”

And Felix barked, “Fuck off!” He turned to the others. “Fuck you all…”

And Davette’s baby voice sighed, “No… no no…

And for a second they stopped and looked at her. But then Felix shook it off. He reached down and picked up his cigarettes and stuffed them in his pocket and stalked toward the door.

“Die, then!” he shouted at the room. “Die if you want to! Die for his ego or senility or whatever…”

Davette was chasing him, her arms held out. “Please please…”

“Forget it!” he stormed at her. “All of you, forget it!”

“You can’t…” she pleaded and the sobs shook her tiny form.

But he could. He could do what everyone had known for hours he was going to do.

“I quit,” said Felix.

And Davette’s voice came out strong and full and she cried out, “You can’t! You don’t know what they can do to people! You don’t know what it’s like… You…”

And Felix and Jack Crow looked at her together and together they said: “Whaat…”

Davette looked at the two of them, back and forth quickly. She hung her head. Then she reached down to the hem of her khaki skirt and took it in her fist and raised it up, exposing the perfect silken lines of her golden legs and the sharp heartache contrast of yellow panties… and there, there high on her left inner thigh… Like the bite of a monstrous spider.

It could be no other kind of wound.

“Help me,” she whispered.

“Help me…”

Fourth Interlude: The Victim

The Team stood stunned and staring at her and she tried to get it all out at once, all of it that she had wanted to tell them from the beginning, about what had happened to her and how she had really come to see them that day in California — but it just came out as sputtering tears.

It was Felix, of all people, who rescued her, taking her gently in his arms and speaking soft, soothing nothings. He led her to his chair and sat her carefully down and dragged up a chair for himself, all the time still murmuring reassuringly to her.

The others unfroze at last, Annabelle hip enough to fetch Kleenex and a glass of water, the men moving slowly, still more or less in shock, into seats of their own to listen. And it was kind of like the Inquisition, with them all circling about her suspicious and staring but she didn’t mind. She deserved this. She deserved it for what she had done to them — or almost had done to them.

Because she hadn’t come to do a story on them.

She had come to bring their killer.

She had left him in the trunk of that car she had been driving.

He was the fiend they had just slain, the one with the headband.

The little god.

His name was Ross Stewart and she had known him for ten years, since she was eleven and had taken Miss Findley’s Dance Class for Young Ladies and Gentlemen.

Ross had been in the class. But he hadn’t been a gentleman even then.

She started sputtering again. Felix leaned forward and took her hands in his and told her to relax, to relax and take deep breaths and start from the beginning. And she knew he was right, knew he made sense, knew she should do it that way, but now, looking into his eyes, closer to him than she’d ever been, she wanted to skip all that and…

And get right to the meat.

Get right to the shame.

She felt compelled — obsessed, really — as she had from the very first time she had seen him, to tell him this. To have him know all about what she had done and what she had been made to do.

She wanted him to know everything. Every nasty detail. But she did what he said. She tried again from the beginning. Not the very beginning, when she was young, but from when it had really started. Last spring. Easter vacation. Religious holiday.

Her Aunt Victoria had planned a wonderful party for her.

Aunt Vicky’s house was the best-kept secret in north Dallas, a tiny, nondescript entrance on Inwood Road exploded, once inside the driveway, into a miraculous vision of a graystone mansion with multileveled terraces sprawling throughout the sculptured gardens and running brooks and towering trees that had tiny colored lights way up high in them, where the stars were. The party had spilled out over all the terraces and there was a band playing and people dancing and everyone was there, simply everyone she had grown up with, glittering and beautiful, the Sons and daughters of wealth and private schools, and you just knew by looking at them that it wasn’t just the fortunes of the past represented here but the fortunes of the future certain to be made.

And Davette was the princess.

Because she really was beautiful, she knew that, and tall and blond and smart, too, editor of the university newspaper, and she laughed and talked and gloried in the attention, warm with friends when she wanted and unapproachable whenever she felt like it because Aunt Vicky had taught her that. You didn’t really have to have that same conversation with every man.

But there were two details wrong and they nagged her. Her best friend, Kitty, had yet to show up. And Aunt Vicky was still abed.

Anyone else would still be “in” bed. But not Aunt Victoria, not in that huge three-hundred-year-old canopied bed in that immense bedroom full of all those beautiful chairs and settees and intricate knickknacks her brother, Uncle Harley, had brought home from around the world. The whole house was a treasure, but it was always this room, Davette had realized, that meant her aunt to her, meant romance and glory, which to Davette had always been one and the same.

She missed her mommy and daddy sometimes, so long dead now, but with Aunt Vicky and her brother, Uncle Harley, her rearing had been just as warm and loving — and a lot more fun. Uncle Harley, decorator to royalty, had shown her the world. And Aunt Victoria had shown her the ways of… the lady. Ways that made men sit up straight and turn their language soft and clean when she entered the room. A certain regal air — never haughty, exactly, but definitely, inevitably, superior. Reluctantly superior, as Aunt Victoria once confided to her.

Aunt Victoria had that look about her that made hard men wish for dragons to slay for her. Just for want of that twinkling smile.

But now she was ill and those beautiful lace bedclothes only made her seem more pale and less strong. She had received a few people, close friends who wished to look in on her, but she wouldn’t leave her bed, wouldn’t come to the party.

“Don’t worry, dear,” she had cooed to her niece. “Have a good time, be a lady,” Then there was that twinkle. “Then come back and tell me every single detail.”

And they had laughed and kissed and Davette had gone back to her rooms, where she found Kitty, who was staying with her, sitting naked on the side of her bathtub and crying.

Over Ross Stewart.

Davette couldn’t believe it. Ross Stewart? No-Class Ross, as she and Kitty had dubbed him and the name had stuck with him from sixth grade to high school graduation because it fit! It really fit!

“I can’t believe it!” she blurted, shaking her head before catching herself and realizing how she must sound.

When she heard Kitty’s sobbing “I can’t either!” she knew they had a problem.

Davette sat down on the edge of the tub and put her arm around her best friend in the world and tried to… to what, to console her? Because Davette didn’t really understand how this was even possible and all she could get out of Kitty was, yes, she was ashamed at being with Ross Stewart, but, no, she had no intention of leaving him.

“I can’t help myself,” she said, looking Davette straight in the eye.

And Davette had felt a cold, dark chill.

Now it was after ten P.M. and the party was in full swing and she still hadn’t heard from Kitty and she was starting to fret. Maybe, she thought, Ross has changed. Maybe he really wasn’t as bad as she had remembered. And she tried thinking back through her memories and images of him in a different light, in a more positive way.

But she wasn’t having much luck. Ross Stewart had been just awful.

Good-looking, really, in a kind of decadent way. He had long black curly hair and he was tall and well built, she remembered. And smart, too, because he had made excellent grades and St. Mark’s Prep, the brother school to her own Hockaday, was a very demanding place. No, Ross had no excuses for being the way he was, foul-mouthed and dirty-minded and totally without class. All the boys talked about sex all the time, of course. They were teenagers and that was practically their job. But Ross always talked about it a little too long, his jokes always a little more filthy, his leers always too damned piercing.

And the money, of course. Ross’s family didn’t have any, at least not the way most of the private school parents did. But that was no excuse, either. There were several students worse off than Ross and they were okay. At least they didn’t go around so greedy all the time, talking about the prices of everything and dating the richest, most homely girls who had never before had such attention.

God, she remembered, he used to drive the girls’ cars on dates! And once he even — “There you are, baby!” sounded a familiar voice. She sighed before turning around. She really wasn’t up to this. But she was trapped. She turned around and smiled at her last high school boyfriend, football captain, senior class president, Taker of Her Virginity, Dale Boijock.

And also the most boring human being alive.

“How are you, Dale?” she said without enthusiasm. “I’m so glad you could come.”

Dale stepped forward and flashed his perfect smile and said, in a voice rich with meaning, “I wouldn’t have missed it.”

And she thought she would die or run screaming from him or worse but she hung in there, talking small talk. She managed to get them walking toward the bar for some wine so she could keep running into other people and not be left alone to talk to Dale one-on-one.

Dale fought it, trying to get her off to one side to talk all alone. But he was getting quite a bit of attention, too, and enjoying it. Tall blond, beautiful blue eyes, a natural leader, a wonderful athlete — a Polish-American god was Dale Boijock. He had been the Catch of All Catches in high school but he was so boring and how could she ever have slept with him?

Curiosity, of course. She did not live in Aunt Vicky’s era and almost all of her friends had “done it,” many more than once, and here she was with the most eligible boyfriend around and she was just dying to know and it had been her suggestion.

He had been shocked. But he had come around.

At the motel he really was sweet and tender, treating her like a porcelain doll, and she had to face it, some parts of it were pretty interesting.

But somehow Dale had managed to make even those dull. And she knew, as he drove home, that she simply could not bear to be with him ever, ever again but she couldn’t think of a graceful way to…

And then she had turned in the car seat and told him he was the best lover she had ever had.

He had laughed at that at first, of course. Then he had looked at her and saw she was serious and that tanned blond face had frowned and he had pulled the car over and the questioning had begun.

Looking back, she decided she had handled it just about perfectly.

Did he know him?

Who?

The other guy.

Well, she knew Dale knew some of them.

Some of them? There was more than one?

Well, yes.

Who?

Dale, I don’t really think I could — How many, then?

How many? What difference could that possibly — She had taken a positively wicked joy in bashing his pride. After she had strung it out a good half hour, she allowed him to force her to tell him the “truth,” that there had been somewhere between fifteen and an even dozen. She couldn’t remember exactly.

Then he had leaned across her and opened the passenger door and ordered her to get out.

Trying desperately to keep a straight face, she had climbed meekly out of his car, closed the door behind her, and stood there, head down, her hands together in front of her, until the car screeched off.

On the way back home she had giggled quite a lot.

It really was a perfect solution. His pride wouldn’t let him tell others about her and even if he did no one would believe it of Princess Davette anyway. And best of all, she would never be bothered by Dale Boijock again. And she hadn’t been, for four long-years.

Until tonight. And this was looking grim. After four years of the Ivy League’s worldly ways, she knew his attitudes had changed. She could tell by that look on his face. It could only mean one thing, his insistence at getting her alone to talk: He was going to, God help him, forgive her.

And she really didn’t think she could handle that with a straight face.

She just had to get away beforehand.

“Dale? Would you excuse me just a minute?” she asked sweetly, then fled.

That’s how she ended up hiding out on the terrace, in a metal chair behind an enormous plant.

And that’s where she was when she heard the Voice.

It wasn’t a deep voice. It wasn’t rich and melodious. In fact, it was rather dry and thin. But it was so… smooth. Smooth and clear and it really carried, cutting through the other voices with it.

She had been aware, in the few minutes she’d spent in her little hideout — on the lookout for Dale — of a conversation going on on the terrace a few feet away. But she hadn’t really been paying attention. Now, with that voice, she began to.

Sex. They were talking about sex. About the difference between men and women. About what each needed. What women needed. What women craved. What they had to have. Release. Abandon. Wantonness. Penetration.

Looking around at the faces in the motel room… Looking at Felix’s face now so close to her, his eyes gentle but so acute…

She just didn’t know.

Should she tell them? Should she tell them all — tell Felix — what exactly had been said? What words? What sweet, forbidden, pornographic…

She didn’t know.

She didn’t know if she could describe what it had been like, sitting there on the terrace and bearing those awful dirty words cutting through the night toward her. Surrounding her. Caressing her. Prodding her. The words he used were so filthy and his descriptions so graphic. No one else was talking but him, now, the entire terrace alive with electricity because it was arousing. She couldn’t believe it. Never in her life had anyone spoken such things in her presence. Oh, she knew the words. She knew what they meant — every schoolgirl knew the words. But to hear them used, to feel them scything in her direction.

And to have them so erotic. To see what he described so clearly. To understand it so well.

Ladies and whores, he talked about. About the difference. About the need for ladies to be both. About what the right man knew to do with his lady behind the bedroom door, free her from her ladyship, from her courtly demeanor. Give her the chance to wallow and grovel and glow.

She could not understand how such talk could affect her so. But it had. It had. She had sat there — perched there, really — on the edge of her little chair, panting, chest heaving… Because she seemed to understand it. She seemed to understand just what release, just what euphoric abandon he meant. And when he went on and on spinning his pictures and images she saw her own skin glowing, her own fingers grasping, her own thighs wide and receptive and—

God help me! What is happening?

She didn’t tell the details to the Team. She didn’t. She glazed over it and hurried past it and she knew she wasn’t meeting their eyes — his eyes — so she forced herself to look up and his gaze was steady and she believed he knew she had left something out.

And she believed he knew what it was.

It was when she decided she could simply hear no more that everything began to happen, that things began to whizz and spiral about her, that her life began to ricochet…

That her soul began its twist in the vise.

The Voice had stopped for the time being and she had risen, spontaneously, from her chair, jerked herself up and forward and away from this madness and the heavy air left by the silence and taken a step around the plant toward the sliding glass door to the library — she could do this! Just step around and through and no one would see her or even know she had been there…

And the other voice suddenly perked up and it was a voice she knew, knew well — had always known — and she couldn’t help herself. She turned as she stepped and leaned wrong and her heel caught and she just careened into that awful plant, banging the branches with her shoulder and leaves went everywhere and by the time she had regained her balance — barely, with ankles out and knees together and wineglass spilling — she was among them. A semicircle of faces she couldn’t meet were staring surprised looks in her direction and she heard that voice she had recognized again saying, “Davette!”

And she looked up and saw it was… Kitty!

Kitty and other girls she had grown up with. There was Patty and Debra and… Oh God! The embarrassment, because it wasn’t just crashing through the shrubbery, it was the looks on their faces, the steaming-dreamy looks because they had been listening to that Voice, too, and their faces were flushed and their chest heaving and she knew they could see her own flush..

And, Oh my God, if Kitty was here, that meant…

“Davette,” said Kitty again, “you remember Ross Stewart.”

And he was there, looming over her, his black curly hair and ivory-white skin and black eyes so deep and forever and he took her free hand in his and said, with a wicked curling smile, “Davette! How often I’ve thought of you.”

And that was that. Her lights went out. She fainted dead away.

It took her some time before she figured out exactly what had happened next. Ross must have caught her as she fell.

And though she was only out for a second she managed to have what seemed an endless dream — nightmare — or running through some awful wet-stoned maze of tunnels with someone she never saw but knew to be Ross Stewart, walking briskly after her and laughing.

But when she woke up she hadn’t even’ reached the floor yet and Ross Stewart still held her in his arms with his eyes boring through her and she panicked and she flailed at his chest and arms and she screamed.

It was the sound of her own voice that shook her out of it, that and Kitty bending over her saying, “Davette! Honey!” And as Ross lifted her upright — so easily! — and she saw all the faces on the terrace turned to look at this crazy woman, she was so humiliated she wished she could just explode at will.

And then “Stewart! What do you think you’re doing with her?” sounded out and she recognized the voice of Dale Boijock being macho and saw him shouldering his way toward her and she closed her eyes and wondered, Could this get any worse?

It could.

Ross, still supporting her — again, so easily! — transferred her to his left arm and turned and faced the oncoming Dale and said, “What I am doing with her, so far as it concerns you, is anything I damn well please.”

It was meant to taunt him — all these people watching him — and it worked. Dale lurched forward, his right arm reaching out, and Davette whispered out, “Dale! No!” but she had no breath and her voice didn’t carry and in any case it was too late.

Ross’s right hand snapped out like a snake around Dale’s wrist and held it fast and there was a pause as the two eyed one another and then she felt, rather than saw, Ross’s smile as he began to squeeze and Davette had a chance to think how oddly beautiful were Ross’s half-inch-long fingernails before Dale’s wrist broke.

Ross released the wrist as Dale cried out with pain and jerked backward. Then came a beat or two as Dale stared, unbelieving, between Ross and his swelling wrist.

“It was easy, Dale,” whispered Ross so that only the three of them could hear. “Want to see it again?”

Davette saw Dale’s eyes go wide with surprise and growing fury and she saw it coming so clearly. Dale, who had probably never lost a fight in his life — and certainly not to that wimp-ass gigolo, Ross Stewart — simply could not help himself. And his roar was very leonine as he launched all six-foot-two-inches and two hundred thirty — odd pounds of muscle at his rival.

Ross’s casual backhanded flick of his wrist swept, rather than knocked, Dale some three feet sideways through the air, through the terrace railing, and nine feet down into the gently rolling slope of the gardens below.

He wasn’t really hurt. The slope was thick with rich ground cover and they could hear him moaning out in pain and shock. Within seconds others had reached him and pronounced him okay. But the fight was over. That was the point.

“I wish he hadn’t made me do that,” said Ross to the astonished onlookers and his sincerity seemed so real that Davette felt them collectively taking Ross’s side of it.

“I’m terribly sorry about that,” he then said to her, looking down.

Only then did she realize she was still in his arms and as she started to pull away he spoke again, but this time it was that Voice.

“I’m sure,” he purred at her, “you’ve had enough excitement for one night. Let us take you upstairs before you fall asleep on your feet.”

And she hadn’t felt sleepy, had she? But now she had images of that soft bed and no voices or crowds or music, those cool sheets…

“Thank you,” she whispered, nodding to both of them, for Kitty was back alongside her and the three of them left and took easy steady steps up the broad staircase and down the hallway to her rooms. Ross didn’t seem to be there as Kitty helped the sleepwalker undress and climb into bed and lie down.

“He’s really changed, hasn’t he?” was the last thing Kitty said to her and Davette saw her friend’s pleasure, as though the evening had redeemed her association with him.

But Davette was too tired to answer. She thought she managed to nod before drifting off.

She had no dreams.

She wasn’t sure it was true sleep at all. She felt only light and floating and still and intermittently aware. She knew when the band stopped. She had a sense of the party finally ending and the great house becoming empty. Kitty always stayed in the adjoining bedroom, ever since junior high, and later she was sure she heard her in there talking to Ross and then there were other muffled noises and she pressed herself back into sleep so as not to hear.

Much later, toward dawn, she felt the weight on the edge of the bed and opened her eyes to protest once and for all. But she could not speak at first. His eyes seemed to shine at her. His skin was so creamy white and softly carved around his smile. His black curls glowed in the light coming through her open balcony.

“Could you hear me well enough through that plant?” he asked.

She had been lying flat on her back, without moving, the entire night. Now she sat straight up.

“You mean… you knew?”

“Of course,” he replied softly and the Voice was back. “Kitty has heard me before. The others didn’t matter at all.” His hand reached out and caressed her cheek and there was nothing, dammit, she seemed to be able to do about it. “No,” he continued, “it was all for you.”

And the blood roared through her and her breath raced as sharp hissing pants and when his hand pulled back she all but cried out, What is happening to me! when she felt disappointment at the loss of his touch. And his smile curled, wide and full around his face, melding with her eyes, and his right hand came toward her again, with the fingernails of forefinger and thumb snapping together like a small animal… click… click… click

And she knew where, through her sheer nightgown, the little creature would bite her. But she could not stop this, either. She could not even stop the wanting of this. And when, matching the heaving rhythm of her chest, the two fingernails clamped with gentle pain on her left nipple, she fainted once more — but not before an orgasm of more exquisite agony than she could ever have imagined.

Sitting there in that cheap lime-green motel room and telling the Team — telling him — about that first night… it was the worst moment. It was not the worst part of her story — there were many crimes to come. But, still, it was the worst.

For now they knew what Ross could do to her, what he was always able to do to her, anytime he wanted. The… humiliation. The sense of being so simple and cheap. Of being used goods. Easy used goods.

Because the sexiness was still there. Even now, thinking back on it and thanking Sweet Jesus it was over, she felt the trembling passion of it all. And the others around her felt it also, it steamed from all the men save Father Adam, whose pious visage seemed struck in granite. But even Annabelle was affected.

And she tried to explain it to them. Tried, because she wasn’t sure she understood it herself. But it had to do with the darker edge of a half-lie. Half-lie implying also a half-truth, yes, she knew that. And that was the vampire’s secret.

What the vampire told you was true. He lied when he told you it was everything.

The day after the party had been one of the great days of Davette’s life. Later, when she looked back on it, she knew it was because she had spent the day hiding from an impending sense of darkness; But at the time it was sweet, accustomed, familiar silliness.

The first days of every school vacation for years and years Davette had spent the same way: shopping with Kitty. Usually they went with Aunt Victoria in the limo and that was always fun because Aunt Victoria’s entrance at the front door of some place like Neiman-Marcus prompted some truly amazing scurrying around on the part of the sales staff.

Aunt Vicky was too tired to come with them that day, but that didn’t prevent her from rousing the girls up early like her usual imperial self and getting them “dressed and pressed and made-up for the table, ladies!”

And Davette loved it, being rousted out of bed, rushing around trying to get ready, with Aunt Vicky’s voice carrying over everything, laughing and giggling with Kitty as they used, the adjoining bathroom.

Davette loved it because she didn’t have to think.

Think about last night.

Or him.

Or herself.

Or…

Or whether or not she should tell Kitty. After all, Ross was her boyfriend. Lord, what would Kitty think of her if she told her that…

That what? What really happened?

Did anything really happen?

Maybe… Maybe it was just a weird dream. I mean, nobody can just reach out like that and make you… Can they?

And a tiny little voice answered back: Ross Stewart can. Anytime he wants to.

But she ignored it and giggled some more and then they were out there in the sunshine, checkbooks and credit cards with safeties off. And it was just as much fun as it always was. Shopping, SHOPPING, SHOPPING!

They laughed so hard and they laughed so long and they spent so much money!

It was great.

And they had lunch at the same place they always did shopping bags piled up high all around the table, and Luigi waited on them like he always did, making those awful snide little remarks about rich girls and “Come the Revolution” and they were just as snitty back and all involved loved it like they always had.

Kitty loved it as much as she did, maybe more. She seemed to relish the air and the sun, and Davette thought she could use more of each — she looked just a trifle pale — but that didn’t matter right now because the day was so perfect and then tonight, like every other vacation, the three of them would sit in the formal dining room, the girls wearing their new loot, and talk and talk with Aunt Vicky. And then Kitty, in some chance remark, mentioned casually that Ross would be joining them for dinner that night.

And the planet froze. And slowed down. And wanted to… grind… to… a… stop.

Because it had always just been the three of them on those nights, sitting and eating, and Davette had counted on that safe picture of at least one night, tonight, without having to see him again or hear that Voice.

Davette started to say something about maybe Aunt Vicky not wanting to share their traditional post-shopping dinner with an extra person and Kitty beat her to it, telling her how Ross and Aunt Vicky had become such fast friends, talking long into the night about philosophy and what-all, sometimes until almost dawn because Ross simply hated the daytime. He said it was only for primitive man, who had good reason to fear the dark.

And the planet slowed further and the faces in the mall seemed more distant and it seemed suddenly terribly important to Davette that she not make a big deal about this, not object at all.

Not let anyone know how she feared.

So she kept walking and she kept shopping and she managed a hollow echo to Kitty’s laugh that she felt sure she had gotten away with and then, abruptly, when they passed a restaurant they had always passed by before, Davette suggested they drop in and have a cocktail.

“Because we are twenty-one now, aren’t we?” was all she would reply to Kitty’s startled look.

She ordered a bloody mary and when Kitty ordered just mineral water Davette kidded her until Kitty said, “Ross says he doesn’t like women who drink.”

And Davette thought: good.

And ordered another.

And then another.

She wasn’t exactly drunk when they finally got home. But she was certainly feeling it, feeling pretty good, in fact, because the fear seemed more distant somehow and the alcohol seemed a kind of talisman, maybe, to ward off evil spirits.

And she giggled to herself thinking that. Kitty, sitting beside her in the bathroom toweling her hair, gave her an odd look.

“Are you drunk?” she asked her.

And Davette shook her head firmly and that made her dizzy and that was so funny she spat the bobby pins out of her mouth laughing and Kitty looked at her funny again but then she started laughing, too, and all was fine for a long time.

And then Kitty began talking about Ross. About how intelligent he was. How witty. How exciting. How sexy. And Davette stared, shocked, at her because they had never discussed such things before.

But Kitty, standing up to go into her own room, just gave her a sly, wicked smile and said, “You should find out for yourself.”

And then she was gone and Davette sat there for several minutes before she could manage to move.

So, to dinner.

In point of fact, she never could remember the dinner much. It all seemed to go by so fast! She remembered the table being so beautiful and Aunt Vicky so lovely, but frowning that special frown because Davette was drinking so much but she had to, she had to do something…

Because he was there, looming at her from his dark eyes and perfect skin and immaculate tuxedo and knowing, knowing, smile. Not that he was intrusive or mean or anything; he wasn’t. He was charming and witty and friendly and funny and he didn’t seem to mind her getting soused. If anything, he encouraged her, refilling her wineglass again and again.

And with that thick cushion around her eyes the whole thing seemed less and less dangerous after a while.

And awhile after that, danger seemed kind of intriguing.

And just after that, she passed out.

She wasn’t exactly unconscious. Not exactly. Her eyes were more or less open and she was able to recognize things. She just wasn’t able to pick them up and hold them without dropping them.

They took her to bed with her weaving and slurring to Aunt Vicky that she was “so sorry! I’m just so sorry! I’ve spoiled everything!” And dear Aunt Vicky giving her that long cold look before finally, blessedly, relaxing and smiling and patting her on the cheek and saying that it was really all right, that anyone’s entitled to a mistake in her own home and that just made Davette bawl some more because it was so sweet.

Ross excused himself while Kitty helped her struggle out of her clothes and into a nightgown and it felt great to just lie back and relax and she guessed the others went down to finish dinner because it was much later, after two A.M., when they came back and she woke up from that deep, deep sleep to see them sitting on the edge of the bed.

Why, she wondered, did I wake up?

But before she could think about that Ross leaned over her and asked, “Are you all right? Would you like to get sick?”

She had felt all right up until then. She hadn’t felt nauseated, had she? Had she? But looking into his eyes she suddenly felt that alcohol vault and swirl within her and she lurched up tripping out of bed toward the bathroom and they both reached to help her.

But she didn’t want their help, she thought. This was just too embarrassing. But ten seconds later she didn’t care who saw her.

Ugggghhh!

She seemed to throw up for hours! She just couldn’t stop, her bare knees hard on the tile on either side of the toilet, that awful wrenching in her tummy, those dreadful noises she kept making.

Once, hunched over with sweet Kitty murmuring gently and patting the back of her neck with that cool damp washcloth, she remembered thinking she was glad of at least one thing: she did not feel sexy.

In fact, she doubted she would ever feel sexy again.

But it happened.

She came to, more or less, curled up on the bathmat in front of the toilet seat, the nausea gone. She was dimly aware of being helped to her feet by someone gentle and very strong and she was almost to her bed before her beating heart allowed her to admit who it was. The top sheet and blanket had been rolled neatly to the foot of the bed and he lifted her up and carried her the last few steps, his hands cool and strong beneath her. She turned her head and swelled into his eyes as he put her down atop the broad empty bed.

He did not lay her down but, rather, sat her up against the headboard. And then he sat there beside her, boring his eyes and dreams of passion unknown to dull drab lives and fantasies of glorious ecstasy streamed into her when he smiled.

Her chest heaved. She panted and gasped and his face began to burn.

“Oops, I’m afraid you can’t wear that anymore,” he said.

He meant her nightgown, of course, and she did look down and she saw no stain…

But he wouldn’t lie, would he?

“Better take it off,” he said next.

And — God help me! — she did. She did, reaching up to the straps and pulling them slowly down off her shoulders and she knew just what she was doing.

And she did it anyway, slipped the nightgown down, exposed her breasts to the open air and to him and then…

Then his face was close to hers and tiny kisses all around her mouth as she slid backward, chest heaving, and then his hands were soft and cool and so strong on her shoulders and around her throat and the kisses slowly — too slowly — worked their way past her chin to her throbbing throat and across the top of her chest and to the breast the little creature had attacked the night before.

When he bit her the pleasure poured throughout her and arms shot out into the air and her fingers spread trembling and she moaned and cried and undulated wantonly beneath…

There! There at the foot of the bed, perched like a grinning cat, was Kitty! She couldn’t believe it! Kitty! And she wanted, for just an instant, to throw him off and run away. But she knew she couldn’t do that. She knew she couldn’t stop him. She knew she didn’t want him stopped. Ever.

And Kitty’s grin went wider and she leaned forward and her smile was bright in the moonlight as she said, “See? Didn’t I tell you?”

And it was too strange, too bizarre. But she couldn’t care now. She shrieked her whisper and wrapped her bare arms around the black curly head and pressed it deeper into her soul.

She slept all through the daylight hours. She dreamed deep and hard, long, exhausting dreams of intricate twisting erotica. When she awoke the tall french doors to her terrace were open, spilling in moonlight and soft breezes through her ghostly curtains, and they were there, sitting on the edge of her bed and smiling down at her.

For a brief moment she felt an icy jolt of… of what? Fear? And disgust?

But then it was gone, for they were so beautiful, Kitty sitting naked with her thighs tucked under her and that lustrous brown hair tumbling about her shoulders and he with that billowy black silk shirt open at the chest. So beautiful. And the smiles were so warm and genuine and happy.

“Swim,” said Kitty with a mischievous tilt to her face. “Come on.”

Davette shook her head that she didn’t understand and Kitty grinned some more and said that Aunt Vicky was asleep and the servants were all out of the way and the pool was beautiful in the moonlight and it really was a warm night for the spring and let’s go!

“I’ll meet you down there,” said Ross, rising to his feet.

But before he left he stepped around to Davette’s bedside and leaned down and caressed her cheek with his hand, boring gently now with his eyes. Then he bent and kissed her softly on the cheek. And then he was gone and Davette was once more full of tingles and catching her breath.

And when she remembered Kitty was still there and looked at her she blushed. But Kitty just laughed and Davette laughed, too, her cheeks red with embarrassment but also humor because Kitty was in the same boat and the laughter became schoolgirl giggles.

As she scrambled out of bed she felt a sharp pang from her left breast. She gasped and looked down and when she saw the swollen wound she gasped again.

“It won’t last long,” Kitty said, standing beside her.

Kitty was right. Davette worked the muscles of her chest and gently massaged the area and the pain seemed to stretch itself out. It still felt tender. But the sharp ache was gone.

It was then that she realized she was naked, that Kitty was also naked standing beside her. The two of them: rich girls, nice girls, ladies, standing naked in the moonlight of an open door about to walk downstairs and swim, skinny-dip, with a man who was down there waiting for them now and who was quite sure they would come.

It seemed to incredible that she should be doing this, that they both should be. But it seemed also so wickedly sexy, so decadent and wanton, and with her best friend it seemed a safe, dark secret and the two smiled and held hands and walked naked out onto the terrace.

She had been out on this terrace barefoot before and the possibility that anyone could climb over the walls and through the gardens and see her was remote. But it was still there. The wind caressed her bare thighs, rolling gently all around her as they descended the broad stone steps to the pool and Davette had never in her life felt so unclothed. So… available.

Ross reclined on one of the sun loungers like a prince awaiting the court entertainment. He was turned over on one side, a knee propped up with a forearm propped on that. He had a half-smile on his face and the light seemed trapped between the moon and his eyes and the surface of the water and Davette thought: That’s the color of his skin! Pale moonlight!

But she didn’t think much. Instead, she blushed. For there was no way to avoid the pointed directness of his gaze or the fact that she continued to approach him. And she wondered once more which was more exciting — that she was behaving this way or that she knew what she was doing.

In any case, they continued to approach, still holding hands, until they came to a stop before him. He smiled at them. They smiled back at him. Then they looked at each other and giggled and turned and dove into the water and it was that, that flash of cold and clarity she felt in her icy spring swimming pool, that would come to haunt her later on.

It sobered her up. Immediately. What had been a gentle night of wicked secrets turned instantly into a cold, clammy, degrading sense of… cheapness. Of loss. What am I doing here? Was I drunk or drugged or what?

When she came to the surface she gasped in shame and turned and saw Kitty and she could tell from her shadowed gaze that she was feeling the same thing. The gritty stone on the side of the bank only added to the sense of shoddiness. She pushed her hair back away from her eyes and face, not looking at Ross, not even looking at Kitty.

I must look at him. I have to. She did.

And she cringed.

He looks like a pimp, she thought. Lounging there in those incredibly tacky tight — what are they? toreador? — pants, he looked not at all like what he had seemed. He looked more like…

How odd! He looks like an imitation of all of that!

How odd. But how degrading. She grasped the side of the pool and vaulted out of the water, shedding drops in all directions, and skipped toward the poolhouse toward warmth and composure. She wanted to try to cover herself with her hands and she started to. But then that seemed silly after all that had happened, and maybe, even rude, so her hands stopped halfway and then she saw that Ross was in front of her, between her and the poolhouse and holding up a towel.

How, she wondered, did he get all the way around the pool in front of her so fast?

He was there, though, which was the point. She didn’t want to see him or talk to him or — God no! — have him touch her. But she couldn’t really avoid the towel because that really would be rude. She stopped just short of him, arms clasped in front of her chest for warmth, and turned her back to allow him to drape the towel about her shoulders and… and as he draped the towel the side of his hand touched her shoulder and there was that tingle once more and the chill flashed on her skin…

And the towel seemed to… coil… about her.

Like a knowing glove.

“Davette!” he whispered.

There was no alternative but to turn and face him and when she did she faced his glowing eyes and they held her and swelled down within her and the heat, the trembling frenzy, the… wicked ache… returned.

And soon it seemed they were back inside — Kitty with them, really with them — and they were laughing and hugging as they walked on either side of him, both women naked once more.

Into the kitchen, because they were starving. For steak. A big, thick super-rare steak, that was the craving. They sat Ross at the little counter that ran the length of the great house’s great kitchen while the two of them, still naked, prepared the meal.

Still naked. Bright kitchen lights and cold floor and no reason for it at all except to be… nasty and wanton and…

And as she talked to the Team she didn’t describe the way the two of them, she and Kitty, danced around in front of him making that meal. How could she tell them about it… how could she ever have behaved that way? Stretching up high to reach this, reaching way across him to get that. Bending over farther than she needed to for something else… She crimsoned at just the memory of it, of how she and Kitty, carnal tension sputtering in the air, had competed to see who could act like the cheaper tramp.

No. She couldn’t tell about that.

But she could tell them about the food.

“Ross never eats,” Kitty said chidingly when he said he didn’t want a steak.

Ross’s face had gone hard and he had used that Voice when he replied that he had his own diet and the smile he gave as he spoke softened it not at all. Davette had almost jumped at the tone, had felt a brief shiver of fear.

But learned nothing. She merely resolved not to question him about so sensitive a topic again.

The erotic atmosphere had been restored to its original tightness by the time the meal was prepared. Davette sat down but knew she was far too excited to eat.

“But you must be hungry,” whispered Ross, gazing deep through her eyes. “You haven’t eaten in twenty-four hours. And look at that thick juicy steak. Just what you need.”

And even as he spoke she felt her hunger rush back so strongly that nothing in the world seemed more tempting than the smell of that food. She fell upon the steak like a starving beast.

“All better?” he asked pleasantly when she had finished.

Davette looked up, surprised. She had forgotten he was there, forgotten anyone was there, forgotten everything but eating. She looked down and saw her plate was totally clean.

How weird, she had thought at the time. Like I was in some sort of a spell or something.

Of course she was in a spell. His spell. A spell he could twist and curl as it suited him. With a knowing smile, he gazed their passions back into them.

Seconds later the three of them ascended the steps to her room and there, in the utter darkness he insisted upon, Davette sought within her some sense of shame as she lay listening to the couple embrace beside her on her cool sheets. But she could find no sense of shame or jealousy or anything other than pounding, aching need for her turn to come soon.

Soon, it did, and with it a bizarre hope that her cries would be as loud and thrilling as Kitty’s.

When Davette paused a moment and Felix leaned forward to hand her the glass of water, she felt the heavy silence of the motel room. She realized she had looked at nothing besides the floor and Felix’s face for the past, two hours and she made herself look up and face their troubled expressions. They gazed uneasily back and she knew it was out of concern for her — she could read that. But she knew it was from embarrassment also. For the sexual charge was as heavy as the silence.

It’s not your fault! she wanted to shout.

But she knew they wouldn’t believe her. Not yet. They wouldn’t understand that it was not them, it was a piece of them. A piece the magic had tainted her with and a piece she now passed on.

They wouldn’t understand.

Still, she should try. And she did. She tried to tell them about the feeling of the bite, about the warping volcanic pleasure rolling through you, vibrating and caressing and powering you deep into your memory and far into your fantasies.

“Didn’t it hurt?”

She stopped, looked around. It was Carl Joplin. His face softened and he smiled at her.

“I’m sorry, sugar. But we are talking about someone biting you.”

“And sucking your blood out,” added Cat.

Carl nodded, but his tone remained gentle. “And sucking your blood. It must—”

“But you don’t know that!” insisted Davette. “You aren’t aware. You don’t know you’re losing blood. There’s so much else going on, you.

“You mean he’s also…” whispered Annabelle before catching herself and blushing.

Davette’s voice was harsh and bitter. “No. No sex. Vampires can’t have sex. Oh, the women can… pretend. And they do. But it isn’t real. It isn’t life. They’re dead.”

It was quiet for a while while they digested this.

And Felix thought, looking at her: There’s still something left to you, isn’t there, beauty?

But he didn’t smile. She wouldn’t know it was admiration.

Davette had another sip of water and tried to explain some more:

“There are really three stages to it. The first is… well, it just never occurs to you. Vampires? That’s for movies, you know?”

They nodded. Yes, they knew.

She had another sip. “It’s just sort of… kinky, I guess. And everyone has a part of them that likes and wants that. Vampires swell that desire inside of you and… Well, you’re enjoying it and it seems harmless.

“That’s the first stage.

“In the second part you’re so much of an addict for it, you don’t want to examine what’s going on. It holds you and controls you. You don’t really ever think about anything else — you don’t want to look at it. Because you… You don’t want to think about it.”

“And the third stage?” asked Felix. “You know then?”

Davette nodded wearily. “You know. The pretense is past. He lets you know. He lets you see it. And it’s awful to see, the things they do to the living, the terrible smiles they get when they twist us. And…”

She drifted off, looking at something behind her eyes.

“‘And’…” Felix gently nudged.

She looked at him and her smile was grim and tight. “Maybe the worst part is not the knowing, the… admitting. The worst part is that you realize you knew, you always knew, deep down inside you, from the first. It’s not the wickedness, the sex part. That’s in everyone and that can be fine. It’s deeper.

“It’s basic.

“It’s Evil.

“And you always feel it, some part of you does, when it grazes you.

“Always.”

She was quiet for several seconds. Then she sighed, took a sip.

“The good news is that the last stage is rare.”

Jack Crow spoke for the first time. “Why is it rare?”

“Because most people are dead by then,” replied Davette, looking at him.

And Jack nodded back, as if he had been expecting the answer.

“So,” began Felix once more, “were you an addict now?”

She looked at him. “Pretty much. But within the next week of that… The next ten days…

A week, she would think later. A week, ten days…

That’s all it took for her former life to disappear.

Within a week she had learned what it was like to be teased. Within ten days she understood the end of the leash. Her life had shrunk to a single nighttime dot. She never went anywhere alone. She never saw the sunshine. She never talked with anyone besides Ross, Kitty, Aunt Victoria, and the servants. She did write one letter. To her college. Less than a month before graduation and she wrote them to say she wouldn’t be coming back.

No life.

He teased her by being especially charming one night, giving her more than her share of attention. He was witty, he was tender, he burned her with that look. Then, abruptly, he left.

She lay awake until dawn. Steaming.

One night he didn’t show at all. The two women sat around talking, wearing their most knock-out attire — for Ross preferred them to be either overdressed or naked — all night long waiting for him to show up.

But he never did.

It wasn’t as if he had actually promised to be there that night. But he had been there every other night. Even if just to tease them. By the end of the night the two friends no longer spoke. They merely sat in front of the great fireplace in silence. Each of them knew then, Davette thought later. Each of them knew it was madness and darkness to continue. And if he hadn’t shown up, if only for just a few nights, they would have been free. Or at least aware enough to instinctively flee.

He was back the next night, apologetic and charming and, later, as awesomely rapturous as ever.

They were his.

His property.

His toys.

And what good are toys if not to play with?

“You can make any man desire you,” Ross said, smiling, from the center booth at Del Frisco’s.

And they were all attention because it had been that kind of a night. For the very first time, he had taken them out!

Long black limousine. Long-stemmed roses. A gorgeous, tuxedo-clad Ross escorting them through the front door of the famous restaurant. Del, himself, there to greet them and lead them into that classic dining room with its carved deep mahogany and deeper rugs and immaculate diamond-bright crystal and the people! The way they stared at the three. Stared and (the ladies just knew it) envied. Davette was wearing her best and she had never felt so beautiful or attractive or, well, glamorous… in her whole life. Kitty was pretty show-stopping herself, though a trifle pale, and the service they received managed to be even better than Del Frisco’s usual standard. The waiters positively swarmed around them.

“You can make any man desire you,” Ross repeated. “Any man. Not just desire you. Crave you!” As he said the last he had leaned forward across the candlelight and beamed energy at them and they had shivered.

Because it was so exciting! To be out again and in the glitter. To feel so desirable — and Ross had seen to it they felt that way before they ever left Davette’s house. They felt like movie stars, like… sirens!

“Let me tell you how,” said Ross next. “First, you have to want him. Or, at least, imagine you do.”

And so it began.

They were in his world now. And everything he wanted to be thrilling and acceptable was so. Every suggestion seemed fun or at least… harmless. A harmless secret between the three that somehow didn’t really… count. ("ibis will not go on your permanent record.") It was easy to believe it didn’t count. It was all so unreal anyway.

“Imagine,” Ross purred, “that those two men in that booth over my left shoulder were so dynamic in bed that you could not resist them.”

And so the women glanced over his shoulder at the two men in the booth. They were much older, in their fifties. Davette thought immediately of her friends’ fathers, and though the older men’s appearance was pleasant enough, the whole idea, the concept of it all, seemed incestuous. One of them was tall, even seated, with white hair at his temples and a lovely dark suit that seemed to glow in the candlelight. He was thin and erect and rather aloof. The second man was shorter, not much taller than she, Davette guessed. He was beginning to lose hair on top and gain weight in his middle but he had a warm ready smile and a friendly look. He wore a sportcoat instead of a suit but it was of the same high quality as his companion’s attire.

Not for me, she thought.

But then Ross began to purr once more, purr with that Voice, and every single thought would seem to resonate their marrow.

“No, they’re not as young as you would like. They are not what you would choose. Is that not what makes it so thrilling? Is it not decadent? These old men, old enough to be your fathers, can take you in their hands and make you sing. You cannot resist it. After a while you will not want to. And you know that. You know that. You will tremble and shake in their gaze. You will find yourselves doing things you cannot believe you are doing. But you will still do them. You will obey their every command. And, worse, you will enjoy it. You will see yourselves doing these wicked things — as if from afar — and you will be appalled and embarrassed… but also the carnal joys will jolt through you because you really are doing them! You! Ladies! Proper young ladies rolling wanton in their arms… My goodness, you think, if those people I grew up with should see me doing this! They wouldn’t believe their eyes! The shame! The shame!

“And yet… Yes! Let them see me! I want them to see me, wallowing whore and free at last!”

Davette stopped speaking and her head went down and the motel room became quiet. Then, head still down, she tried to explain.

She tried to explain that vampires tell the truth. And she knew she had said all this before and all but she… just… wanted… everyone… to… understand. It wasn’t the Truth. It was only a piece of it — a small piece, really, but… But people are like a spectrum, you know? They have all the colors and some have more of one shade than others but everybody has some of any shade and Ross, the vampire, could make that shade seem brighter and stronger than any of the others and… And, yes, it was there! He did have something to work with. But that didn’t mean I’m really… Or anybody is really…

And she drifted off to silent tears until she felt a finger under her chin, gently raising her head up. She lifted her head and Felix was there, smiling at her.

“We know,” he said softly. Tenderly. “We know. We understand.”

And she knew he meant it. His eyes were so pleasant and sweet. She followed the gesture of his head, next, to the faces of the others in the room, to the rest of the Team, and the glow was still there. Smiling, understanding faces. Misty faces, small tears hidden in the corners of understanding eyes.

All of you act so hard and tough, she thought, gazing gratefully at them. Is that so no one will know about you?

“So,” Felix continued gently, “you and your friend Kitty slept with those two men.”

She could only nod, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“It wasn’t fair! He made us helpless! And then he told them!”

Of course Ross had known the men. Of course he had told them to be there. Of course they stopped by the booth to say hello. And then they were following the limo to her Aunt Vicky’s house and then they were all having a drink on the terrace and then, somehow, she was alone with one of them in the library, the short, fat, balding one who owned her, and abruptly he stopped being sweet. He put down his drink and leaned forward on the leather sofa and told her to take off her dress.

She wept and said, “Please don’t make me do this!”

Even as she rose and exposed herself to him.

She did see it as if from afar. As if from the top of Uncle Harley’s vast eighteen-foot bookshelves. And in this awful, obscene, filthy image of what she was doing, she reveled. She rolled and spun and gushed animal screams.

The only thing Ross spared them was seeing the money change hands.

It happened again, of course. And again. And again and again and one night there were two men just for her and then one night Kitty wasn’t there and there were three. Three men she didn’t know, back once again in her uncle’s vast library, back on the vast leather sofa. And through her tears and shame she looked up and saw Ross there, standing and smiling at the uncurtained window. She called out to him from the couch, there on that couch on all fours wearing nothing but her jewelry that glinted and turned in the moonlight, she called out to him to make it all stop.

But he only laughed.

And then she felt added weight of the second man on the leather behind her and the animal cries soon returned to wash away the tears.

For a while.

Kitty was absent more than once. Soon she was hardly there at all and when she was she was as pale and wan as Aunt Vicky and Davette was starting to worry and fret but Ross would soothe her and comfort her and reassure her and fool her. She lived now in a constant dream state in which the oddest things were acceptable. She was exhausted from loss of rest and loss of blood and lack of… focus. She had nothing going on around her that she was used to, that she could count on or lean against. Aunt Vicky was always abed now, looking tight and worn and deathly pale. When they did talk, which was rare, they talked as strangers. For Davette’s sense of shame and guilt encompassed her always these days, like the air around her. And when she sat in Victoria’s great bedroom, the shame smothered her into silence. She was too engrossed with her own humiliation to notice her aunt’s oddly distant behavior.

Then one night, with Kitty gone and Ross not yet arrived, she almost told her. Sitting there in that chair at her aunt’s bedside, the pressure was almost too much. A sudden desire — passion, really — to throw herself to her knees and confess everything all but overcame her.

But then she thought of what the news would do to the lady, and she choked it back.

Weeping later in the corridor, she thought her tie with Aunt Vicky could never be worse.

But it could.

Two nights later, for reasons only Aunt Vicky would know, the frail elderly woman decided to get up from her bed in the middle of the night and go downstairs. She didn’t even take the elevator, but rather the long curved front staircase. And that’s where she was standing, on the bottom step, when she saw Davette, naked and rolling on the mansion’s entryway carpet.

Davette did not cry out. She did not scream or try to explain or even move. Instead she closed her eyes and lay there waiting to expand and explode and be gone forever. But neither did this happen. When at last she opened her eyes everyone was gone.

When she woke the next night, so was her beloved Victoria. Forever.

Overdose.

Jack Crow spoke softly: “He had her, too, didn’t he? Your aunt.”

Davette looked at him and nodded. “All along.”

“And she couldn’t stand the shame…” finished Annabelle, her eyes welling tears.

Davette nodded once more. “Everyone was so nice. I guess I’d forgotten how many friends Aunt Vicky had. The medical examiner, Dr. Harshaw, came out to the house personally to take care of her — and, I guess, me — through it all. And the governor sent something. And the mayor came to the funeral; she’s so nice. And senators and… everyone…”

Her voice drifted off and she simply stared for a few moments, at something only she could see.

The Team exchanged painful looks. All except Felix. His eyes never left Davette.

“Where was your Uncle Harley?” he asked. “He was Aunt Vicky’s brother?”

“We couldn’t reach him. He was in Samoa or somewhere.”

“Samoa? In the South Pacific?”

“Uh-huh. Harley is a photographer. He’s always going somewhere out of reach for National Geographic or somebody. I think he’s in Samoa. Photographing diving pigs or…”

“Speaking of pigs,” said Carl Joplin bitterly, “where was little Ross during all of this? The funeral was in the daytime, right?”

Davette smiled at him gratefully. “Yes. Yes, and I had to be up during the days, to do the… to handle all of the details. So I didn’t see Ross at all for those three days except one night. Ju… Dr. Harshaw was with me all along and he didn’t like Ross because I was all alone and Ross did have that horrible reputation. Anyway,” she said breathily, looking to Carl Joplin once again, “anyway, it did change when he wasn’t there. With the sunlight. And Dr. Harshaw gave me something so I slept at night, all night, and in the mornings I could think and I could remember and I hated him! I hated Ross!”

She was almost out of her chair. Her voice had become strident and wild and the tears flipped from her eyelids and Felix leaned forward and took her in his arms to soothe her but she fought, not with Felix, but to speak:

“He would stand there and laugh when those awful men would have me. They would all have me. They’d pass me back and forth between them and Ross would be there laughing and calling me filthy names and saying what a lesson I was learning to treat him the way I used to and I wasn’t such a lady now, was I? And — and I just wallowed there in front of him! I just wallowed for those men because I couldn’t help myself! I couldn’t help it! I couldn’t!”

And she sobbed a painful sob and pitched forward out of her chair into Felix’s arms and bawled and bawled.

In the heavy silence surrounding the child’s weeping, Annabelle felt the full force of Team Crow’s collective hatred pulsing about her. It was like a real and tangible force, so mighty was its purpose. The men looked not at each other or at her but rather straight ahead, each lost in his own thoughts of vengeance:

It’s frightening, thought Annabelle. And I would be frightened, if I didn’t feel the same way.

And then she thought: The vampires are very foolish to make men such as these this angry.

“When,” asked Felix gently after Davette had been silent a long time, “did you see Ross again?”

Davette pulled her head off his shoulder and sat back in her chair, sniffling and wiping her eyes.

“The night after the funeral. He woke me to tell me he’d moved in.”

“Into your house?”

“Yes. Yes. Into my house. And I sat up in bed and I didn’t care what he looked like. I didn’t care about his eyes in the moonlight. I told him ‘No. No! I don’t want you here! I don’t want to ever see you again!’ And I meant it!”

“And what did he say?” asked Father Adam.

Davette looked at him and she half laughed, half cried, and shook her head. “He just laughed and reached down and jerked me high into the air way over his head with one hand and…”

“And what?”

“And let me see his teeth..

“And then, at last, you knew?” asked Jack.

“I don’t know what I knew. Then. But I knew an hour later. You see, he carried me downstairs, in my nightgown, and threw me into my car and then he got in behind the wheel and started driving.”

He drove to a part of Dallas Davette had never seen. She had heard about it, read about it, seen the police reports on the local news. But she had never been here in deep south Dallas, mostly black, mostly miserable, full of hookers and rival street gangs and crack dealers and fractious racial politics herded together by terrified and outgunned police. The faces through the whizzing car windows seemed alien and menacing and the streets seemed seedy and tense as a shaken fist.

Ross pulled the car into a crowded and littered parking lot alongside a place called “Cherry’s” whose neon sign lacked an “r” and part of the “h” but still blinked spasmodically through the heavy gloom. The parking lot was full of people, mostly men and all black, standing around in little groups of twos or threes or sixes talking and smoking and passing bottles back and forth. A group of four were standings in the parking space Ross had selected. He pushed forward into it anyway, honking and lurching the great Cadillac bumper toward them. They leapt out of the way, one dropping his bottle, only just avoiding the car.

“What the fuck’s wit you?” cried the largest, a huge black man with a great broad-brimmed hat and what Davette believed was a least two pounds of gold jewelry.

“Parking my car,” snapped Ross as he stepped out. “This is a parking lot.”

Then he stepped quickly around the car and opened Davette’s door and lifted her, literally, out of her seat and onto the Cadillac’s roof. She was still wearing her nightgown and she struggled to keep its dainty ends from fluttering in the heavy breeze. Ross sneered at her efforts, then turned back to the four blacks.

“Want to make something of it?” he asked them.

And when they hesitated, too amazed to speak, he added: “niggers?”

As she spoke this next, the Team heard her voice change. As she had spoken of her own fall, Davette’s tone had been rich with shame and fatigue and hatred. But now it became tinged with awe. Awe and fear and something else.

Resignation? wondered Felix. As if, now that she thinks back on it, they really are unstoppable?

Shit.

And she tried to explain, to describe what she’d seen. The might of him. The surrealistic animal force of the vampire among mortals.

When they heard the “nigger,” they surged at him as one, as if choreographed. Ross had just laughed and then reached forward and snatched them up, just snatched them like they were dolls, like they had handles on them — on their stomachs, even. And they had screamed when he snatched them, crushing their bones with his fingers, collapsing their organs, they had screamed. And then he had laughed again and shaken them and at first they fought, stiffly blurring, but then they just flopped obscenely from side to side and he just — tossed them away. And the sounds when they hit, against the other cars, against the cinderblock wall of Cherry’s were almost as bad as their screams.

The crowd formed immediately, some there to “teach this honky motherfucker.” Two, three, six maybe, tried. Ross laughed and casually bashed them from side to side with the backs of his hands. Davette couldn’t stand it and she turned away after the first two and Ross noticed and spat “WATCH!” at her in that Voice and for just an instant, everyone — fighting or watching — froze while she meekly obeyed. Then they came out of it and rushed him again and he slapped them as before.

Then a short man circled in darkly, looking serious and unintimidated and wielding a huge knife. Ross looked at her and smiled and then turned back to him and opened his arms wide for the charge and it came and Ross did nothing and the blade rose in a quick glinting thrust from below, splitting the chest to the hilt.

Ross grunted — Davette could tell it pained him — but did nothing else. Except smile. The black man went wide-eyed but hung tough. Instead of running, he just jerked the blade out and slammed it home once again. And again Ross grunted.

And smiled.

Then he leaned over the little man and opened his mouth wide and the fangs were there flashing in the neon and he… hissssed…

And the man with the knife fainted dead away.

The crowd melted off after that, save for a handful of men standing at the entrance of the club. One of them, Davette suspected, was the owner or at least the manager. She saw the pistol he had hidden behind his thigh, saw him trying to decide if he dared use even that.

Ross saw it, too, and laughed harsh and point-blank at him. The man stared numbly back.

Then Ross laughed again and his look took in all who were left to watch, at the front door, in the parking lot, biding around the edges of the neon.

“So,” he boomed harshly, “you want me to move the car? This car? Very well!”

He strode quickly around to the front of the Cadillac, reached down and grasped the huge chrome bumper. He tensed, strained, then lifted the car to his chest. Then he took four powerful strides forward and the rear wheels, still on the ground, whined and treaded thick black rubber oft the asphalt and, just like that, the Cadillac was unparked. When he dropped the front of the car it bounced and Davette, still on the roof, was kicked sideways into the air. But Ross was there, as she slid to the ground, to catch her so easily.

And that’s when she realized the knife was still in his chest.

He sneered down at her. “Well?” he Voiced at her.

She knew what he wanted. She took a breath, forced herself to grasp the handle, and tugged. The knife came immediately into her hand, as if being also pushed from inside. And there was no blood. Just a clear, sticky mucous something.

The knife clattered to the asphalt.

Ross snorted and shoved her inside the car. Then he went around to his door. There were still three people remaining, too stunned to move.

“Well, niggers?” cried Ross happily.

No one moved, spoke, died.

Then they drove away in silence.

And it stayed silent, almost all the way home. Davette was too overcome to speak, too astounded, too shattered by what she had seen. This wasn’t just little Ross turned sexy. This was much, much more. Much, much worse. This was black magic. Evil. Oh God! Save me!

And she cowered over against her door waiting to die.

Only…

Only she knew that he wasn’t going to kill her. Not here, anyway. Not right now. And…

And his stomach was hurting him, she thought. He rubbed it, hard, as he drove, constantly kneading it with his free hand. And the thought of this, the dream of his vulnerability, was like the tiniest slice of hope.

Hope for what, she didn’t know. She only knew that he could be hurt and she couldn’t take her eyes off his kneading and that’s when he spotted her doing that and snorted with disdainful fury and jerked the Cadillac to a skidding stop on the side of the freeway, grabbing her with his right hand and dragging her across the seat to him and with his left hand ripping his shirt open and — And the wound was closed.

“It itches, you stupid little mite!” he barked shaking her head with a handful of her hair. “It doesn’t hurt! It itches!”

And then, when she just stared blankly at him, he reached up and grabbed the rearview mirror and tore it lose from the front windshield. He slammed her cheek up next to his and held the mirror in front of her eyes and…

And he wasn’t there.

She could feel him, his hand in her hair against her skull, his cheek pressing into hers — she could see that, she could see the impression his cheek was making against hers in the mirror.

But he wasn’t there!

And then… And then he sort of was. Sort of. Outlines, flashes, traces of his features when he moved. He wasn’t completely invisible. But… But.

And then he dropped the mirror and turned and bored his eyes into hers and opened wide his mouth and the fangs were growing out.

“Vampire, mite!” he hissed that awful hiss. “VAMPIRE!”

And his mouth went wider and the fangs grew longer toward her and his features went red and demonic and unholy and she screamed a scream of hopeless irrefutable terror and all was black and dark.

The next night she signed everything over to him. The stocks, the bonds, the CDs, the cash, the houses… everything. Full power of attorney.

Ross, the vampire, owned her.

After that, things started happening pretty fast.

First, Ross decided to redecorate.

Soft things. Sickly-sweet, tender-to-the-touch things. Tasteless things. Expensive things. Gone were the great broad antique leather sofas from the library. He replaced them with silk-pillowed lounges. And he replaced the tapestries, some centuries old, with what looked to Davette like red satin bedsheets.

Ross actually did take the time to sit down and show her his new “motif.” It looked like a cross between a sultan’s harem and a Colorado Gold Rush Whorehouse. “No-Class” Ross’s true colors were, quite literally, coming through.

He fired all the servants Aunt Vicky had retained for years. He replaced them with a handful of gray-faced, dull-witted, self-loathing slobs. It always amazed Davette how they simply could not seem to tidy up. No matter how rich and expensive their uniforms, no matter how much care and attention was paid to their appearances — their hair was always razor-cut, their faces always shaved, fingernails always clean — they still looked like unmade beds. Their jackets, however well pressed and tailored, never quite seemed to fit. And their starched white shirts never managed to stay tucked in for over a minute or two.

Davette had no idea where Ross had found these people who knew he was a vampire and still wanted to work for him. And she didn’t want to know. Still, Ross managed to replace the entire staff in one single evening. He also managed to get a terrific amount of the redecoration done that first night — all the library, most of the main living room. An army of preened and primped men of all ages showed up to handle the work, all blatantly homosexual and each clearly enraptured by Ross’s slightest notice of them.

In the midst of this, still in her bathrobe, Davette sat drinking vodka on the rocks and watching these dreadful people reshape her universe. It was all so distant somehow, as if this really weren’t her house and Aunt Vicky weren’t really dead and one morning she’d wake up…

No. Best not to get too detailed and lose the fantasy.

So she just sat and drank some more and waited for the scurrying trolls to leave. Which they did about midnight. Not because they were finished. But because Ross couldn’t wait one more minute to try out his new playhouse. He dismissed the workers and went out to hunt.

Ross returned soon, just after two, with two couples driven in a limousine of their own. The four were well dressed and cultured and wildly, happily, drunk and friendly, the two men in their early forties, their wives a few years younger, and they laughed and laughed as they came tripping through the front door following Ross and they laughed as they got their drinks and they laughed some more when one of the ladies caught a heel on the edge of Ross’s new red carpet and when Ross made some comment about Demon Rum they laughed some more and one of the men raised his glass and said, “I’ll drink to that!” And they all laughed a lot at that and then Ross apologized for the unsecured rug, explaining that he was in the midst of redecorating and one of the women, who could not have known that the whorish red carpet was Ross’s idea, picked up an edge of it and said, “Better hurry!”

And all four laughed longest and hardest at that until they realized Ross was not laughing at all. Davette was thirty feet away and above them, hidden in a shadowy recess, still wearing her bathrobe, still drinking her vodka, and she could not only see but feel the change in Ross. His coldness and anger, instantaneous, eruptive, seem to sphere out from him to the high walls of the living room and back, and the two couples, as the wave passed through them, caught their breaths and their faces went slack and pale.

And then Ross was all smiles and laughing one second later, his face animated and gracious and gregarious and endearing. And Davette watched the four stare and exchange uncertain, uneasy looks. But this passed because they had just been having such a good time and Ross was so charming, after all and…

And what was this? A game! How fun!

And Ross was everywhere among them, laughing, making them laugh and oh, yes! we’re going to play a game, a drinking game, but we need one nondrinker, and somehow they were persuaded to fetch their chauffeur in while Ross and an ash-faced servant rolled out the plastic tarp left by the painters to cover the new red rug. The women had to take off their high heels, to keep from making holes in the plastic, and there Ross was, on his knees, to assist them and oh, the comments and the sly exchanged looks and the ooh’s as he performed this sensual task.

But then all was ready for the game and Ross personally positioned everyone, including the chauffeur, at just the right place on the plastic tarp after first taking their glasses from their hands. And one of the men groaned and said, “I thought this was a drinking game!” and Ross smiled a sly smile and, “It is! It is! You’ll see!” and then he had one last person to position, the loveliest of the women, the only name Davette had caught from her perch, Evelyn, whose long black dress suited her so. Ross took her by the shoulders and stepped her over to the center of the tarp, the exact center, and then, with everyone smiling and laughing, turned her once more with her shoulders, turned her around so that her smiling faced his and slit a gaping gash in her throat with the edges of his long fingernails.

The blood fountained from her severed arteries and Ross had an impish moment to catch some of it in his mouth before turning and doing the same thing to her husband who simply stood there staring, with no chance to react. The second husband had enough time to open his mouth to protest, to raise an arm to object before Ross’s vise-grip closed his throat and spinal cord forever. The second woman screamed a high-pitched scream before Ross grabbed her around the waist with his left hand and slammed his right fist into the center of her chest so hard she died, hemorrhaging, before her limp body had reached the plastic tarp.

Ross killed the chauffeur with another blow of the fist, straight down atop the man’s skull. Davette heard it crack.

And then the feeding. The servants, panting the obvious repulsive sexual fervor, began scurrying about lifting the edges of the plastic to drain the blood into an enormous urn while Ross himself clamped a hand over Evelyn’s still-spouting arteries. Then he lifted her body into his arms and positioned the throat within reach.

And then, before removing his palm from the wound, he turned and looked straight at Davette, straight at her, knowing all along she had been there, knowing her, knowing everything. Davette had time to gasp and put a drunken hand to her mouth before she heard the words, heard the Voice, slicing into her shadows.

“Entertained?” purred the vampire, before removing his hand and plunging his fangs into crimson.

Davette had been wondering what had happened to Kitty. She hadn’t seen her for weeks. Now she wondered no more.

She knew.

And she knew the rest.

I’m dead too, she thought.

Soon, I’m dead.

And then the doorbell rang.

“Get rid of them!” hissed Ross’s bloody mouth.

It was not so easy. Pough, Ross’s main slug, went dutifully to the front entrance, checked through the eyehole, and opened the door to dismiss whoever was there. Davette heard his voice briefly. Then, for several long seconds, heard nothing.

Then Pough reappeared. His face was, even for him, ashen. His eyes were wide and bright.

And fearful.

“Master…” he all but whined.

Ross put down Evelyn’s body and stood up. He eyed Pough menacingly for an instant, then opened his mouth to speak.

But… “Ross!” sounded out from the front entrance and all present were silent.

“Ross Stewart!” then sounded out. And again, as before, it was from another Voice.

Davette watched Ross start toward the sound, then stop, find something to wipe his mouth, then continue. He paused at the step to the entryway and Davette felt sure he wanted to turn and look to her. For what? For reassurance?

Maybe.

Then he was out the front door and it closed behind him.

When she awoke, late the next afternoon, she found someone had put her in her bed. Her first thought was of the look on Ross’s face as he had stepped toward the door. But her second was the look he’d had as he’d raised his fangs from the feast.

He had been drunk. On the blood.

Dinner on the terrace just after sunset. Candlelight, flowers, fine wine. Just the two of them. Just Davette eating. Ross wore a tuxedo and Davette, under orders, wore her glittering best.

And that part had made her feel better. Not dressing up. Ross often made her dress up. He liked to look at her, liked to show her off. Liked to make her strip. No, it wasn’t the dressing up. It was that it didn’t take two hours to do it like it usually had.

Because she would… just… sit… there… in front of her dressing table and she would reach for something, a comb or a brush or some perfume? Maybe? And… by the time… her… her hand had… reached out… for it… she had… forgotten what it was she was reaching for.

And then she would have to just sit there for a second until she remembered what she had been trying to do and to do that she would have to look in the mirror to see what was still undone and she hated looking at herself these days, hated it so much it would often make her cry and… And she was too tired to cry, too exhausted, too drained.

So she would just slump there and the dry sobs would rock her shoulders for a while. Sand-blasted by horror and fear and shame.

And then it would be time to continue getting dressed. And she would sit herself up, and reach for something, reach fast, before she forgot, and sometimes she missed and Pough spent a lot of time cleaning up broken bottles.

But tonight had been… okay. Not great, not the way she used to feel. But better.

Then she knew.

He hadn’t bitten her in a week.

I’m recovering, she realized. I’m coming back.

And then she thought, looking directly at him, Whom do I kill first? Him or me?

He had started talking about high school. Not just about the school but about old friends from school and old events and old dances and parties and the way they used to dress and how everyone from those days was doing — well or poorly — and how much he thought of them and how much he missed them and…

And on and on and it came to her, suddenly, what he was trying to do.

And she also knew why.

Ross was scared.

The other Voice had scared him, made him realize he was not all-powerful to everyone, just to mortals. So he was retreating, now, back to the mortal he held most firmly in his palm. And pretending she really wanted to be there.

It was disgusting.

And worse, much, much worse, it was effective.

For Ross had turned up the heat again, the distant warmth of his Voice. His looks had become more pointed, his gestures more graceful and casually touching. And despite her best efforts to remember her hatred and fear, she was giving in to the vampire’s magic.

When he reached out a perfect white hand to gently palm her chin she managed to mutter “damn you” before his skin touched hers and her breath caught and the awful wicked excitement stirred within her, fluttered from deep within, sprinkling up her arms and through her shoulders and…

And she did just what he said to do.

She stood up, in front of the servant-slugs, in front of Pough, and slipped her dress off, exposing her naked body underneath. And she did slide her manicured nails along her hips and thighs and she did tease her diamond-hard nipples and…

And oh God! but she enjoyed it as much as ever before, enjoyed the wanton, whorish nastiness of it all, the shameful, rutting depravity of it all.

She loved it, God help her.

But even more, she loved his laying her, with her eager consent, across the top of the quickly cleared dining table and opening her thighs to his exquisite, monstrous, bite. And she loved the sounds she streaked up through the leaves and clouds at the moon.

Perhaps she would not have hated herself so had she known it would be the last time he would do this to her.

By 7:30, he had lain her in her bed, saying something about an errand he simply had to run. Even as she dropped off, she could tell he was trying to be too flippant. That this was more than an errand.

In her dreams she heard that other Voice again and again and again.

“That was the night,” said Jack Crow suddenly, “that he came up to Bradshaw and killed my men.”

“Yes,” said Davette quietly. “Only he missed you because he got there too late. Pough got lost. And then… Well, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“What did Ross do to Pough?” Kirk wanted to know.

“He had bruises all over his face when he came back. And he limped.”

“Did Pough enjoy his pain?” asked Father Adam quietly.

Davette looked at him, surprised. “Yes. How did you know?”

The young priest shrugged his broad shoulders.

“Just a feeling,” was all he said.

“What about,” asked Felix leaning forward, “the wound?”

“Yes,” added Cat eagerly. “In his forehead…”

“From the cross…” finished Carl Joplin.

“The Holy silver cross,” amended Father Adam.

“Yeah.”

“Oh!” sparked Davette, remembering, “It hurt him. It really hurt him… He thrashed about on the silken sheets of the huge bedroom suite he had furnished deep in the basement, wallowing in pain and frustration. And it was impossible to restrain him, with muscles hard as a bronze statue come alive and hurting and… angry!”

“DO SOMETHING!” he raged and they tried, Davette and Pough, they really tried, but the wound would not stop bleeding. The thick, heavy vampire mucus continued to ooze, rhythmically, with his panting dead man’s pulse. And every time a new surge of matter pushed its way out, the monster howled and grabbed his head, or ripped the sheets with his long nails or tore one of his brand new tailored silk shirts from his chest or…

Or lashed out. At the walls, at Davette, or at Pough, who was either too stupid or too masochistic to step beyond his reach. The first time Davette went down was from being struck by just the edge of his hand. That blow had sent her rolling onto the floor and from then on, whenever she saw the glob begin to form at the wound’s opening, she would step quickly back while the vampire raged in agony.

But then she would jump quickly back onto the bed an sop up the stuff before it rolled heavily down his forehead and got into his eyes, because that seemed to hurt him more than anything else. When the mucus hit his eyes he would shriek!

Three hours at this and Davette was exhausted. More she was angry. At Pough, the slug who liked being hit, a herself, for being here at all, for the vampire Ross, who, like the wicked infant he was, refused to accept the bill he’d run up.

She saw him differently now, in his pain, and her contempt was joyous. There was no seduction here, no hypnotic gaze, no Voice. His skin was no longer smooth cream but mottled, crinkled, paste.

The Undead, she kept thinking.

All those movies and all those stories I’ve seen and read in my life were fantasies. But this is so true. He is not alive. He is Undead. He is Unhealthy.

He is scum.

Ross actually tried aspirin for the pain, a notion that Davette, in her newfound insight, found laughable, ludicrous almost beneath contempt.

You’re dead, pig. You can’t take aspirin, she thought.

But she said nothing as Pough fetched the bottle and Ross tore the top of it open with a flick of his fingers and forced a half dozen of the dry white pills down his throat. She stood way back then, eyeing the ornate quarters for a receptacle. He had quite a few of those urns around against the walls but they were too heavy. At last she spied some awful, intricate, and expensive French washbowl — something on one of the side tables — and sidled over casually to pick it up while Ross lay frozen in his misery, staring straight up at the ceiling, his hands outstretched and talon-taut in the ragged sheets.

First he started to retch, his body warping on the bed as electrocuted. And when he finally vomited it was the most vile, fetid, loathsome… Decay! That awful smell of Death, rotting, sickly-sweet bile!

Davette dropped the washbowl to the carpet and staggered back from that smell.

“Ross, you fool! You’re a vampire! You can only have blood!”

And the monster’s eyes rolled back in his head, the pupils almost disappearing entirely, and his spine arched once more against the bed. But then his head snapped forward and his eyes were red and demonic and the fangs were there and he looked at Davette and hissed:

“Yesss!”

And she thought she was going to die.

But Ross’s arm streaked out and his taloned hands clumped down on Pough’s forearm and pulled it toward his jaws and Pough screamed when the fangs sliced the arteries and the blood began to spurt and Davette felt her scream coming as Ross aimed the stream not at his mouth but at his wound. And as the blood splashed and splattered across Ross’s forehead Davette looked at Pough and saw his eyes go back, but not in pain. In ecstasy.

And her scream blew out from her soul and possessed her and she collapsed, still screaming.

It worked. The wound didn’t heal. Not completely. But the opening shrank to little more than a large pinprick. It still dripped that clear viscous fluid. But a headband was all it needed.

And the pain was less. Not gone, but less. It no longer incapacitated him. It just made him a bit more cruel.

Ross had looked into her eyes and told her she was tired, sleepy and exhausted, that she would go to sleep and not wake up until midnight tomorrow night, and it was so.

He awoke her with his mind or his Voice — she wasn’t sure — at the appointed hour. He was standing in her doorway, the light from the hallway silhouetting him. She could hear voices downstairs, many voices laughing and talking.

She didn’t want to go.

“Ross…” she began weakly.

“Get dressed,” said the Voice. “Now. I’ll be back for you.”

And then he was gone.

She lay there a few seconds, then clambered slowly dizzily, out of bed. She was exhausted, beaten, drained. She hadn’t eaten. She had slept too long. She wanted to die

She didn’t know if she could get dressed.

“I’ll help you,” offered a soft, silky, familiar voice.

Kitty, even in the dim starlight from the terrace doorway, was incredibly beautiful. She was radiant, really, her features sharp yet soft, her walk lazy yet precise and sensuous. She was friendly and warm and obviously glad to see Davette and…

And a vampire.

“I’ll help you,” she said again, this time all but cooing as she strolled forward and took her friend’s limp shoulders. “I’ll make you beautiful.”

And she did. She dressed Davette as one would a child. She fixed her hair and applied her makeup and never once turned on a light.

Davette simply sat there. Or stood up. Or raised her arms as told. She couldn’t cry or disobey or think. She just let it be done.

And then she was ready and Kitty pronounced her beautiful and then Ross, who had reappeared at the doorway, agreed. Then the two of them took each of her arms and guided her downstairs.

On the long main staircase Davette managed to speak at last.

“Are you… going to make me a vampire?”

Ross’s smile was satanic.

“No, my dear,” he replied pleasantly. “I’m going to make you watch.”

And when they reached the bottom of the stairway and turned in to the main living room filled with happy partying victims, Davette saw the plastic tarp had already been laid out.

She watched them feed from a far distance it seemed. The horror was too much, the screams of surprise and terror too piercing, the quantities of blood too enormous to accept. She didn’t move, she didn’t speak. She didn’t respond, except to Voices. She wasn’t there.

But she noticed them swelling as they drank. Like ticks, she thought.

For their bodies did actually expand as they sopped the lives. And their eyes became dreamy and their voices, Voices, became slurred. There was too much blood for the two of them but they drank most of it anyway, gorging themselves and laughing about the presumed lives of the victims based on their clothing and personal effects and when they realized they simply could not drink it all, they laughed and rubbed it all over each other and Davette thought they really did look like serpents, intertwined and slimy with blood.

It was the same the next night. First, though, they had the orgy for the sheep, seducing them with Voice and Gaze, and the sexual tension was rich and thick.

But somehow carefully directed. One young couple in their twenties were somehow carnally separated. Ross had him bound and gagged while the young wife rolled and clasped with a series of men on the floor in front of him, knowing what she was doing, weeping throughout, but unable to help herself, unable to stop the rich, luxurious orgasms from rocking her again and again.

Davette watched the young man, his eyes red with tears, as he went through the torture of his wife the rutting slut. She didn’t know how they had managed to keep the feeling of sex from him, only that they so much enjoyed seeing his agony without having any idea as to what was causing his wife to behave like this.

Then Ross just let them go, without explanation, before the slaughter began.

“Let’s see them work this out,” he said with a laugh as he watched their subcompact lurch away down the drive.

Davette wept silently. The two had been married less than three weeks.

And she thought, for a few brief moments, that it would have been less cruel to kill them. But that was before the night’s slaughter began. Once she heard the new screams, she realized she was wrong. There was nothing worse than what she saw. Except, possibly, the vampires’ pleasure in it all.

I cannot do this, she thought.

I cannot continue like this.

I cannot live like this.

And then she thought: So I won’t. I know where Aunt Vicky kept her pills.

Davette lived because she overslept. She had no chance to sneak into Aunt Vicky’s room to kill herself. Before she was half awake, Ross and Kitty and someone new, another woman, another vampire, a redhead named Veronica, were all in her room, rousing her out of bed to show her their new clothes. Vampire clothes.

They were all blacks and reds, the women’s dresses trailing wisps of material to give the illusion of black widows, Ross’s jacket and red ascot making him look just like a movie Dracula.

The three seemed to think this very witty. And they had a dress just like it for Davette. They also had victims on their way.

So Davette got dressed and went downstairs and listened to the three whisper among themselves and wondered what adolescent horror would come about in her home that night. The main living room had been just about transformed to Ross’s specifications. It reminded Davette of these absurd outfits the four were wearing. If only the absurdity were not so vicious and macabre.

I’ve got to get away, she thought. If I can just get to the pills, and take them at dawn, it will be over before they can do anything about it.

So just smile, stupid. And go along with these monsters.

And then leave this all. Leave everything.

And she took a deep breath and braced herself. She could get through anything, couldn’t she? This one last night? Please? Only… what have they planned to show me tonight?

As it turned out, they had to change their plans.

The vast eighteen-foot-high french doors to the grand terrace burst inward with a rush of air and electricity and a White Giant walked into the room.

At least that’s how Davette thought of this great huge man, at least six-five and weighing close to three hundred pounds with huge shoulders and a massive mane of snow-white hair. He had the most piercing blue eyes Davette had ever seen. He was supremely confident, blazingly intent.

And a vampire.

“Ross Stewart,” he bellowed, “you have failed me. What will it be?”

Davette recognized the Voice from the other night.

Ross had stumbled to his feet upon the man’s appearance. Davette felt rather than saw him try to draw himself up to his full height and power as the other vampire approached.

As she also felt him give in as the giant drew near.

“What is it,” he asked, with no Voice at all, “that you want me to do?”

The giant took one more step forward so that he literally towered over Ross.

“Finish it!” he roared. “Finish it! Kill him!”

“Kill Crow…”

“So!” hissed Cat, and his smile was not a friendly one, “that’s the guy!”

“Yeah,” rumbled Jack, sitting forward. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know. They wouldn’t let me know.”

“Any ideas?”

She shook her head. “No. Even when they had me sign the papers, they had tape over his name.

“What papers?”

“I don’t know. He brought them with him. And he made Ross have me sign them before we left.”

Carl Joplin frowned. “You signed them without knowing what they were?”

Davette’s eyes dropped as she nodded.

“Ease off, Carl,” said Deputy Thompson gently.

Carl looked at him, nodded. “Sorry, sugar,” he said to Davette, “I just keep forgetting…”

“Well, how?” sparked Davette suddenly, her eyes bright and flashing. “What did you expect me to do, with four vampires in the room?”

It got very still. The Team sat stunned at this bristling defiance from this meek little broken…

And then Felix started to smile and so did Davette and then everyone laughed and Cat thought, My God, girl! How do you keep shining?

And everyone felt a lot better. Cat got up and fixed more drinks. Even Davette had one. Only Felix declined.

Instead he lit a cigarette and looked at Davette. “Still, it’s important about the papers. More legal documents?”

“Yes. Like the ones I did for Ross. Power of attorney, I guess.”

“How about a last will and testament?”

“It could be.”

“A death sentence.”

“What?” cried Annabelle. “What do you mean.”

Felix frowned at her alarm. “Sorry, Annabelle. But she said she had to sign the papers before she left.”

“Yes,” replied Davette slowly.

“Where were you going?”

Davette paused, looked at Jack Crow.

Jack nodded and answered for her. “… to California.”

“Yes,” said Davette.

“Yes,” repeated Jack. “That was the night you came—”

“To kill you. Yes.” She looked down, looked back up at him. “I’m sorry, Jack.”

He shook his head. “Not your fault. How long did it take you?”

“Three days.”

“You drove?”

“Yes. Almost straight through. We only stopped at all because I was so tired…”

She couldn’t keep her eyes open but it was still too light for Ross to leave the trunk and tell her it was all right to stop. But she had to stop. She had to.

So she did, somewhere in Arizona, at a rest stop. In the shade. She pulled over and lay down for just a second to “rest her eyes".

When she awoke it was dark and Ross was shaking her awake to get moving and the couple in the Camaro convertible parked beside them at the rest stop were dead and drained, their lifeless eyes staring, a slack corpse’s mouth hanging open over the driver’s door.

She roared back onto the highway and, once more, Ross began to talk.

About being a vampire, about the trouble back in Dallas with the white giant. Something about invading another monster’s territory without permission, something more about getting to stay as soon as he got this “Crow” person. Davette still didn’t understand who this Crow person was and why they wanted to kill him. And she had seen so many murders, horrible slashing murders, already, that she found it hard to worry about anyone in particular. Every night someone else died. Names didn’t matter.

Neither did any other details. Ross had always kept everything secret from her before, yet his wanting to let her in on this trip suddenly repulsed her. She didn’t want to hear. She didn’t want to know.

She didn’t want… anything.

She didn’t even want to die. She was too tired.

She had thought about it, thought about stopping the car at some little town and going to a drugstore and getting sleeping pills and maybe a little vodka (maybe a lot) to wash it down with. But even that seemed too much trouble.

Too numb. Too lost.

So tired.

And then, on the last moonlit leg of the journey, up U.S. 1 along the northern California coast, he finally got her attention. She finally realized why he was telling her so much.

This Crow person was not just a person. He wasn’t just another victim or plaything. He was more. A lot more. Just a man, but a very powerful one.

He killed vampires.

And this thought, that someone existed who not only stood up to them, but fought them and won… ! It staggered her, it raced her blood and breath through her soul. She felt the stirrings of something deep within and long lost and she reached for it, reached deep down inside her until she could grasp it and identify it and… and it turned out to be her. The her that once, so long ago, had been.

And then she remembered that this man, this Crow, was going to die, too, and she tried to hide it all away.

Because he would die. You couldn’t stop these monsters.

So she went along and listened to his plan and did just what she was told, dressed up and put on her Reporter Face and straightened her extra-clean clothes and went up to that great mansion on the ridge over Pebble Beach and knocked on the front door.

And she met them and she liked them and she refused to notice she liked them and she confirmed that this Crow person, Jack Crow, it turned out, wouldn’t be there until the next day and she went back and told Ross and he was furious and thought about killing them all, all the others in the house, before Crow came back, but…

But he couldn’t afford to frighten Crow off. He couldn’t afford to fail again.

But neither would he leave. Just before dawn he closed himself in the trunk of the rental car and sealed the seal he had devised that no one could possibly break alone.

And she lay down in the front seat and went to sleep expecting to help him feed the next night.

But then… but nothing, not really. Crow’s car driving past her had awakened her and when she awoke she awoke to the fourth day without being bitten and enslaved and maybe, just maybe, she had some extra strength and will and hidden crying hope…

So she just got out of the car and went up to meet this fool who thought he could stop evil with his drunken little band and…

And she met him and he was, yes, special, but not that special — no one was special enough for this job. And she played reporter and he walked her through those empty rooms of his dead comrades’ — was it seven? Yes, seven who had been insane enough to follow him — and he told her their stories and they were wonderful stories…

And then he’d said they were going and asked if she wanted to go along and then she’d heard that music from downstairs and, well, she…

She just went. She just did it.

She didn’t know how she managed such spectacular courage.

But she suspected the music.

“What was that music playing downstairs?” she asked Jack suddenly.

“Downstairs? Downstairs when?”

“When we were in California and you asked me to fly back with you?”

Jack frowned. “Oh. When we were in the zoo… That was Stevie Ray Vaughn. Texas rock and roll.”

And she smiled. “Yes! Rock and roll. That’s it!”

Cat, along with the others, found himself smiling at her smile. Because it was the first one in so long. But…

“But I don’t get it. What’s the music got to do with anything? Don’t you like rock and roll?”

And she laughed. She really laughed.

“I love it. But Ross hated it. All vampires hate rock and roll.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No,” she giggled, sitting up straight. “He told me on that trip. All vampires hate it.”

“What do they like?” Kirk wanted to know.

“Opera,” replied Davette. “All kinds of opera.”

“Figures,” muttered Father Adam and they all turned and smiled at him.

“So,” finished Jack. “That was it. You just… ran. When you heard that music, you just…”

“I just did it. I didn’t think about it. I just went.”

“And that’s all?”

She sighed, looked at him. “That’s all.”

And it was quiet for a moment while they thought about this, this sweet golden human made slave and a swine, about all that she had been and all that she had lost and all that had been done to her and…

And Carl Joplin stood up and stepped over to her and looked down and smiled and held out his huge chubby hands to her. She hesitated, then put her two small hands in his and he pulled her up out of her chair and his smile went wider and he said, “You’re a good, good girl.”

Then he gave her a bear hug that almost hid her from view.

The other smiles glowed upon them from all around the room.

Chapter 21

Felix didn’t know what he felt about all he had heard that night.

He was shocked? Yeah. Stunned and… repulsed? No. Not really. Not for her. Just stunned a bit. And dazed. Too much story. Too much data. Too much monster.

They really know how to rip up Life, don’t they?

But how did he feel about her? How did he really…?

Say it, you stalling buffoon! Do you still… love her?

Yes, he thought at last.

And he smiled.

Now what, he wondered, am I smiling about?

The only other door to the room — the one to the bedroom used by the ladies — opened. It was Annabelle.

“Is she okay?” he whispered.

Annabelle first closed the door carefully behind her.

“I think she’ll sleep,” she said. “You should try to do the same.”

Felix looked around at the empty room filled with smoke and overflowing ashtrays and half-empty glasses. The others had gone to their rooms.

“I’ll just give her a few minutes.”

Annabelle smiling knowingly. Sometime during Davette’s tale she had busied herself knitting some large multicolored whatever. She resumed her seat and picked it up again.

“You were wonderful for her tonight,” she said.

Felix shrugged. “Not hard to do.”

“Then what took you so long?”

“What do you mean?” he asked innocently. “I’ve only known her for—”

“Felix!” she intoned, sounding like everyone’s mother.

He stopped short, grinned. “Yeah. Well, I’m not used to this falling-in-love-at-first-sight stuff.”

Annabelle grinned at him. “That’s better.”

“And…”

“And what?” she asked.

He turned around and busied himself making a drink he didn’t need.

“I was angry that she was with Crow.”

“What?” Annabelle gasped. “You thought that she and Jack were…”

“Huh? Oh, no. Not at all. But…” He lit a cigarette and looked at her. “See, I’ve been waiting for my wife to come along all my life and, well, avoiding this kind of shit at the same time. Then I see her and there’s Jack and…” He shook his head. “I shoulda figured I couldn’t have one without the other.”

She thought he looked almost embarrassed. “She loves you, too, you know,” she said.

He looked up. “You think?”

“I know so.” She eyed him carefully. “Don’t you?”

He looked at her quickly, looked down, smiled. “Yeah.” This time he was definitely embarrassed.

“Figures,” he added, “the way her luck’s been running.” And then they both smiled.

How weird you are, Felix, she thought. What a weird, dark, scary young man you are.

They were quiet for a while.

“Felix, what have you been doing all this time? Since Mexico?”

He shrugged. “I run the saloon.”

“All this time?”

He shrugged again. “The past couple of years.”

“And before that?”

But this time he just looked into his glass.

Annabelle eyed him carefully, a smile curling up.

“Felix, just how rich are you?”

He looked at her, surprised. “What makes you think I’m…”

“How rich?” she insisted.

He looked at her, relaxed, grinned. “Very.”

“Millions?”

He smiled. “Many.”

She nodded, almost to herself. “Rich, single, young, obviously well educated… Young man, what have you been doing all this time?”

And he looked at her and had no answer. But Jack Crow, at the doorway, did. “He’s been waiting for me.”

“Sometimes, Jack,” drawled Felix lazily, “you sound just like you.”

And the three of them laughed.

Crow fetched himself a glass of ice water and sat down across from them and got right to the point. “What’s it gonna be, Felix? You coming with us tomorrow, or not?”

Felix put his cigarette out and closed his eyes and rubbed them.

“I don’t know, Jack. I guess so. You’re going to Davette’s house, right?”

“Got to. Got to try.”

Felix nodded. “I know. And… well, it’s not like anyone’s going to be there waiting for us. It’s not another trap.”

“Not so far as I know.”

Felix nodded again. “Then I guess I’m in.”

“For tomorrow.”

“Yeah.”

“And after that?”

Felix lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly.

“No, Jack. No. Jack, it’s not… it’s just that I don’t think you’re a good deal. Sorry.”

Crow shook his head. “That’s okay.”

But it hurt. Saying this was hurting Felix. And he wanted the other man to understand.

“Jack, it’s just that… Dammit, they know who you are and they’re gunning for you. And they’re going to keep gunning for you. And you keep on doing this alone—” Felix stopped abruptly, looked down. “You shouldn’t be doing this alone.”

Jack Crow’s voice was so tired and his eyes were so bright as he replied, “I know. But I can’t get anyone else to help me.”

“Yeah,” Felix muttered.

And no one spoke after that for awhile.

Then Felix stood up, said good night, and left.

Jack watched him go and after he was gone he sighed and dragged out a cigarette and a light and leaned back wearily without lighting it.

He looks so tired, Annabelle thought. I’ve never seen him so tired.

And then she thought: I’ve never seen him like this at all.

And she felt the resentment for Felix welling up. Because Jack needed him so — they all needed him. Davette needed him. And Jack had been counting on him so much and he was so good at it and Jack was alone…

So alone.

“Poor bastard,” Jack muttered to himself.

“What?” she asked.

“Felix.”

“Felix?” she asked, amazed. “Why do you feel so sorry for him?”

Jack’s smile was thin and grim. “Because here’s this poor jerk who’s… Hell, he’s young and bright and, in his own way, plenty, plenty strong. And he can’t do a goddamned thing but shoot. But he doesn’t want to shoot. Doesn’t want to be a shooter.

“So he doesn’t do anything at all.”

Annabelle frowned. “Jack, you’re not making me feel any better about him.”

He grinned. “But don’t you see? Don’t you see how he’s trapped? Hell, he’s always been—”

“All I see is you in a spot and a young… young I-don’t-know is too scared to help you.”

“Whoa, there, lady. It’s not just scared. Besides, scared is smart. He—”

“Jack! Would you stop defending him?” she cried. He stopped, looked at her. “The more you take up for him, the less I like him,” she said with exasperation.

And he grinned again.

What is he smiling about?

She had a bad thought.

“Jack, is that what you’re hoping for, that the vampires will stop scaring him?”

He shook his head. “Oh, no! They’ll never stop scaring him.”

“Then what?”

“Sooner or later,” he whispered fiercely, “they’re going to piss him off.”