“That’s ’cause we stepped in it in the last inning.”

“Still doesn’t feel over.”

Crow said, “Whether it is or isn’t, we need to know more than we do right now. I hate like hell fumbling around in the dark. Which brings me to my next question. Are you in any condition to help me out with what’s going on?”

“If that means tramping around through graveyards with a Gladstone bag filled with stakes and holy water, then…no, I’m not. On the other hand, if you want me to help with research and that sort of thing, then I’m way ahead of you. Since I left the hospital I’ve been doing nothing but surfing the Net and sending e-mails. I’ve tracked down about twenty people, just in this end of the country, who are considered top experts on…these subjects.”

“Anything we can use?”

“The one person who seems to be the absolute golden boy of this particular kind of folklore is a guy from U of P, Professor Jonathan Corbiel. Do you remember me telling you yesterday about a website I was at that mentioned you-know-who down in Dark Hollow?”

“Sure. Something about a werewolf trial a couple hundred years ago.”

“We agreed it was either an ancestor of our boy, or he took the name symbolically. In any case, Corbiel is a real expert on that case. The Peeter Stubbe case.” He spelled the name. “The more of the case I read the stranger it gets. I’ve forwarded a lot of it to your Yahoo account.”

“Can we talk to this Corbiel guy?”

“I already sent him an e-mail. Carefully worded. I’m pretending that I’m writing a pop-culture book on the haunted history of Pine Deep and want a folklore expert I can footnote. Haven’t heard back yet, but maybe we can get him to meet us for dinner somewhere.” He paused. “Somewhere that’s not Pine Deep.”

“Works for me,” Crow said, “but before you go, there’s more stuff happening around here.” He told him about the morgue and the missing bodies.

Newton’s voice was a whisper. “Are you sure that Boyd didn’t just get up and walk off?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“Pretty sure?” Newton said. “Oh, man…”

He hung up.

Crow made a few more calls, then walked back to Val’s room. She was only dozing and woke as soon as he entered. She turned toward him and offered him a tight smile.

“Get any sleep?” he asked, parking a haunch on the side of the bed.

“In and out.”

“I’m heading home for a bit. I got to get cleaned up, but I’ll be back here in an hour or two. Will you be okay?”

“I’ll be fine. Just…be careful,” she said, glancing at the window. “It’s dark out.”

“I will. Be back soon.” He kissed her, and left.

He met Weinstock by the elevator; he was heading home, too. Crow told him about his call to Newton.

“That sounds promising,” Weinstock said.

“It may be past time for getting proactive, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

“No kidding.” The elevator was nearly to the bottom floor when Weinstock opened his coat and turned his hip so Crow could see the handle of a big pistol snugged into a belt clip. Crow cocked an eyebrow, then the elevator chimed and Weinstock dropped the coat flap.

As they crossed the nearly empty lobby, Crow asked, “You any good with it?”

“I fired a couple of rounds off when I bought it.”

“Swell.” They exited the lobby and stepped out into the parking lot. There were still dozens of cars parked in neat rows, their colors muted by the darkness except where sodium vapor lamps spilled down swatches of light.

“But I have a little edge, just in case.” Saul said, leaning close. “I had some silver bullets made. No, don’t give me that look—I know silver is for werewolves, but I figure I’ve got both bases covered. No matter what jumps out at me I’ll park one of these hollowpoints in his brainpan. Werewolf, vampire—I’m pretty sure that’s going to settle his hash.”

Crow smiled. “‘Settle his hash’? And you say I watch too much TV?” He tilted his head and cocked an eye at Weinstock. “I can’t say much for your choice of handgun, though.”

“Why not? It’s a damn .44!”

“It’s a Ruger Blackhawk. A Ruger, Saul, really?”

“Jeez…I didn’t even think…”

A voice said, “You fellows okay there?”

They turned to the first row of cars to see a pair of local cops leaning against the side of a parked ambulance. Shirley O’Keefe and Dave Golub. Good kids, new to Pine Deep PD. The pair of them stood just outside the spill of light from the entrance. Golub, a big man, had his arms folded and his hat pulled low. O’Keefe wore no hat but her face was shadowed by her frizzy mane of red hair. The stark lighting made both of them look dark-eyed and pale.

“Hey Dave,” Crow said with a smile, “Shirley.”

Shirley said nothing, but she gave Crow a slow nod. She wore a quirky little knowing smile that seemed out of place on her freckled face. It made her look impish rater than elfin.

“How’s Val?” Golub asked.

“Well as can be expected.”

“Shame about Mark and his wife, though,” Golub said.

“Dave,” Weinstock asked, “any news on finding Boyd’s body yet?”

“No…but I’m sure it’ll turn up.”

“Ask Gus to call me first thing if it does.”

Golub gave him a smile and a nod. “Will do, Doc.”

2

Vic was out for hours, sprawled in a tangle of arms and legs, reeking of shit, a pool of brown urine going cold and stale under him. His nose and ears were no longer bleeding, but the dried blood caked his nostrils and streaked the side of his face. Every once in a while one of his fingers would twitch. That it was his trigger finger was not coincidental and spoke of the dreams that burned in his mind as he slept off the effects of Griswold’s rage.

Ruger was only out for a few minutes. He was wired differently now, his nerves and synapses firing on different fuel. When he came awake it was like the flick of a switch, with full awareness returning in a crystalline rush of clarity. He knew who he was, where he was, and why he had been smashed flat. He felt the pain was his due, and he wore the invisible stripes of the Man’s lash humbly, honored to be noticed enough even to have been struck down.

Ruger was on his back when he became aware and he lay there for a moment drinking in the room. He smelled Vic and that made him smile. He was allowed to smile at the pain of others, even at Vic’s pain. The house above was almost silent, but he could hear the clink of ice in a glass and smell the faint juniper tang of Lois’s gin. Even through the smell of Vic’s shit and piss, he could smell that, just as he could smell the woman who sat alone, drinking the day away. He put those thoughts away for later.

Ruger sat up, crossing his legs and folding them under him so that sitting moved into kneeling. He placed his palms on the floor and closed his dark eyes as he bowed his head to the cool concrete. In the posture of the supplicant he had never been in life, Karl Ruger bowed before the raw, boundless power that was the Man.

“Forgive,” he begged in a whisper.

He remained in that posture for hours. All the while the only thing that burned as intensely within him as his need for forgiveness was his aching, burning desire to feed. Night had fallen heavily over Pine Deep. Ruger could feel it, a silky wet darkness that was alive with predator and prey. His body was on fire to run into the shadows, to melt with them, seeking the human heat in the dark cold of October, but he would not move, would not even budge. Even when he heard Vic get up, cursing and groggy, weeping with pain and humiliation as he staggered to the cellar steps and climbed unsteadily up to get cleaned up—even then Ruger remained bowed in supplication as the nothingness screamed in his head.

Then, like the faintest breath of a cool breeze on scorched skin it came. Not a word, not even a whisper, nothing articulate or shaped. Just the softest, sweetest, most subtle of touches, mind to mind. Kind to kind. After the lash, a caress of forgiveness. And of consent.

Ruger’s fetid blood screamed for black joy.

Chapter 11

1

Weinstock dropped Crow off outside his store and headed home, anxious to be out of the night and behind his own locked doors. Crow watched him go, and in the time it took Weinstock to drive two blocks and make a left the enormity of everything that had happened in the last day and a half suddenly caught up and hit him like a freight train. He staggered backward and leaned against a parking meter as a wave of nausea swirled sickeningly around his head. Gagging, he twisted around to throw up into the gutter but could only manage dry heaves. The corners of his eyes tingled as if little spiders were crawling on his cheekbones and he had to grip the meter to keep from falling into the street.

Three shoppers gave him disgusted looks as they past, and Crow distinctly heard the word “drunk” from one of them. It made him furious, but that only intensified the nausea. He held onto the meter for dear life.

Mike looked up as the bell above the door jangled and he saw Crow come in looking dirty and defeated.

“Crow!” He hurried over, and actually had to support Crow across the floor to the tall chair behind the counter. “What’s wrong?”

Crow sat on the chair, arms on thighs, head low, breathing like he’d just finished a marathon. “Sorry, kiddo,” he gasped when he could manage it. “Feeling a little out of it. No sleep, no food, bad hospital coffee.”

“Stay here,” Mike ordered, then went over and locked the front door, came back, and helped Crow into the adjoining apartment and down onto the couch. Crow’s three cats, Pinetop, Muddy Whiskers, and Koko, rushed over but then slowed to a stop when they smelled Crow’s clothes. One by one they sniffed, turned up their noses, and stalked off. Crow, steadier now that he was sitting down, looked at them and then at Mike. “When you stink so bad you offend animals that lick their balls for fun and sniff each other’s asses, then you really are in sorry shape.”