Crow closed his eyes and a great dark wave of tension seemed to roll out of him.

“So, yes—lucky in that regard,” Weinstock said, “but there’s still everything that went on at the farm last night. You’ll have to really be there for her, buddy. More than ever, what with Mark and Connie and all…”

“I know. About Connie…did she suffer much?”

“I doubt she was even aware of anything from the time she was attacked.”

“God. I just can’t believe this. It’s like Ruger and Boyd had some kind of vendetta going. Why them, though?”

Weinstock shook his head. “Who the hell knows what goes on in minds like that?”

“Is there anything new on Terry?”

“Not much. They moved him out of surgery and into ICU but—”

“Are you talking about Mayor Wolfe?” a voice asked.

Weinstock stopped and wheeled around to where Newton was struggling to sit up in the chair by the window. The little reporter blinked like a turtle and fisted sleep out of his eyes.

“You!” Weinstock said, pointing a finger at him. “Whoever you are, get out.”

“Whoa,” Crow said, stepping between them. “Ease up, Saul—Newton’s a reporter. You know him, the guy that broke the Ruger story.”

Weinstock inhaled through his nose. “In that case get the hell out. And I mean now.”

“Hold on, Newt’s with me,” Crow said, waving Newton back to his seat.

Weinstock’s face was alight with anger. “Crow…there are some things I want to tell you that I’m sure you’re not going to want him to hear. Trust me on this.”

“Don’t be too sure. A lot of stuff happened yesterday and Newt was with me. You can speak openly.”

“No way…not in front of a reporter.”

“Saul, I don’t think there’s anything you can tell me that he won’t be ready to hear.”

“No.” This time it was Newton who said it.

Crow and Weinstock both looked at him. “Hey, Newt, you can’t bail out on me now.”

“Crow…honestly, I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I haven’t even gotten my head wrapped around what we saw yesterday. I need to stop thinking about this. It’s all too…” He stopped and just stood there, small and defeated, hands jammed defensively into his pockets.

Weinstock arched an eyebrow at Crow, who sighed. “S’okay, dude. I guess I didn’t give you a lot of time to prepare for this, and what we went through yesterday…well, I’m just glad I had a friend with me.”

Newton looked at him in surprise, his eyes searching Crow’s face for the lie, but not finding it. “Thanks,” he mumbled, his eyes wet.

“Why don’t you go home, get some sleep, and meet me back here later today? Try to put this stuff out of your mind for a while.”

Newton smiled at the absurdity of the concept. “What do you think the chances are that I’ll ever be able to do that?” He sketched a wave, picked up his soiled jacket, and shambled out of the room.

“Poor bastard,” Crow said. “He’s a pretty good guy, Saul. A little fussy at first, but he kind of stepped up. It’s just that yesterday was…well, when I tell you the whole thing you’ll understand.”

Crow sat down on the edge of the bed and Weinstock dragged the chair over. For a full minute neither said a word, their eyes meeting for a second at a time and falling away. Crow leaned on his forearms and stared at the floor between his hiking boots; Weinstock leaned back and studied the blankness of the speckled acoustic ceiling tiles.

After a while Crow took a breath. “You want to start?”

Weinstock barked an ugly little laugh. “Not really.”

“Me neither.”

The tide of silence washed back and forth between them for a while before Weinstock finally said, “The problem is, now that I’m right up to it I don’t know how to start.”

“There’s that.” Crow chewed his lip for a second. “On the other hand, brother, do you have the same feeling I have that we both want to say the same thing but are just too damn scared about how we’ll each react?”

Weinstock stopped looking at the ceiling. “No, but that sounds encouraging.”

“There’s a word that’s in my head here, Saul, and I wonder if you’re thinking about the same word.”

There was another long time of silence, but this time they kept eye contact. Finally, Weinstock licked his lips and, very softly, said, “Does your word start with a v?”

“I’m sorry as hell to say it does.”

Weinstock closed his eyes. “Oh…shit.”

Chapter 3

1

In his dreams he was Iron Mike Sweeney, the Enemy of Evil. In his dreams he was tall and powerful, his hand was strong and sure, his courage a constant. In his dreams Mike rode through the burning town on a cut-down Harley, a Japanese katana slung across his back, matching pistols strapped to his hips, the fire of purpose burning in his eyes. In those dreams he sought out the killers and the predators, the monsters and the madmen, the dragons and the demons—and he slew them all.

That’s what happened in Mike Sweeney’s dreams.

Last night he stopped having those dreams, and never in this life would he have them again. The interior world of fantasy and heroics, of drama and excitement was gone, completely burned out of him by a process of change that had begun the night Karl Ruger came to town. For a while his dream life had intensified as new dreams had snuck into his mind, dreams in which he was chased down by a madman in a monstrous gleaming wrecker—chased and then run down, ground to red pulp beneath its wheels—or dreams in which he walked through Pine Deep as it burned, as everyone he knew and loved died around him.

The heroic dreams were gone. The dream of the wrecker was gone, too.

Only the dream of the burning town remained.

All through the night, as blood was spilled on the Guthrie farm, and as the doctors labored to save the lives of people Mike knew and didn’t know, Mike phased in and out of a dissociative fugue state. Memories flashed before his dreaming mind that his waking mind would not remember. Well, not for a while anyway. Halloween was coming, and that would change everything for Mike, as it would for the rest of Pine Deep. The part of him that was emerging, the chrysalis forming in the shadows of his deepest mind—that part of him knew everything—but it was still unable to communicate with Mike’s conscious mind. Unable, and unready.

Mike slept through that night of pain and death and most of who he was burned off, fading like morning fog will as the sun rises. The part that was left, the memories and personality that was truly Mike Sweeney had become thinner, just a veneer over the face of the dhampyr who fought to emerge. Yet both boy and dhampyr shared the dreams, the former unaware of the presence of the other, and the latter indifferent, but both caught up in the remaining dream as it played out over and over again as the night ground to its end.

When Mike woke only one image remained in his conscious mind, and it lingered there, enigmatic yet strangely calming. In it Mike stood in a clearing by a ramshackle old farmhouse that was overgrown with sickly vines and fecund moss. Behind the farmhouse was the wall of the forest, but in front of it was a big field that had gone wild with neglect. Mike stood in the clearing, just a few feet from the house, and he heard a sound that made him turn and look up to see a sight that took his breath away. Overhead, from horizon to horizon, filling the sky like blackened embers from a fire, were crows. Tens of thousands of them, perhaps hundreds of thousands. Featureless and dark, flapping silently in the still air, and Mike turned to watch them as the carrion birds flew from west to east, heading toward the forest, which was burning out of control. The last image Mike had before he woke was the silhouettes of the swarm of night birds painted against the swollen face of a gigantic harvest moon.

“This is what Hell looks like,” Mike heard himself say. “The Red Wave is coming…and the black wind follows.”

2

After he left the hospital Willard Fowler Newton did not drive home. He walked the six blocks to where his car was parked outside of Crow’s store, fished in his pocket for the keys, unlocked it, climbed in, pulled the door shut, and locked it. The interior of the Civic smelled of stale air, old coffee, dried autumn leaves, and sweat. He didn’t roll down the windows, didn’t start the engine.

For twenty minutes he just sat there, his keys lying on the passenger seat, the engine off and cold. At this time of day Corn Hill was empty except for an occasional car rolling past as someone went off to start an early day at work, or drifted home after the graveyard shift. There was no foot traffic, no one to take notice of him, no one to see a man sitting alone in his car in the early morning of October 14. No one to observe a young man sitting with his face buried in bruised and filthy hands, his shoulders hunched and trembling as he wept.

3

“You’re up early, Mikey.”

Mike Sweeney stood in the shadows of the doorway, silhouetted by the light filling the hallway from the foyer window. Lois Wingate turned from the stove and looked at her son. “You want some breakfast? I’m making pancakes.”

“Not hungry,” he said and walked slowly over to the fridge, opened it, and fished around for the orange juice.

“You look tired, Mikey. Your eyes are so bloodshot.”

He swirled the orange juice around in its carton, then opened it and drank at least a pint, wiped his mouth, and tossed the empty carton into the trash. “I’m going out. I have to work at the store today.”

“It’s only seven o’clock.”

He headed back toward the hallway. “I’ll ride my bike for a bit.”

“Mike,” Lois said, reaching out a hand to touch his shoulder as he passed. He stopped but didn’t turn toward her. She smelled of last night’s gin and Vic’s cigarettes, and the pancakes smelled burnt. “Mike, are you okay?”