Val made an ugly sound and they all looked at her. “I don’t care if he’s Saint Jude reborn—if he comes near Mike again I’ll kill him.”

No one doubted her.

“Try calling Crow again,” Newton suggested after a moment. “And maybe those cops, too.”

Crow’s phone went right to voice mail again, so she tried LaMastra’s cell and got the same thing; but when she called Ferro’s phone it rang six times before going to voice mail. A signal, but no response.

“This is bad,” Mike said.

“You know that,” Weinstock asked, “or are you guessing?”

“Some of both, I guess. The Bone Man told me that Griswold was going to do something today. Something called the Red Wave.”

Newton turned away from the window where he’d been watching the storm clouds thicken and darken. Even though it was only three o’clock it was as gloomy as twilight outside. “Which is what exactly?”

“I’m not sure. He wasn’t sure, either. All we know is that Vic and Ruger have been working hard to make as many vampires as possible so that the Red Wave will work, and that whatever it is will be bad. Really bad.”

Val cut a look at Weinstock. “The Festival?”

“Has to be…damn it!”

“And it’s supposed to happen tonight?” Jonatha asked.

“Yeah, but I don’t know what it’ll be or when it’ll start.” He put his head in his hands. “It’s so frustrating to know some things in so much detail and not other things. I feel like I’m trying to put a puzzle together and I don’t know if I have all the pieces or even if the pieces are part of the same puzzle.”

“I have to go and warn Crow. If he’s walking into a trap…” The hunting hawk look was back on her face even though her eyes were bright with terror. She looked at Newton, expecting him to say something, perhaps offer to guide her to Dark Hollow, but he blanched and even backed up a step.

“I…can’t…” he said.

“Val,” Weinstock said, “no, we could never get out there and find him. Not in time. We have to do something to stop the Festival. If Ruger and his goons show up tonight, it could be a slaughter. Everyone’s going to be in costume…Ruger could walk right up to someone and no one would know who he was until it was too late.”

Chapter 37

1

“Dear God!” gasped Crow as he climbed to his feet. Tears streaked his cheeks, but not just from the cordite. “Dear sweet Jesus God.”

Beside him, LaMastra was furiously reloading his shotgun, flicking frequent nervous glances around at the shadows as he worked. The vampires were sprawled like dolls knocked off a shelf by an earthquake, their white faces strangely empty of malevolence. Kneeling, Crow peered in wonder at the face of Jimmy Castle.

“He doesn’t have any fangs,” he said softly. LaMastra looked up from his shotgun. “They must have gone away after he died. Anyone finds these bodies it’ll just look like we murdered them all.”

“I don’t care,” LaMastra said, and Crow turned and gave him a sharper look. The big man’s eyes were twitching and jumping, and he had a nervous tic that made it look like he kept trying to smile.

Christ, thought Crow, don’t wig out on me now. But then LaMastra’s eyes hardened. “Hey…reload, damn it! Get your head out of your ass.”

“Right, sorry…” He dug in his pockets for shells.

Slotting the last shell into his shotgun, LaMastra said, “We have to get out of this place.” He picked up the fallen Maglite. His own flash had shattered when they fell through the floor, but Crow’s sturdy little flash was still working. LaMastra held it above him as they began to explore the cellar.

Crow looked around at the walls, trying not to look at the bodies. “These old farmhouses usually have a yard entrance to the cellar. I saw one outside, but it was chained shut just like the front door.”

“Good call,” said LaMastra. “So let’s find it, blow the lock, and get the hell out of here.”

“Works for me.”

The cellar was a thirty-by-eighty-foot oblong with a seven-foot-high unfinished ceiling and a badly poured concrete floor. Five doors were set into the walls, ostensibly leading to storerooms. A set of rickety wooden stairs bisected the basement, but they ignored them—upstairs held nothing but traps and frustration.

“The cellar door has to be behind one of these,” Crow said.

“Shit.”

The awareness of what could be behind any one of those doors was daunting and they were both sweating badly despite the deep cold of the room. The fact that there was no sound other than what they made and no movement other than their own was no comfort. The basement had a sneaky, crouching, waiting feel to it.

None of the cellar doors had locks, though they were all closed. Three of the doors were hinged to open out; the others opened in. Before they approached them they shone the light on the ceiling and all around the frames, looking for trip wires, but they could see nothing.

“Vince…I’ll grab the handle and pull, you get ready to shoot anything that so much as twitches, okay?”

LaMastra wiped sweat from his face on a hunched shoulder and nodded. He set himself and aimed the shotgun at the center of the first door. Licking his lips, Crow reached out for the handle, took a breath, and then turned the knob and pulled the handle as he stepped back to yank the door open.

LaMastra almost fired just from sheer nerves, but Crow shined the light inside and they were looking at a filthy but empty toilet stall.

Neither sighed in relief; there were still four to go. They moved eight feet to their right and stopped before one of the two doors that opened inward.

“I’ll kick it,” LaMastra said and gave it such a massive stamp that the door crashed inward and off its hinges and fell flat, sending up clouds of dust. They sprang into the room and instantly LaMastra saw a figure lunging at him with the same speed and aggression. He fired without thinking and there was a boom and the sharp crash of shattering glass.

“Nice shooting, Tex,” Crow said. “You just killed a mirror.”

“Shit.”

The room was cluttered with old chairs, wardrobes, tables, and boxes of bric-a-brac. “Nothing,” Crow concluded. “Just Griswold’s old junk.”

They exited and crossed the cellar to the far end where the last three small rooms were.

“Your turn,” LaMastra said, shifting to a flanking position, gun ready. Crow nodded and braced himself for the kick, but just as he raised his leg the door was whipped open and children poured out of the shadows, laughing insanely and reaching for them with black-taloned hands.

2

Vic saw the three ATVs and immediately jammed on his brakes, bringing the pickup to a screeching stop. Dust plumed up from his tires and panic leapt up in his chest.

The Man’s in danger! The thought was like a hot wire in his brain.

He was out of the truck and running, low and fast, making maximum use of the tall grass, toward the house, his Luger in his hand, eyes cutting back and forth across the field for signs of movement. He couldn’t see anyone, but just one glance at the house told him there was trouble. One of the plywood sheets was down, exposing the red brick he’d laid.

As he drew closer he could see that the front door was open.

“Shit!” he hissed, then changed his angle of approach so that he came at the house obliquely. It had to be Crow—they used ATVs at that stupid Hayride—but who was with him?

Crow being here could be very bad or very damn good, especially if he was actually inside. Vic had rigged the place pretty well last time he was here. He crabbed sideways from where he was squatting and tried to get a clearer look at the front of the house. The pile of debris from the fallen porch roof hid most of his view of the door.

He heard a sound and froze, listened. Heard it again. A kind of moan. Definitely human. By now he knew the sounds the Dead Heads made and the Fangers didn’t moan. Vic rose to three-quarters of his height, just enough to see over the pile of debris. What he saw made him smile.

There was a man lying on the porch at the top of the steps. Even from where Vic stood he could see that the man was covered in blood. Vic felt a flush of pride at knowing that at least one of his little booby traps had worked. Still cautious, he moved closer, though he knew that if a man that badly injured had been left to lie there and bleed, then his companions were in no position to help.

Vic didn’t understand what he was seeing at first, because the wounded man had a landscaper’s insecticide sprayer on his back, but then he got a whiff of gasoline and he understood. His smile faded slightly. The presence of the gas confirmed the fact that these intruders understood something of the nature of the problem. Not good, he thought, but at least the problem appeared to be contained for the moment.

He stood over the bloody man and admired the effects of his little booby trap. The nails of the trapdoor had caught him good; one had even punched right through his skull. Vic nodded in satisfaction at that. It had taken a lot of hard work to rig that trap; nice to know it had worked as planned.

He climbed onto the porch and pushed on the front door, but the panel was as solid as a rock. Good. Crow and whoever else came with him were probably trapped inside.

He turned looked down again at the corpse. The man had obviously crawled out of the vestibule, trailing blood and piss and gasoline all the way, leaving a slimy trail like a slug. Blood was still mostly wet. Vic figured the guy hadn’t been dead long.

Even with all the blood Vic recognized the dead man. Frank Ferro, the black cop from Philly who’d been hunting Ruger. Vic chuckled. Well, this wasn’t the first spook he’d killed over the years. He saw a bulge in the man’s rear pants pocket and was reaching for the wallet when the dead man moaned.

Startled, Vic jerked his hand back and brought up the pistol. The man reached out one feeble hand and fumbled at the edge of the top step, closed his fingers around it, and then tried to pull himself forward. Vic was impressed. Hole in the back of his head and the son of a bitch was still trying. He took a wooden kitchen match from his shirt pocket and put it between his teeth.