“No,” Stiles said flatly, hiding his own self-doubts. “I don’t like killing.”
“Really? Come now, my friend. We are too much alike.”
“Not hardly.”
Danner wore a viper’s smile. “We shall see. For that’s the purpose of my little confession.” His expression became malevolent as he came to the bed and sat down on its edge. “You. Hurt. Me. Mister. Stiles,” he hissed, punctuating each word with a finger jabbed into the soldier’s ribs. One of them gave an audible crack, and the soldier winced. Danner continued talking. “I thought imprisonment was the most grievous wrong done me but you went one better. It took all I had to recover from your attack, to regain my strength, to heal myself. You will suffer for that. You will rue the day you raised your hand against me.”
He reached over and smeared his finger with blood from Stiles’s lip and licked it off with rapturous delight. “I could take you now. I could bleed you dry and leave you a mindless husk like those out there. But that seems so . . . simple. You wouldn’t be able to comprehend your plight, would you? No, I want you as I am: fully conscious and able, with all of your faculties and wits intact. You will need them.” He leaned over him. “For this fate can be many things—blessing to some, curse to others. Imagine an unquenchable thirst, and the vile acts you must commit to appease it. Could you bear the shame, the guilt? A moral man, a righteous man, would be tormented throughout eternity.” Then he smiled. “Or at least until he learned to enjoy it. And you will, Mr. Stiles. We are that much alike.”
Stiles strained at his ropes openly. If only I can get to the Uzi . . . “You’re screwing up, Danner,” he stalled. “Making me like you would be your biggest mistake. Then I’d have your powers, and I’d use them against you. I’d can your ass, so help me God.”
Danner laughed. “No vampire can use his powers against his master. Never.”
Stiles managed a disturbing grin. “Just wait and see.”
The vampire’s smirk vanished. “Enough talk,” he snapped. “It’s time.” He stood and stretched like a cat before its meal. “You know, traditionally, the apostle would drink from a wound in the Master’s neck or breast. But for you . . . I’ve another vessel in mind.” He unbuttoned his pants and reached inside. The thing he took in hand was pale and bulbous, like a slug born to darkness. When he ran a fingernail across his penis’s sallow head, it left a ragged scar as if in wax, and, slowly, stolen blood began to seep through the laceration. Stiles squirmed frantically, jerking and tugging at his bonds, but they wouldn’t come loose, not fast enough. Danner seized him by the face and pressed at the jaw hinge, squeezed hard until the soldier had to unclench his teeth and open wide or hear yet another bone crack. “Drink, Mr. Stiles. Drink deep.”
A voice sounded from over near the door. “Put your dick away,” it said. “Nobody wants to look at it.”
Danner wheeled with a snarl. But there was no one there.
“Alex?” Stiles muttered.
“Who is it!” barked the vampire. “Show yourself!”
“Back here, Smiley.” The voice came from the bathroom. “Catch me if you can.”
Danner buttoned his pants and stormed across the room with a low growl, battering in the lavatory door, knocking it off its hinges. But there was no one there. The voice had already moved on.
“Over here, Smiley.
“No, over here now.
“C’mon, Smiley. You’re getting cold.”
“ENOUGH!” Danner went back to the bed and caught Stiles’s windpipe in a vise-like grip. “Show yourself,” he ordered, “or he dies now!”
There was movement near the front door; an indistinct figure was suddenly standing there, hiding in the gloom, a shadow among shadows. “Whoever you are,” the vampire hissed, “you’re a dead man.”
“Lucky guess, fucknuts,” Alex replied. “Now, move away from the bed.”
“Or what?” Danner picked the lifeless television from its stand as if it weighed nothing and flung it at the intruder, smashing it into the corner and destroying both wallboard and appliance alike. But the shadow man standing there was untouched. “But . . .” the vampire stammered, “how could . . .”
“You’re a little slow on the uptake, son. I’m a ghost, get it? A spirit, a specter, a haunt?”
“That’s impossible.”
“You should talk. Now, I suggest you leave while you can.”
Danner managed to control his shock. He even laughed. “Is that a threat?”
“Gosh, it sounded like one to me.”
The vampire shoved the lounge chair across the room, where, like the TV, it passed through its target and rebounded off the wall. Then he laughed. “You have no substance, spook. How do you plan to hurt me?”
“I can’t,” the shadow man replied. “But he can.” He pointed behind the fiend. Toward the bed.
Danner’s eyes widened. He suddenly knew that the phantom was no threat—only a diversion.
He turned just as the prisoner sat upright on the bed, pulled the Uzi into view and opened fire. The short, static burst started low and swept upward, opening the vampire from crotch to collarbone. But Danner stayed on his feet. He looked down at the widening fissure in his chest and stomach, saw his captured blood spilling onto the motel-room floor, and he shook with sudden rage. His mouth opened wide and kept going, seeming to fill with more and more jagged teeth, until he gave a guttural cry and lunged toward the bed.
Stiles ignored the pain of the Uzi’s recoil in his hands and fingers and fired again, this time sweeping from side to side. The first pass cut a dotted line along the creature’s throat but didn’t slow him; the second enlarged the perforation and made Stiles’s intentions obvious. Decapitation. “NO!” Danner croaked, mostly through the rent in his throat, as he turned and threw himself through the picture window in a rain of glass.
The Uzi had hit empty but Stiles kept it ready nonetheless, at least until the footsteps outside staggered away and faded from his ears. The vampire was gone again, but for how long? He was getting stronger, Stiles could feel it. It was just a matter of time.
He struggled with the ropes at his ankles, cursing them and his aching hands, and finally freed himself completely. But he collapsed like a stringless puppet as soon as he left the bed. He looked to the specter still lingering in the shadows. Even Alex looked haggard and spent—what Chris could see of him—and he was already fading. But he managed to smile anyway. “How’re you doing, Hoss?”
Stiles nodded. “Pretty shitty, but I’ll manage. How about you?”
Alex faded a little more. “I guess my Casper act . . . took a little more out of me than I expected.”
“But why? Why’d you come back to help? You never did that before.”
The specter tried to shrug. “I guess you never really needed me until now.” He was little more than an afterimage now. “I’m used up, Hoss. I won’t be back for a while. So it looks like you’re on your own.”
“I’m used to it,” Chris replied. “And Alex . . . thanks. You know?” But by that time the shadow man was gone. Chris couldn’t tell if his brother had heard him or not.
Chapter Thirteen
Billie lay wide awake in the cocoon of her comforter and stared a hole in her bedroom ceiling, waiting for sleep that was already three hours late. She wasn’t asking for much, just a brief respite, a chance to elude the worries that, since earlier in the evening, had begun to gather like bloated specters at the edge of her imagination. She was exhausted, and desperately needed the rest. But the arms of slumber would not comfort her. Chris Stiles just wouldn’t allow it.
He had taken up residence in her mind and she could not force him out, no matter what his incarnation. First the rugged stranger with the easy manner and the quick smile, then the quiet loner on her porch swing, fumbling with his solitude and wanting, needing to reach out to someone. To her. That
was the man she was quickly learning to care for, learning to . . .
To like a lot, she was quick to finish. I just liked him a lot. Past tense.
For that man’s face was blurring now, and another was taking its place. This one was a parody of the former, an identical twin whose features shifted schizophrenically with wide eyes that saw, what, jungle enemies from a war long over? Or something more seriously unbalanced, like demons or ghosts, or vampires?
Maybe a cup of hot chocolate would help her sleep. She slipped into her housecoat and scuffs and shuffled down the chilled hallway, careful to avoid those worn spots in the floor lest she wake the boys.
She was two steps down the staircase before she heard sounds from the darkness below.
It was soft and continuous, like the low drone of an insect. Her throat constricted. Voices. Muttering just softly enough for her not to identify them or make out what they were saying. She backed up a step, hoping she could make it to her room and the telephone without setting off one of those land-mine floorboards and giving herself away. But then the voices downstairs turned to clapping and her alarms deactivated with a sigh. Unless the intruders had brought a studio audience, she realized, it must be the television set. And where there was a TV on . . .
She crept the rest of the way down and peeked past the wall into the living room.
A late night episode of Happy Days was about midway through, and the studio was still alive with whistles and applause at Fonzie’s entrance. The home audience, however, was not so enthused. Del was sprawled on the couch in his pajamas, cradling something (probably He-Man or Skeletor) in his arms like a football player protecting the ball. Bart sat in the recliner before the television and nodded his head erratically, swaying and dipping, the same way his dad used to do when he just couldn’t stay up for those late-night westerns.
Billie felt a flash of motherly anger at being disobeyed—they were sent to bed hours ago—but her temper was quickly squelched by even stronger maternal concern. What’s wrong with you, she snapped at herself. Have you been that wrapped up in your own worries and disappointments? What did you expect, two scared boys to sleep in their own rooms, alone, in the dark? They’re your children, dammit. Act like it.
Bart’s chin finally tipped forward onto his chest and stayed there, snoozing fitfully. She came up behind his lounge chair and tilted it slowly back. The boy conceded to the change in body position without opening an eye or breaking rhythm in his snoring. Only then did Billie notice what he’d been doing: a grocery sack full of wood shavings sat between his legs, as did the broken head from her best broom. The shaft of it lay across his lap, one end whittled to a threatening point. She took his pocketknife away and laid it on the coffee table, then eased the makeshift stake from his grasp and looked it over. A glance toward the couch told her Del had a weapon too, of sorts. The “toy” he’d been cuddling was the remainder of the garlic bread from supper a few nights back. Vampires, she sighed wearily. They just wouldn’t give it up. They were so adamant about it earlier, almost frantic, insisting that she believe them. Was it so much to ask, she wondered now. They are your children—don’t you owe them that much?
No, she reminded herself emphatically. Humoring them wouldn’t do any good, not for them, not for anyone. Not even for Chris. Because that was who this all boiled down to, wasn’t it, whether she wanted to admit it or not. The stranger had some kind of hold on the boys; just what it was she couldn’t say and was afraid to even guess. But they would never uncover it if they hid their heads in the sand and blamed it all on imaginary monsters. Maybe they should get out of town after all, she considered, just for a little while. But not because of Stiles’s warnings. They would go because the boys needed help, either medical or psychological or maybe both, and they wouldn’t get it in Isherwood. Maybe they’d go to Mom and Dad’s in Ellettsville, and stay there for a few days. There were plenty of doctors in nearby Bloomington, and Indiana University had a whole department of psychology if they needed it.
Billie kneeled down beside Delbert and brushed the hair from his brow, finding his skin cold to the touch. No sense getting him up, she thought, so she went out into the hall to get a blanket from his room. She picked her way through the mess of adolescence like an experienced adventurer, stripped the top blanket from the bed, bundled it under her arm, and went looking for one for Bart. There was bound to be another around there somewhere.
She saw a cover in the closet doorway, picked it up, and spied the carefully hidden stack of horror comics beneath. “What the hell?” She kneeled down beside the magazines and books and felt her face flush with anger as she sifted through the Fangorias and GoreZones and Famous Monsters of Filmlands. Many of them were emblazoned with dripping monsters and hideous mutants and imaginatively dismembered victims.
“Dammit, Delbert,” she muttered as she leafed through one of the magazines, “how many times have I told you not to buy this junk?” She dropped the book as if it might bite her fingers and just sat, fuming. No wonder the boys were so rattled. How could any normal child read such trash and not be affected? A horrible thought struck her—what if she’d been placing the blame on Chris unfairly? What if she’d had it backward all the time, that Del and Bart had convinced themselves that it was a vampire who beat them up, and when poor troubled Chris came along he was unwittingly drawn into their fantasy world?
They all have to go, she fumed. I won’t have this trash in my house. She scooped up the whole stack, wrapped it in the blanket, and went out into the hall. The trash cans were out back, along the side of the garage. But when she got to the back door, she hesitated. She felt a twinge of fear, though not because of the vandals who’d been out there earlier. They were long gone by now, she reasoned. Seeing a nut with a machine gun would have put the fear of God in them readily enough. No, this was a more familiar fear, one she knew most every day. Namely, fifty-five pounds of canine muscle named Bruiser. The Citozzi’s pit bull next door always made her nervous, even out of sight behind a boundary hedge and a tall chain-link fence. Del had assured her that the dog was docile, but she had seen too many news reports on TV . . . She turned and crept back into the living room just long enough to retrieve Bart’s customized broomstick. Then she unlocked the back door and stepped outside.
It wasn’t as dark as she’d expected; the security lamp on the corner of the garage to her right did a good job of keeping the night at bay and spilled a cone of liquid light across the backyard. It illuminated the tire swing on the lowest branch of the big oak and the grill that hadn’t seen charcoal since two summers ago and the lawn-darts set that the boys seemed incapable of putting away. The mower was in the middle of the yard, its last meal digested and waiting to hibernate in the back of the garage until spring.
She listened to the night around her and heard nothing beyond the rustling of branches overhead, the whistle of the chilled breeze through the hedge. No dog so far. She started down the stone walkway slowly, scuffing her feet louder than necessary just to have a little audible accompaniment. But still no growls. Not even a whimper. So what were you so afraid of? she chastised herself. A brass band couldn’t rouse that mutt. She looked at the stake in her hand and felt stupid. So when she got to the plastic garbage cans along the garage, it was the first thing to go in.
She unwrapped the blanket and found herself staring at one particular cover in glorious color. The title identified the movie as Fright Night. The woman pictured was blond and clad in a wispy white gown, but that was all so much detail. It was her feral face that dominated the picture, especially her mouth. The lips were peeled all the way back to the nose, baring an unprecedented jawful of teeth. Including the requisite canines.
A chill edged along her spine.
Staring into that face out there in the dark, she realized that what seemed ridiculous in the confines of her home a few minutes ago was a wholly different situation out here. In the silence. In the dark. She still did
n’t believe in vampires, at least not in the classical sense. But there were human monsters, weren’t there, not just criminals but blithering psychopaths who strained the boundary between man and beast. Hadn’t she seen tribesmen somewhere, in the National Geographic maybe, who filed their teeth to vampiric points? And weren’t there documented cases of madmen who killed for blood, like that guy she’d seen in a TV Guide book ad once. What was his name . . . the Vampire of Düsseldorf?
She stared at the picture and wondered if someone like that had come upon her boys at the Danner House. And if that someone might still be walking around loose.
A low growl sounded from beyond the hedge at the side of the yard, not ten feet away. It took Billie by surprise, jolted her. The menace it conveyed raised the fine hairs on her neck. “Ssh, Bruiser,” she whispered, trying to stay calm. “Easy, boy. It’s just me.” But the growling continued, deepening until there was no sound at all, just an angry rasping of breath. Billie backed up a step. What is it? Her mind raced. Is it me, or is there something else?
The first yelp was so unexpected that it struck Billie like a physical blow. Another followed soon after, but this one did not end. It was a shrill ululating cry of pain, and it froze Billie in her place. All she could muster was a whispered, “Dear God . . .”
The whimpering ended swiftly, in midcry, and then the quiet of the night returned as if never disrupted. Billie stood gaping at the blank wall of the hedge, disbelieving all she had heard. Where was the sound of doors and windows being thrown wide in alarm? Surely everyone had heard that noise . . . hadn’t they? Hadn’t she? She took a numbed step toward the hedge. “Bruiser?” she half-whispered even before she realized what she was doing. Her voice seemed impossibly loud. But then, so did the furtive whispers and snickering that answered.
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